North Carolina, Confederate soldiers and widows pension applications : COLLECTION RECORD, 1885-1953

Notes

North Carolina, Confederate Soldiers and Widows Pension Applications are available online, click here.

Digital images of originals housed at the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Pensions were provided for Confederate veterans who were residents of North Carolina and who had lost a leg, eye, or arm, or who were incapacitated for manual labor while in the service of the Confederate States during the Civil War. Widows of soldiers who were killed in service were entitled to the same benefits as long as they did not remarry. Any person, however, who owned property with a tax value of $500.00 or received a salary of $300.00 per year from the nation, state, or county was not eligible. The law was amended to include widows of soldiers who had died of disease while in service. In 1901, a new pension law was passed, in which, “Every person who has been for twelve months immediately preceding his or her application for pension bona fide resident of the State, and who is incapacitated for manual labor and was a soldier or a sailor in the service of the State of North Carolina or of the Confederate States of America, during the war between the States (provided, said widow was married to said soldier or sailor before the first day of April, 1865)" was entitled to a pension. No person holding a national, state, or county office for which he received $300.00 annually, no person with property valued at $500.00 or more, or no person receiving aid under laws for relief of totally blind and maimed was eligible (inmates of the Soldiers' Home, recipients of pensions from other states, and deserters were excluded from benefits under the pension acts, although inmates of the Soldiers' Home were granted quarterly allowances of $1.50 in 1909 -- increased to $3.00 quarterly in 1913).

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