REVOLUTIONARY WAR PENSION RECORDS ON HERITAGEQUEST ONLINE

DON'S FREEWARE CORNER - JUL 2021

REVOLUTIONARY WAR PENSION RECORDS ON HERITAGEQUEST ONLINE

©2021 Donald R. Snow - Last updated 2021-07-03

Don's Freeware Corner articles are printed in the UTAH VALLEY TECHNOLOGY AND GENEALOGY GROUP (UVTAGG) Newsletter TAGGology each month and are posted on his Class Notes Page https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html where there may be corrections and updates.
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HERITAGEQUEST ONLINE (HQO

This Freeware Corner article is in honor of Independence Day, since this is July, and deals with U.S. military Revolutionary War records found on HeritageQuest Online.  HQO is a website available in various ways, including at Family History Centers and at home with a public library card.  It is paid for by public library subscriptions and many make it available for their patrons as a free online service at home. An article about its history is at https://about.proquest.com/en/products-services/HeritageQuest-Online/ . An article about FHCs and their access to HQO is on the FamilySearch Research Wiki at https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Introduction_to_Family_History_Centers . Searching on the FamilySearch Research Wiki for HeritageQuest Online (Go to FamilySearch.org > Search > Research Wiki and type in HeritageQuest Online) brings up many articles which list public libraries that have it available for their patrons. Of the military records it contains tThe articles say it has over 2 million records, including the Revolution War Pension and Bounty Land-Warrant applications. To access HQO at home, you go to that library's website, find HQO (usually under Resources or Digital Library),  click and enter your library card barcode and you can use it all you want at home for free. It is sponsored by ProQuest and powered by Ancestry, whatever that means. Here is a screenshot of the HeritageQuest Online webpage that I signed into from the Washington County Public Library website.

https://uvtagg.org
        Screenshot of the HeritageQuest Online Home Page


The HQO website has lots of helpful genealogy data, including all the U.S. censuses, many genealogy books, city directories, obituaries, and much more. It is really worth knowing about and using and, with you library card, you can do that for free at home.  Here is a screenshot of the record tabs across the bottom of the home page.

https://uvtagg.org Screenshot of Record Tabs on HeritageQuest Online

REVOLUTIONARY WAR PENSION FILES

Many men of the British Colonies in America fought to free the Colonies from England in the Revolutionary War (1775-1783). After the War, them or their heirs (spouses and descendants) applied for pensions and bounty land grants from the new U.S. Government. These applications are the files that are available on HQO. There is a description on HQO that says there are about 80,000 applications in this collection. Each application is for the pension from one individual, but several family members may be mentioned in it, so this collection includes 100s of 1000s of names and all are searchable. Therefore, even if your ancestor was not in the military, they may be mentioned in one or more of these files Each file consists of many handwritten pages, the average being about 30 pages, with some as large as 200 pages. If you have any ancestors in the U.S. during or after that time period, it would be worth your while to check this collection. On the Revolution War records tab is a description of these records and where they came from and how to search them.

SEARCHING THE HQO REVOLUTIONARY WAR RECORDS

Here is a screenshot of the search form for military records.
https://uvtagg.org

Screenshot of Search Form for Military Records on HeritageQuest Online

The search form ha a place to enter your ancestor's name, location, and dates, but usually, as in all online searches, entering too much information eliminates many hits that you want. I started by typing in just the surname Snow and got more than 1000 hits, so I narrowed the search by adding Massachusetts in the location field. That cut the hits down to 63 and, as I looked at the list, many of them are my ancestors or their, and hence, my, cousins too. Sometime I need to check out each one and see which really are my ancestors and cousins. There many be clues in there to solve the brickwall on our Snow ancestry. Then I need ot try other New England states, since I know that some of my Snow ancestors lived in New Hampshire and elsewhere.

CONCLUSIONS

This collection was filmed many years ago from the federal government records. It was later digitized and posted online and contains much helpful data. We have only discussed Revolutionary War Pension files in this Freeware Corner article, but I plan to do others on other tpes of records on HQO. I hope you find something helpful here for your family history research. ================================