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Revolutionary War Final Pension Payment Vouchers

Final pension payment vouchers for Revolutionary War veterans were originally located in the voluminous series, "Settled Accounts of Pension Agents, 1813–1899," Entry A1-712 in Record Group 217, Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury (National Archives Identifier 302049).

Recognizing the genealogical value of the vouchers and the difficulty in locating them in this large series, National Archives staff in the 1960s culled the records to make them more accessible to researchers. The result is the series, "Selected Final Pension Payment Vouchers, 1818–1864," Entry A1-722 in Record Group 217 (National Archives Identifier 605894).

Contents of Vouchers

Final pension payment vouchers consist of paperwork relating to the last pension payment made to the veteran pensioner, to the surviving widow, or to the pensioner's heirs.

Payment vouchers may include any or all of the following information:

  • Name of the pensioner and name of the spouse
  • Pensioner's county of residence
  • Military service of the veteran, including rank and organizational information
  • Congressional pension act that covered the claim
  • Monetary provisions of the pension
  • Final pension payment amount
  • Date that the last pension payment was made
  • Name of the attorney or executor handling the filing of the claim
  • Names of the pensioner's surviving children
  • Dates of death of the veteran and/or his widow
  • Name of the administrator of the pensioner's estate

Accessing the Vouchers

Note: This series is currently closed for digitization​.

 

The Selected Final Pension Payment Vouchers are housed at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC (Archives 1).

These records are arranged alphabetically by the state in which the veteran was living at the time of his death, and thereunder alphabetically by the name of the veteran. Occasionally, the vouchers are arranged alphabetically by the name of the widow.

The payment vouchers for Delaware and Georgia have been digitized in full and are available online at Fold3.com (database title: "Final Payment Vouchers").

For more information about final pension payments, see “Follow the Money: Tracking Revolutionary War Army Pension Payments” in the Winter 2008 issue of Prologue magazine.

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