Brooke-The selling of future income, or an annuity is certainly possible. It is a form of a futures contract--and would be sold at a lump sum price at a discount. This way the soldier would get cash for land, etc purchases.This not an unusual transaction, even today. The contract could be filed somewhere--state agency or bank or ? An interesting search it will be for you! Beverly Brooke Myers wrote: > Hello! > > I saw some information regarding the upcoming (Nov. 13) increase in price > to request military records from the Nat'l. Archives. I found an ancestor > in one of Ancestry.com's military databases for the Civil War soldiers. It > gives information such as dates of duty, rank, company, etc. I could not, > however, find a pension file for this person. Has anyone ever heard of a > soldier "selling" off" his pension for a lump sum? I won't even guess > that's why the file I'm looking for is missing, but a friend brought that > possibility up to me, which I've never heard of. Is this a legal > transaction? > > More importantly, given the soon-to-be large price of pension and military > records from the Archives, I'd like to request the military records for this > ancestor. Given that I do not have a file number for this person, I'm > wondering if the NATF-80 is the correct way to go to search for any existing > files on this person. I may just go ahead and fill out an NATF-80 before it > gets too late, but if anyone has alternate suggestions as to how I might > obtain Civil War files/information on this person, I'd like to know. > > Brooke Myers > > ==== NYRENSSE Mailing List ==== > Archives: http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl > Rensselaer County Genweb page: http://www.rootsweb.com/~nyrensse/ > GenConnect Board: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/NY/Rensselaer > GenExchange-Rensselaer Co http://www.genexchange.org/county.cfm?state=ny&county=rensselaer