Footnote’s “Rev War” Collection
Jan 6th, 2008 by sharbrough
Service Records
Link to Footnote’s Description [link]
Size Factor. More than 2 million pages. It’s really really big.
Cool Factor. Many people think they have a rev war soldier. If you find him here, it’s proven.
Pensions
Link to Footnote’s Description [link]
Size Factor. 2.4 million pages.
Interesting spotlight. The widow of Paul Abney of Virginia included a page from the family bible in the pension application. [link]
Cool Factor. Footnote keyed all of the names they found. Many times, people have told me that they found their rev war ancestor mentioned in some other person’s file, who perhaps served in the same military company.
In closing
The Footnote collection for the War of Indepence is a unique collection of original records that gives the reader a chance to see firsthand into the minds of the founding fathers, and to marvel at the end result. It contains 80,000 pensions from military service. Thousands of researchers are able to see these records from their own homes today, and only a year ago they could only be viewed on microfilm at a NARA facility.
[...] Elsewhere on this site you can find a description of the meeting where this topic was first discussed. It’s a story worth repeating because in my view, it was a fortunate accident. [link] [...]