New York Roots, 1883 Military Pensioniers Franklin County, NY, Introduction

Transcribed and submitted by John Austin

Introduction to the 1883 List of Pensioners on the Rolls

The following is a modified transcription of the list of military pensioners which the US Government periodically published in the 19th Century.The originals may be viewed at any large library where they will find the lists bound alphabetically by state, then by county within each state.

The 1883 list is interesting because it lists pensioners from the War of 1812 and from the Civil War. The originals are not very useful in the form they were published because of several reasons:

1) the men are not arranged alphabetically within the county list. The list is organized alphabetically by Post Office, and then the men are listed (in no particular order) under the appropriate Post Office where they received their mail

2) the units of the men are not listed, so it is difficult to tell if a certain man fought as a resident of Franklin Co. or if he had moved to Franklin Co. since the end of the war.

3) when parents or widows are listed as the pensioners, the soldier for whom they are receiving a pension is not listed. Thus, if you don�t know the father�s name of a certain soldier, you cannot determine if the man listed is the father of the veteran you are interested in

4) the compilers of the list confused Franklin Co. VT with Franklin Co. NY and many of the men in the original were Vermont soldiers and not from Franklin Co. NY.

5) many of the names, especially ones of French derivation, are misspelled so badly in the originals as to be unrecognizable.

After having said all that, this list is valuable for several reasons. It furnishes the residence of veterans or their dependents, and describes the reason for the pension. It also gives a date for the initial pension, which may help in completing a family history. It also gives a clue as to the identity of some of the War of 1812 soldiers who lived in Franklin Co.

Whenever possible, the unit and circumstances of a veteran�s pension were added to this list. However, some men were not identified because only a parent or wife was listed, or the man had moved in from some other area and records were not available to identify them. A few of these men do not appear on the Franklin Co. list, but rather on the St. Lawrence or Clinton lists. This is because they were residents of Franklin, but received their mail at a Post Office across the county line

John M. Austin