In 1879 Georgia began paying pensions to resident Confederate veterans and to men who served in the militia and state troops. However, not until 1894 did the state begin awarding pensions to widows of veterans and to veterans based uopn their poverty instead of only upon personal disabilities due to military service in the Southern cause. The following is a 1894 list of Georgia's first indigent pensioners. No other list of pensioners appears to have been published by the State of Georgia, although thousands of other individuals not mentioned on this list also received pensions from the State as indigent veterans, disabled coldiers, and widows of veterans.
Within the average pension claim, a researcher can find the unit or units in which the veteran served and a very brief statement of some of his military service. Often a Georgia state pension claim also includes information on the veterans' birth, marriage, and death. For many years, pensioners had to refile for their pensions every year and as a result, these claims often provide information on changes in residency that is unknown to their descendents.
To obtain the information found in a state pension claim, researchers would do best to visit the Georgia Archives in person or to have the claim searched by someone for them. The Civil War Section of the Georgia Department of Archives and History will provide a cost estimate for copying all of the documents in a particular pension file. Such copying tends to be very expensive, however, as such files usually contain dozens of pages of manuscripts, most of which is extrememly repetitious in content. The staff of the Civil War Section cannot select documents from a pension file for a patron by mail. For more information on the holdings of the Civil War Section, write tot the Georgia Department of Archives and History, 330 Capitol Ave., S.E., Atlanta, GA 30334.
Below is a copy of the 1894 Georgia Indigent pensioners Act and the list of such pensioners. A list of the federal pensioners for Georgia for 1882-1883 was published in The Georgia Genealogical Society Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 4 (winter, 1979), pp. 169-99.
By County: Indigent Pension Claims Under Act of 1894
Approved, Subject to Revision, up to October 21, 1895.
Bibb County:
Aides, Daniel
Ard, A. J.
Baldwin, J. C.
Barron, R. H.
Belknap, Wm. N.
Brantley, M. V.
Bullock, Henry B.
Burge, John W.
Bennett, Charles C.
Campbell, J.P.
Cowart, R.H.
Dingler,
Geo. D.
Fennell, H. C.
Flannagan, John
Hendricks, C. W.
Hill, T. J.
Hatfield, G.H.
Hilby, R. S.
Jones, R. H.
Jones, Harrington
Langston, J. A.
Mathews, W. L.
Nash, L.C.
Owens, C. W.
Owens, J. W.
Parker, J. M.
Patterson, S. L.
Perry, D. M.
Radcliff, J. M.
Ralph, W. C.
Ranton, John D.
Rowland, R. J.
Seymour, H. C.
Smallwood, Thomas
Solomon,
W. F.
Stewart, A. J.
Stripling, W. B.
Tate, C.
Teel, W. H.
Thomas, T. J.
Thomas, Calvin
West, J. A.
Wilson, M. P.
***The Southern Historical Press of Easley, South Carolina, has published the first comprehensive index to
Georgia state pension applicants ever compiled. Not only are the names in the Georgia Archives' old index
included but also the applicants found in Supplement One (fraudulent and rejected claims) and Supplement
Two (misfiled claims), neither of which have ever been indexed before. This book, published in the fall of 1980,
is titled The Georgia Civil War Veteran's Index.
Compilation Copyright by The GAGenWeb Project Team 1996 - Present - All Rights Reserved.
This page was last updated on -11/15/2015