Volunteers transcribe Revolutionary War pension files for National Archives project

Volunteers with the National Archives’ Citizen Archivist program are turning handwritten Revolutionary War pension files into a searchable public record, one difficult line at a time. The effort, run with the National Park Service and tied to America250, focuses on some 2.5 million pages of Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, ca. 1800-ca. 1912.

The files document claims filed by more than 80,000 men and women who lived through the Revolution, including veterans and their widows. As the pages move from manuscript to transcription, details that once sat buried in faded handwriting can surface in a search: rank, unit, period of service, age, residence, marriage information, and even the date and place of a spouse’s death. Many files also hold marriage or family records, military details, letters, diaries and family trees.

Since June 2023, thousands of Citizen Archivist volunteers have already transcribed pension files, pulling out battlefield stories, accounts of seeing George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, and other first-person accounts from the 18th century. Volunteers also tag records, not just transcribe them, to improve searchability and make the material easier to navigate across the agency’s online catalog.

The digitized catalog records came from scanning 2,670 microfilm reels. Transcriptions make records more accessible to researchers, genealogists, educators, students, journalists and artists.

Pension laws began in 1818, expanded in 1820 and 1832, and were opened to widows in 1836.

The National Archives maintains Revolutionary War military records in Washington, D.C., and the service files are part of a broader military records collection that runs from the Revolutionary War to the present. Volunteers can read the old cursive and tag the names and dates.