Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application File
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NATIONAL ARCHIVES MICROFILM PUBLICATIONS
Microcopy No. 804

REVOLUTIONARY WAR PENSION
AND BOUNTY-LAND-WARRANT
APPLICATIONS FILES

Roll 104

Bacon, Isaiah -

Bacon, Norman


THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS SERVICE
GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION

Washington: 1969
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INTRODUCTION

On the rolls of this microfilm publication are reproduced an estimated 80,000 pension and bounty-land-warrant application files based on the participation of American military, naval, and marines officers and enlisted men in the Revolutionary War. Most of the records in the files are dated between 1800 and 1900. The files are part of Record Group 15, records of the Veterans Administration.

Pension Legislation

For more than a century before the beginning of the Revolutionary War, British colonies in North America provided pensions for disabled soldiers and sailors. During and after the Revolutionary War, three principle types of pensions were provided by the U.S. Goverment for servicemen and their dependents “Disability” or “invalid pension,” were awarded to servicemen for physical disabilities incurred in the line of duty: “service pensions,” to veterans who served for specific periods of time; and “widow’s pensions,” to women whose husbands had been killed in the war or were veterans who had served for specified periods of time. 

On August 26, 1776, the first pensions legislation for the American colonies as a group was enacted. A resolution provided half pay for 7 years after the conclusion of the war. Enlisted men who continued to serve for the duration of the conflicts were each to receive a
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War veterans, but the records reproduced in this microfilm publication pertain only to bounty-land warrants made available under acts of the U.S. Government.

On September 16, 1776, the Continental Congress passed a resolution that provided for granting land to officers and soldiers who engaged in military service and continued to serve until the end of the war. Representatives of officers and soldiers who might be slain by the enemy were also entitled to land. The resolution specified that each noncommissioned officer and soldier should be entitled to 100 acres, an ensign to 150 acres, each lieutenant to 200 acres, and other officers to proportionate amounts of land up to 500 acres for a colonel. By a resolution of August 12, 1780, the provision was extended to include generals, ad the grant was to be 850 acres for a brigadier general and 1,100 for a major general. The resolution of September 16, 1776, was the basic law under which Revolutionary War veterans were granted bounty-land warrants by the Federal Government until 1855, although numerous acts were passed in the interval providing claimants with additional time in which to apply for or to locate warrants.

On March 3, 1855 ( 10 Stat. 701), the U.S. Congress went beyond merely satisfying the former pledge of the Continental Congress and authorized the issuance of bounty-land warrants for 160 acres to soldiers, irrespective of rank, who had served for as few as 14 days in the Revolution of had taken part in any battle. Widows and minor children of such veterans were also eligible. An individua who had received a warrant under previous bounty-land legislation was limited by the act to receiving a second warrant for only such additional acreage as would total 160 acres. An act of May 14, 1856 (11 Stat. 8), extended the benefits of the 1855 act to include Revolutionary War naval and marine officers, enlisted men, and their widows and minor children.

Bounty-Land -Warrant Administration

On July 9, 1788, a supplement to a Continental Congress land ordinance of May 20, 1785, authorized the Secretary at War to issue bounty-land warrants to eligible veterans of the Revolutionary War or to their assigns or legal representatives. When the First U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of a Department of War in the newly formed Federal Government on August 7, 1789 ( 1 Stat.  50), the Secretary of War was given the responsibility of issuing bounty-land warrants. In 1815 the pension and bounty-land duties of the War Department were assigned too separate bureaus, an bounty-land matters were handled thereafter by an administrative unit known successively as the Land Warrant Bureau, the Sec
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cards that give information about an valid pensioner or veteran (former rank, unit, enlistment date, nature or disability, residence, and amount of pension). The date were transcribed by the Bureau of Pensions from the Congressional publication American State Papers, Class 9, Claims (Washington, 1834). The volume contains information from War Department pension reports based on original applications papers and submitted to Congress between 1792 and 1795. Some invalid-pension application papers submitted after 1800 were apparently destroyed in another War Department fire in August 1814. For some of these applications, pertinent entries in te 1835 Report From the Secretary of War . . . In relation to the Pension Establishment of the United States (23rd Congress., 1st sess., S. Doc. 514) were copied and placed in files that were also labeled “ Dis. No Papers.” Copying was done by Veterans Administration, but it seems this was done only in response to and in the form of of replies to inquiries concerning specific veterans. 

Bounty-land-warrant application files for approved applications submitted after November 8, 1800, are envelopes that have headings consisting of the name of the State or organization for which a veteran served “B. L. Wt.” for bounty-land warrant. This symbol is followed by two or tree numbers, separated by hyphens, which represent the warrant number, the number of Lakers granted, and the year 1855 (usually written “55”) in this case of warrants issued pursuant to the bounty-land act of the year. Records in the files my include applications by veterans, their widows, or heirs; family-record pages from Bibles; copies of marriage records; copies of State records showing the service of a veteran; affidavits of other persons testifying to the length or kind of service claimed; annotated paper jackets used to hold bounty-land-warrant papers before they
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warrant was delivered or assigned. The original application papers were apparently destroyed in 1800. The cards were compiled by the National Archives from entries in three registers of bounty-land warrants issued to enlisted men before November 8, 1800. Sometimes a card was placed in an envelope containing pension application papers based on the service of the same soldier. In such a case the warrant number on the card was added to the heading on the envelope.

Bounty-land-warrant applications submittted pursuant to the act of March 3, 1855, and approved were interfiled