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.
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.
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.
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.
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