[Genealogy] Is the Pension worth it and Have I Proved It?

Sun Jun 7 20:00:23 CDT 2026

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7 June 2026

** Is It Worth It to Get the Pension?
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** I've Proved It!
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** Brick Wall Busters
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Is It Worth It to Get the Pension?
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In the theoretical genealogical world, one gets a copy of everything and
cost is no object.

Unfortunately most of us do not live in the theoretical world.

I’ve started working on a family that I’ve not worked on in some time and
discovered that one of the sons-in-law of the ancestor in question (Andrew
Trask, born around 1813 probably in Massachusetts and died in the 1880s in
Mercer County, Illinois) served in the Civil War.

The question: do I need the son-in-laws’s pension?

One school of thought is that I need it because I should track all the
relatively closely related people down as much as possible. The problem is
obtaining a copy of the pension will cost me money–which is how most
offline records are acquired.

I need to think about what the pension likely contains and what my research
goals are.

I want to document Andrew as much as possible and do the same for his
children. I also want to determine the names of his parents.

The son-in-law in question outlived his wife–who was the daughter of Andrew
Trask. As a result there will be *no* widow’s pension which typically
provides some detail about the wife, her marriage to the soldier, and (in
some cases, her life before and after marriage to the soldier).

There will just be the soldier’s application for a pension in which he will
typically have to document:

   - his service
   - his eligibility for a pension
   - service-related injuries and subsequent medical challenges arising
   from those injuries

That’s probably not going to provide details about the wife or her family.
The veteran is not going to have to prove his marriage, etc. If the veteran
was a pensioner in 1890s there was a survey sent that asked about their
marriage and children. Those questions were asked so that the information
could be compared to what any subsequent widow may claim. I already have
the date and place of marriage for the soldier and the same for his
children.

At this point, the chance is small that there is something in the Civil War
pension file on this son-in-law that helps me meet my research goals for
the wife and her family.

If she had outlived her husband, then it would have been a different story.

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---------------------------------

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I've Proved It

-----------------------------

I’ve proved it.

That’s a loaded sentence.

We don’t prove something with one just record that states what we want.

We evaluate that record. We determine how reliable that record is. We
decide who the probable informant is. We determine how reliable
that probable informant is. We need to make certain that the scribe or
clerk wrote down faithfully what the informant said.

We need to be aware of things we have assumed.

We look for all the records that may address the point we are trying to
establish. We do not limit our searches to records that are easy to access.
We research without preconceived answers directing our searches. We look at
records even if they are inconsistent or make statements with which we are
uncomfortable. We continue to look for all the records even if our
preliminary searches point in one consistent direction.

We don’t just copy down a piece of information from a record and say
“there’s our proof.”

We copy that piece of information down and say:

Here is a statement from a record. Now it is time to analyze that statement.

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Michael John Neill
Genealogy Tip of the Day
PO Box 17, Henderson, IL 61439
http://www.genealogytipoftheday.com
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