Hello List, Below is a message I received from someone who requested my help locating a Crawford Co. family. She found some great information from a Civil War pension file. This person re-married incognito and the file straightened out many mysteries for her. Per her request, I have changes the surnames to read [Surname], but, you will get the gist of what was contained in the file. If you have any Civil War veterans and haven't requested their pension files, you never know what you might find. Some are dud's, others a treasure trove of information.... Like I told Amanda, the $37 for the file was probably less than the cost of requesting the marriage and death records she received with the pension file. Information on pension files requests is available from the National Archives at: http://www.nara.gov/research/ordering/milordr.html Dave Taft -----Original Message----- From: Amanda Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2002 9:04 AM To: Dave Taft Subject: Genealogy Research Dave, Around February, 2002, I wrote you an e-mail asking for your help in my [Surname] Genealogy research from Wisconsin. I want to thank you very much for the advice that you gave me, and I want to tell you that my James Frederick [Surname] genealogy research is very much completed since you advised me to order the Pension File in reference to James Frederick [Surname]. I ordered the Full Pension File as per your advice, and wrote a note to the National Archives asking them to make sure that they included everything in reference to both [Surname] widows requesting the pension. For a while there I thought that my James Henry [Surname], son of James Frederick [Surname] and Susan Mary [Surname] was probably an illegitimate child since I knew that his date of birth was October 18, 1868, and in some of the information on other genealogy Family Trees it stated that James Frederick [Surname] married another woman called Mary [Surname]. Let me tell you a little bit of what happened in this case. James Frederick [Surname] married Susan Mary [Surname] on December 12, 1858, I have a copy of the certificate of Marriage. Then after having 10 children with Susan Mary [Surname], and she was pregnant with her 11th child, 1882, James Fredrick [Surname] left home with the excuse that he was going to the next town for provisions. They were living in Ohio at the time. He took a satchel and his gun. Susan Mary [Surname] and her children never saw him again. She moved back to Wisconsin. Meanwhile he married Amanda [Surname] on October 16, 1886, in Harrison County, Iowa, under another name and had 6 children with her. When Amanda [Surname] met James Frederick [Surname] he told her that his name was Jay [Surname] and he married her under that name. Amanda did not find out his real name until 12 years later when he applied for his own pension. James told her that he was married before with a Mary [Surname], a marriage that never took place according to the investigation of the Department of Interior, Bureau of Pension, Washington, D.C. When James Frederick [Surname] died on July 7, 1908, in Castleberry, County of Conech, State of Alabama, Amanda filed a Declaration of Widow's Pension and submitted to the Department of Interior. Meanwhile, another [Surname] family member from Wisconsin informed Susan Mary [Surname] of James death. Susan Mary [Surname] was living in San Francisco, California then. She also applied for the pension. So, when the Department of Interior, Bureau of Pension, received two (2) applications for the Widow's Pension File they in turn started an investigation. I received 142 pages of documents, depositions of members of the family, friends, marriage certificates, etc. A goldmine of information. After the investigation the Department of Interior, Bureau of Pensions, gave Susan Mary [Surname] the pension as the legal wife of James Frederick [Surname]. Now, I know that my James Henry [Surname] had many other brothers and sisters. Thanks again, Amanda St. Petersburg, FL