United States, Revolutionary War, Pensions

There are more than 90,000 records in this collection and each represents an American who was granted a pension for service during the American Revolution. While the information for each person may vary, United States, Revolutionary War, Pensions usually provides:

• First and last name
• Service number
• Rank
• Service state
• Spouse’s name

The records in this collection date from the early 19th century when the United States began issuing pensions to military veterans from various early conflicts. While most of the pensions are for veterans of the American War of Independence or Revolutionary War and their families, some pension applications for veterans of the Barbary wars and Indian wars are also included. Each pension record includes a transcript along with images of the documents submitted to the government to prove military service.

Explore these records and find out new details that you can use to enrich your family history and continue your research. You may be able to use the details you discover to find your relatives in our other collections, including the federal censuses and state vital records.

In a few records, the veteran’s place of origin or current residence was written in the space saved for service location in the original record. If you cannot find your ancestor, try searching by just the name and leaving the service state search box empty.

Most records have multiple pages associated with the specific veteran. Click on the next image button in the Image Viewer to see the next document and discover all of the information related to your ancestor.

If you are having trouble locating the records for someone, clicking the “name variants” box under the search bar will expand your search. This will return more records with similar names, including possible alternate spellings or the use of initials or middle names.