In a message dated 6/25/98 6:32:24 AM, Sherri Hessick wrote: <<I recently received the pension file for one of my Civil War veterans. I have a couple of questions: *******snip****** There was no enlistment form in the packet sent to me. Just the pension declarations and the disability discharge. Is that normal? *******snip****** is there more to the pension file and I asked for the wrong thing or is there another record I need to request? Thank you for your assistance. Sherri Hessick thessick@flash.net>> Sherri and GenTippers, You have asked may specific questions that may be hard to answer with certainty. Each Pension Application will contain different material. The smallest will contain a statement from the soldier and a service report from some military department. Because most all pension application are for invalid disability, widow of minor children there also will be several depositions concerning illness or need. The smallest pension application that I have seen contained about eight actual documents. Even a small packet may contain information about place of enlistment, marriage (s) or other family members. The largest Pension Application file that I have seen was greatly in excess of 200 pages. It involved a soldier who had several wives all making widow(s) application at the same time. Another contained a tintype photo of the soldier's mangled hand as proof of wartime injury. Occasionally they contain enlistment papers or discharge papers but not always. I have never seen evidence of naturalization although that is not improbable. The Pension File I was working on yesterday contained about 200 pages and is filled with epic movie content, complete with a hand written personal story of being in battle of "Little Round Top" at Gettysburg. Pension applications are always potential bonanzas of genealogical information, but not always. About the only thing that can be said is that unless you specifically requested to have the entire file copied it wasn't. Below I include and excerpt from my web site. There is also a page, at the same site, on naturalization records. *************** Veterans Records, use NATF Form 80 Certain military records, pension files and bounty-land applications can be requested with this form. One file for one person will cost about $10.00. You must provide them with as much information as possible. The minimum is: name, branch of service, state from which he served, war, whether union or confederate. Additional information: such as unit in which he served and place and date of birth, certainly would insure a favorable result. If your soldier was named Jones or Smith you should have very detailed information before requesting the file. They, in general, will not do research for you. Often they will not photo copy the entirety of a large file unless you make a specific request. *************** Good luck with your search, one step at a time, backwards. Ralph Komives RalphK@aol.com http://members.aol.com/RalphK/DocumentSearch.html Document Searches in Washington, D.C. Area and Annapolis, MD. Problem searches and Common Names a specialty. Research at: DAR Library, National Archives, Library of Congress, MD State Archives