Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-06-30
DEATH OF VETERANS
Ninety Names a Day Dropped
From Pension Rolls.
AT RATE OF $4,000 A YEAR
Federal Forces in Civil War EST.
mated at 2,213,365.
MOSTLY LADS UNDER 81
Civil War Pensioners in 1900 Num-
bered 5e3,e61-None of Revolu-
ton or 1912 Now Living.
AT RATE OF $4,000 A YEAR
MOSTLY LADS UNDER 81

About ninety names day are dropped
from the pension rolls. This average is
euuivale lent to about ., 100 deaths month.
or about $4,000 annually. among federal
survivors Of the civil war carried on the
pension lists.
How many survive who are not on the
pension roll is not recorded in the pension
office the adjutant generals Office of
the War Department. The officials refer
to these unreCorded soldiers as the un-
known army Many of them belong to
Grand Army posts or Confederate Vet
eran camps, but there are undoubtedly
number who are neither pensioners nor
identified with organizations. Every once
in while a survivor of the war who
had been lost sight of turns up in some
out-of-the-way corner of the world and
applies for pension through con-
gresham or under general statutes.
The old soldiers of both armies are van
ishing rapidly. Just how many survive
will not be known until after the coIu-
pleton of the thirteenth census. and can
only he Appropriated now outside of
those whose names are carried on the
pension rolls as having served in the
Union army. There is no such record
of the Confederates. for they get no gen
eral pensions, and their names and places
a
record A number Of Confederate sol
diers can be located through the rolls of
the veteran camps in the SOUTH but
these records are not nearly so complete
as those of the Grand Army Of the Re-
public
The law providing for the taking of the
census of 1910 stipulated that there
should be included a tabulation OF the
number of Union and Confederate sol
diers and sailors living. The census Of
al NO
Union Forces, 2,213,365.
The most generally accepted estimate of
the total number of individuals serv-
ing in the Union army and navy during
the civil war is 2,213,360. This estimate
was prepared by Maj. Gen. Ainsworth,
adjutant general of the army, fourteen
years ago, ad is the one toward which
pension officials and others turn for data
relative to the size Of the Union forces in
the war. But 1t was only an estimate. The
records showed that the total number of
enlistments from the various states and
territories during the war under Presi-
dent Lincolns various calls aggregated
2,77s,3O4. But of this number there
were 1O5,363 enlistments of seamen and
marines, leaving 2,612,341 enlistments
credited to the army alone, exclusive of
III, 422 men who were serving In the reg
ular army. 1t is estimated that OF these
I,tIg,S4l, tnSTe were cfo,ooo 1c-ehiiol-
ments, which, when subtracted, leaves
the estimate of individual volunteer SOL
ders in the war 2,12o,94S There were
enough re-enlistments in the navy to
bring the actual number of individuals in
the navy down to S4.417, making the
number serving I'm the war on the Union
side 2213,365 This is the only official
estimate ever made, and how far 1t varies
from the actual number can never be
determined.
Gen. Ainsworth in his estimate of four
teen years ago stated that it appeared
that at the close of the war there were
1717 3:S3 individuals of the Union army
surviving, deserters excluded. He eSti-
mated that the number of survivors in
1880 should be .2S5,471 and 1,125, 10 in
1885, while he predicted that at the rate
at which the men were passing the
army would be reduced to about 800, 100
survivors In 1900