Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Vol  5     No. 29       15 Jul 2000

Civil War Pension Index Cards Available Online

One of the more valuable sources of United States genealogy
information is the collection of American Civil War pension index
cards. If your ancestor fought for the Union and lived through the
war, he probably applied for a pension in his later years. If he
died during the war, his widow or his children may have applied
for his pension. The index cards can show you a synopsis of the
information recorded during the application. The applications by
widows or children can be especially valuable, as the applicants
had to prove their relationship.

Once you have the information from the index card, you can order
copies of the veteran's military records as well as their pension
records directly from the National Archives in Washington, DC.
There is more information contained on the pension papers that is
useful for genealogy than the information that you will find
contained in the military records. However, the military records
will often contain a physical description of the soldier, and in
some cases they also contained discharge papers.

MyFamily.com has now added the actual images of the index cards to
their Ancestry.com Web site. This is a huge database. I don't know
how many megabytes or gigabytes this database occupies on
Ancestry's Web server, but it must be huge.

Here is the announcement from MyFamily.com:

    Ancestry.com(SM), part of MyFamily.com, Inc., the leading
    online family network, today (July 13) announced that American
    Civil War pension index cards are now available for viewing
    and printing at Ancestry.com.  Of great value to family
    historians and genealogists, the online images provide
    extensive detail only available through original source
    records.  The Civil War pension cards are the first of
    numerous records that will be available through the Images
    Online service on the Ancestry.com site.  Upcoming Images
    Online databases include the U.S. federal census schedules
    from 1790 to 1920, the first of which will be available later
    this summer.

    "By offering Images Online, Ancestry.com is taking online
    genealogy to a new level.  Making these documents available
    online allows our users to view and print documents that have
    traditionally been stored on microfilm and are difficult to
    access," said Andre Brummer, general manager of Ancestry.com.
    "Not only is this information extremely valuable, but as we
    begin to make more and more images of this kind available
    online, we are saving people a great deal of time and money
    that would have been spent in the search for these records."

    The Civil War Images Online will be free for all users to
    access until July 21, 2000.  Following the initial free trial,
    the pension index cards images will be viewable and printable
    online only in the Ancestry.com subscription area.  More than
    2.5 million images of pension index cards have been added to
    Ancestry.com, each recording the veteran's name and the state
    in which the application was received.  If a widow or a child
    filed the application, that individual's name and relevant
    information is included. Until now, the pension index cards
    were only available through microfilm copies contained at the
    National Archives and limited repositories.

    Online images of the Civil War pension index cards will be
    added to other in-depth Civil War databases on Ancestry.com.
    Other Civil War databases on the site include the Civil War
    Research Database, American Civil War Muster Rolls, Kansas
    Civil War Soldiers, Maryland Soldiers in the Civil War,
    Minnesota Civil War Soldiers, Missouri Civil War Records,
    Nevada Civil War Volunteers, Tennessee Civil War Regimental
    Histories, and many more.


    About MyFamily.com, Inc.
    MyFamily.com, Inc. is the leading online network for families.
    The company's four Internet sites, MyFamily.com, Ancestry.com,
    FamilyHistory.com and RootsWeb.com, according to Media Metrix
    are among the 10 fastest growing sites and rank among the top
    20 in total pageviews according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
    MyFamily.com is the leading provider of free, private Web
    sites for families, where family members can share photos and
    news, participate in private voice and text chats, and
    maintain a calendar of family events. Ancestry.com is the
    premier online resource for tracing family history, where
    visitors can discover their roots by searching more than 600
    million names.  FamilyHistory.com hosts more than 100,000 free
    family history oriented message boards that allow users to
    connect and share information with others who are researching
    similar family lines. RootsWeb.com is the oldest and largest
    free community genealogy site. Privately held, MyFamily.com,
    Inc. has offices in San Francisco, New York City and Provo,
    Utah. Investors in MyFamily.com, Inc. include CMGI @Ventures
    (Nasdaq: CMGI), Eastman Kodak, America Online, Inc. (NYSE:
    AOL), Compaq Computer Corporation, Tango, Intel Capital, Group
    Arnault, Pivotal Asset Management LLC and Amerindo Investment
    Advisors, Inc. For more information, visit
    http://www.myfamilyinc.com/pressroom.