Citizen Archivists and the Revolutionary War Pension Files

This page describes the project as of 2024, two years before the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

In 1777, drunken British soldiers burst into Sarah Martin's home in Woodbridge, New Jersey, and demanded that she cook them ham and eggs. Impatient and hostile, they threatened to kill her youngest child, who cried as she cooked, and one officer swung his sword, striking the child and leaving Martin with a deep cut on her arm. It was not the only such scene. The family's roadside home, in British-occupied territory, was ransacked as many as 30 times during the war; soldiers looted it, drove off the cattle and finally burned it, while her husband, Gershom Martin, was away for months at a time on militia duty.

Martin told this story 60 years later, as an 83-year-old widow testifying in court to prove her husband's service so she could claim a pension. Her testimony survives in the National Archives, one of countless stories being brought to light by the Revolutionary War Pension Project.

Pensions for the first veterans

Many soldiers came home from the Revolution in poor health and struggled for decades to work and support their families. The United States responded to this growing poverty among veterans with the first of four pension acts in 1818. By then the youngest veterans were in their late 50s and 60s, after 35 years of hardship since the war ended in 1783; some owned little more than the clothes they wore.

At first, only Continental Army soldiers who had served under George Washington could claim pensions. Later acts extended them to militiamen and to widows, like Martin, who had married before the war's end. Because there was little paperwork to prove their eligibility, these applicants had to describe their war experiences in court and back them up with credible witnesses. For many, especially those who could not write, it may have felt like their only chance to record their stories. The testimonies of women and people of color fill important gaps in the historical record and show how many kinds of people contributed to the war.

10th Massachusetts Regiment reenactors at Saratoga National Historical Park. NPS/Kristin Vinduska.

A treasure trove

In the 1970s, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) microfilmed the Revolutionary War pension documents held in its Washington building, and the reels were later digitized for its online catalog. The pages range from neatly typed later correspondence to handwritten sheets that are torn, blotted with ink or nearly illegible.

Pension file jacket of Sarah Martin, approved under the Act of 1836 (W.7395). National Archives and Records Administration.

The applications hold vivid first-hand accounts of the war, from boasts of meeting Washington or the French commander Lafayette to somber descriptions of burying the dead after battle. They chronicle turning points now commemorated in national parks, such as the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 and the Battles of Saratoga in 1777, and they record social details such as rank, birth dates, family members and property. The files also illuminate lesser-known lives: Judith Lines, a widow whose 1837 application contains the only known surviving letter written by a Black Continental soldier; Lewis Hinton, who served in the war in place of his enslaver; and Richard Leet, who won his freedom from slavery by serving as a midshipman on the frigate Alliance.

A battalion of citizen archivists

Launched in June 2023, the project is a partnership between the National Park Service and NARA to transcribe more than 2.3 million pages of pension files through NARA's citizen archivist program. More than 4,000 volunteers, almost 600 of them from the Park Service, had typed up over 80,000 pages, and more than 2,300 records were completely transcribed. NARA's collection of more than 13.5 billion items is full of records connected to places the Park Service protects, and the pension files touch parks from Minute Man National Historical Park, site of the war's first battle, to Colonial National Historical Park, where the last took place. NARA's catalog will keep the files public permanently.

Joanne Blacoe, an interpretation planner in the Park Service's Northeast Region who helped develop the project, said the aim was something that would last beyond the anniversary and be accessible to everyone. The files, she said, reveal a stunning, often heartbreaking and sometimes funny complexity in the Revolution and the decades that followed, rich material for parks, artists, researchers and families tracing their ancestors.

British army reenactors at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. National Park Service.

Transcription is a form of citizen science: until someone reads a document, its contents are unknown. Historians alone could transcribe only a small fraction, but every volunteer contribution becomes searchable. Some parks run their own efforts. Guilford Courthouse National Military Park recruits volunteers to transcribe the pensions of veterans of the 1781 battle there, broadening the stories it tells to include life in the new nation. Some volunteers love history, some have found ancestors who fought at Guilford Courthouse, and college students gain professional experience; what they uncover will shape new programs and exhibits. Ranger and volunteer program manager Daniel Engelgau said new stories surface every day, and that volunteers who never visit will still be part of the park's history.

Why human eyes still matter

NARA can convert images of text into searchable text, and artificial intelligence keeps improving, but Suzanne Isaacs, a National Archives Catalog community manager, explained that handwriting varies enormously and the records have been folded, ripped, written in the margins and stamped with seals that bleed through, so human eyes do better.

Creases, seals, ink bleeds and unclear handwriting make some pension pages (left) far harder to read than others (right). National Archives and Records Administration.

Volunteers who would rather not decipher old handwriting can join a tagging mission instead, reading transcribed files and tagging the places, names and subjects they mention. Tags help parks find stories connected to them: a file describing David Hunt's service in the Continental Army at Valley Forge, for example, is tagged "Valley Forge National Historical Park," so the park can share it online and rangers can use it on tours.

A citizen archivist revises the transcript of a pension file. NPS/Nina Foster.

Linking past and present

The files open new lines of study. The pension acts responded to an epidemic of homelessness and poverty among veterans, issues that still matter, and today's veterans share many experiences with Revolutionary soldiers, from the boredom and frustration of deployment to the joys and difficulties of coming home. Teachers can use the files as primary sources, genealogists can trace families, and writers and artists can glimpse daily life. Nancy Sullivan, another National Archives Catalog community manager, said the files give students and researchers a far more nuanced picture than a textbook and bring the Revolution to life.

How to help

Anyone can register with NARA to transcribe or tag the pension files. Adding "NPS" to the start of your username counts you as a Park Service referral, and reading carefully for references to park sites may turn up connections no one has noticed yet.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Volunteer Archivists Decipher Thousands of Untold Stories from the American Revolution," by Nina Foster, a 2024 Scientists in Parks intern at Acadia National Park. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/revolutionary-war-pensions.htm
• Revolutionary War Pension Project: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/americanrevolution/revolutionary-war-pension-project.htm; NARA transcription mission: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions/revolutionary-war-pension-files; Sarah Martin's file: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/144146224
• The article's summary speaks of "more than 80,000 pension files"; its text gives 2.3 million pages in total and more than 80,000 pages transcribed, the figures used here. Staff members' remarks are paraphrased; the author's own account of transcribing Martin's file is not included.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.