FREE Sons of American Revolution Records for July 4

In honor of Independence Day,  Ancestry.com launched the Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970, a collection of more than one million applications from men with a direct link to either a supporter or participant in the fight for United States independence during the 18th century.   This collection is FREE through July 4th.

Like its well-known sister organization, The Daughters of the American Revolution, also available through Ancestry.com, the Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications contain  handwritten historical information that can take a family back through two centuries of history.

The applications contain references to Revolutionary War pension files, documented family and local histories, family Bible records, deeds, court documents, census records and typically include a short summary of the ancestor's service.

In celebration of America's Independence, Ancestry.com invites the public to discover proof of their own link to the founders of freedom by searching in the Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970 for free during a long weekend of access, Thursday, June 30th through Monday, July 4th. To begin searching users can visit Free Sons of American Revolution.

I have one ancestor, John Fertig, who was in the Chester Co, PA militia during the Revolutionary War. Searching for him in this database, I got 725 hits and found the names of previously unknown-to-me distant cousins with their lineage on these applications.  I'm still examining the records to see what else I can find.

I also have a 5th great uncle who was denied a Revoltionary War pension, yet his descendants were accepted into the Sons of the Revolution.  Interesting.

George Washington, Tim McGraw, and Historical Connections

I watched the TV show Who Do You Think You are? with interest because I was curious how Tim McGraw was connected to George Washington.  I knew our first president had no children of his own, so just how was Tim McGraw connected?

Turns out that when George Washington was 16, he surveyed Tim McGraw’s ancestor,Jost Hite’s land in the Shanadoah Valley and wrote about this in his journal. 

It reminded me that I also had connection to George Washington where a member of my family crossed paths with him, and I wondered how many can find this type of connection to him.  If you can trace your ancestors back to pre-Revolution history, then I'm thinking there is probably a fair chance that George might have crossed paths with a member of your family. After all, George Washington was a surveyor of frontier land, was a Colonel of the Virginia regiment in the French and Indian War, then was the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution.

My own family’s connection to George Washington was that my 5th great-uncle, Harmon Aughe of Chester county, Pennsylvania, was an Revolutionary War soldier who wintered in Valley Forge with General George Washington.  In Harmon’s Revolutionary War pension application, he stated that he personally knew General Washington, as well as General Anthony Wayne, because he drove a wagon that brought supplies to the Valley Forge encampment.

I know George Washington was proud of the courage of his soldiers that wintered in the terrible conditions at Valley Forge.

I found Harmon Aughe’s 35 handwritten page Revolutionary War pension application on Footnote.com.  If you want to browse the pension files at Footnote, you can get a 7 day Free Trial

More About Harmon Aughe's Revolutionary War pension application

Did your family have a connection with George Washington?  Is a family member crossing paths with George Washington as “shocking” as the TV show WDYTYA? made it sound, or are there many of us in the U.S. that have an ancestor with some type of connection to George Washington?  Let me know in the comments.

Want to know more about your family? Start your FREE family tree online to enter what you already know about yourself and have Ancestry.com help you find your family story.

Ordering Pension Records from NARA Before the Price Increase

If you have been thinking about ordering US pension & military records from the National Archives, now is the time to do it. Prices will double on October 1, 2007.

Civil War Pension Files

Starting Oct. 1, NARA will charge $75 for a Civil War pension file of up to 100 pages, with for $.65 per additional page (for longer files, staff will contact you with a price quote before filling the order). NARA says the average pension ordered is 106 pages.

If you order today, a Civil War pension file is $37. Civil War pension files are a wonderful genealogy resource and well worth sending for. The ones I have received were a goldmine of information.

You can order pension records online or request order forms. Instructions for ordering Pension Files plus details about what you can expect to receive in these files is available at How to Order Civil War Pension Files


Revolutionary War Pension Files

NARA will charge $50 for pre-Civil War pension files regardless of page count, and $.75 per page to copy other records.

If you are interesting in Revolutionary War pension files, I think it makes more sense to buy a subscription to Footnote.com instead of ordering records from NARA at their new price. Footnote has a partnership with the National Archives to digitize the full Revoultionary pension files and other NARA records. The Footnote records can be downloaded onto your computer, saved and printed.

You also have the advantage of browsing Footnote.com for your ancestor's pension file to make sure you get the right person. I can't be the only person who has sent to NARA and gotten back a file for the wrong person.

At this writing, a monthly subscription to Footnote.com is $7.95 and an annual subscription $59.95, so it is a cheaper alternative than ordering the Revolutionary records from NARA at the new price. See Footnote subscriptions Footnote is adding 2 million records per month, so you have the added benefit of being able to find other records during your subscription time.

In addition to the Revolutionary War pension file of my 5th great-grand uncle, I found some very interesting and unexpected family records at Footnote.


Spanish-American War Pension Files

Some, but not all , of the Spanish-American War (1898) pension files are held at NARA. Others are at the Veteran's Administration. The NARA price increase includes the Spanish-American War pension files held at NARA.

There is more information about ordering Spanish-American War pension files and how to determine which repository is holding your soldier's files at Ordering Spanish American Pension Records



I've got a few Civil War & Spanish American War pension files I have been procrastinating sending for. This price increase has given me the needed push to do it sooner rather than later.

Footnote.com Revolutionary War Records Free for the Month of July

Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com) has now officially launched and is making available Revolutionary War Records free until the end of July, 2007.

June 28, 2007 06:15 AM
Footnote.com Announces Official Launch of the Company and Reveals First-Hand Accounts of the Birth of America
Today Footnote.com announced the official launch of the company and its Web 2.0 historical social networking site.

As part of the launch, Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com) is making a significant portion of their millions of original Revolutionary War Records available for free from today until the end of July, 2007.

This is a great opportunity to get free access to Footnote.com's Revolutionary War documents.

For better search results at the Footnote website, read Searching the Footnote.com Web Site and Examining a Revolutionary Pension File at Footnote.com


UPDATE: The databases that are free are:

• Papers of the Continental Congress - Papers of the Continental Congress (The National Archives): NARA M247. The correspondence, journals, committee reports, and records of the Continental Congress (1774-1789).
• Misc. Papers of the Continental Congress - Miscellaneous Papers of the Continental Congress(The National Archives): NARA M332. These documents were misplaced, overlooked, or found in private hands when the records of the Papers of the Continental Congress were first arranged in 1834.
• Constitutional Convention Records - Records from the Constitutional Convention of 1787(The National Archives): NARA M866. Journals of proceedings, early drafts, and other papers relating to the formation of the U.S. Constitution.

Examining the full Revolutionary Pension Files at Footnote.com

Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com) in partnership with with the U.S. National Archives, is digitizing the Revolutionary War Pension Files to post online. These are the complete pension files taken from the National Archives microfilm publication M804, which includes an estimated 80,000 pension and bounty-land warrant application files. These pension records give full details about each veteran's history and service, as well as information about his family, state of health, and life after the war. Many of these pension files can contain upwards to 80 pages.

To locate a Revolutionary War soldier, you can use the browse menu if you know the state where the soldier served,. You can also use the Footnote search engine but you have to be very aware that there were many surname spelling variations during the 18th century.

I used the browse menu to look for my Revolutionary War ancestor, but since the digitization of the pensions is about 10% complete, my ancestor's records are not yet online. However, I did find my 5th great grand uncle, Harmon Aughe of Chester County, Pennsylvania.

His pension file begins with his affidavit of his duties as a soldier. He says he was drafted while living in Pikeland township, Chester Co.. Pennsylvania and that he was involved in building breastworks. He describes his movements "thence to Chadd's Ford on the Brandywine where the battle was fought...thence to Chestnut Hill and Germantown, where the battle was fought, thence to winter quarters in Valley Forge, Chester Co. Pa.





In these few words, I realized how the history of my country and the history of my family were intertwined. He was present at two early battles we lost to the British, and also wintered at Valley Forge. Valley Forge is the story of suffering, sacrifice and ultimate survival against terrible odds, against hunger, disease, and the cold and became our symbol of the will to prevail.

Further down in his affidavit, Aughey states he knew General George Washington, General Lee and General Wayne.


His affidavit give a lot of genealogy information.. He tells that his date and place of birth is written in the family bible which is now owned by his sister's daughter who lives in another state. He tells of his migration from Pennsylvania to Virginia to Ohio to Indiana. He gives the names of his children and the states where they live.

Unfortunately for Harmon, he also states he lost his discharge papers as he pioneered to Indiana and no one in Indiana can substantiate his affidavit. Because of that and also because part of his war duties were wagon service to carry supplies, his pension claim was disallowed .

At the end of his file is a letter written to NARA during the 1930's inquiring about his war service. The letter doesn't say why the inquiry was made, but I assume it was either for genealogy reasons or to obtain documentation to join the DAR. If so, this letter give the names other descendants of the soldier, possible distant cousins, along his address.

All the names in his pension file are annotated and indexed for easy reference and searching.

I was glad to find the genealogy information, but learning that he survived the winter at Valley Forge and knew George Washington and Mad Anthony Wayne was the most exciting to learn.

If you want to view these fascinating Revolutionary War pensions to read about history as our ancestors lived it, Start Your Free Trial with Footnote.com.

Footnote.com Teams with Family Search to Release Revolutionary War Pension Files

Yesterday FamilySearch announced that it will provide free services to archives and records custodians who wish to digitize, index, publish, and preserve their collections. This is in addition to the project already underway to digitize and make freely available the 2 million rolls of microfilm stored in the Granite Mountain Records Vault.

Today we see the first announcement of this collaboration. I suspect there will be many more.

May 15, 2007 06:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Footnote.com Teams with Family Search to Release Revolutionary War Pension Files




Revolutionary War Pension Files Will Be Available for Free at All Family History Centers Worldwide

LINDON, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Footnote.com announced an agreement with FamilySearch, historically known as the Genealogical Society of Utah, a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. FamilySearch is the world’s largest repository of genealogical information.

This new partnership brings together two organizations that will utilize their combined resources to digitize and make available many large historical collections. The first project will be the three million U.S. Revolutionary War Pension files which will be published for the first time online in their entirety.

“The Revolutionary War Pensions will provide an intimate look into the historical events and individuals that shaped our country’s history,” said Russell Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “We are excited about this relationship which enables us to put many more historical collections online.”

The Revolutionary War Pension Files feature original records that include muster rolls, payrolls, strength returns and other miscellaneous personnel pay and supply records of American Army Units from 1775-1783. They provide a wealth of new information for historians and genealogists which they can share with other colleagues and family members.

“We are excited to partner with Footnote.com to provide historians and genealogists alike a tremendous source of data that will assist greatly in putting puzzle pieces together to create a rich family history,” said Paul Nauta, manager of Public Affairs for FamilySearch. “This affiliation allows us to better meet one of our goals to provide as much data online as fast as possible for those working on their genealogy.”

Also, as a part of this agreement, Footnote.com will be accessible for free in all FamilySearch operated centers worldwide. FamilySearch has more than 4,500 Family History Centers in 70 countries.

Since partnering with the National Archives in January 2007, Footnote.com has digitized over eight million historical records. Each month an additional two million documents are digitized and added to the site. Footnote.com estimates that by the end of 2007 it will have made over 25 million digitized documents available on its web site.

To see free examples of the Revolutionary War Pension Files, go to Revolutionary War Pension Files

Fold3 (formerly Footnote.com) has now begun offering free three-day trial memberships. Start Your Free Trial with Footnote.com