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Stumpage Reports
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Tuesday, October 12, 2004 :::
Fun With Confederate Widows
As a side job at work, I've been busy interfiling some "new" Confederate Pensions applications we got a while back. (By new, I mean about 40-50 years old). Most of these are from the 1950's and 1960's. They're pension applications for widows of Confederate soldiers, most of these ladies married the vets around the 1920's when the women were pretty young and the guys were pretty old.
One of the funniest things is watching the court clerk's reactions to these things. Each file almost always has a letter from the local court clerk to the State Auditor (guy who wrote the checks) that basically says: "Uh, are you guys still giving out Confederate pensions, how does she apply, and do you have any forms?" The standard rate in the late 1950's seemed to be $60 a month.
Because I can, I read up on NC's Confederate Pension program, which is pretty interesting. It started in 1885 and you pretty much had to have lost a limb to get any money. The did another major overhaul in 1901, and continued to tweak it, always making it easier for the vets and the widows to get money. At one point, around 1920 (when most of them were probably dead), the even opened it up to former slaves who had been injured while working for the army. I'll spare you further details of the pension program. But digging around in that stuff led me to Confederate Soldier's Home records, which is whole other blog post.
Quote of the Day (and Currently Reading):
"So I sat there in the silence (Duffy was never talkative in the morning before he had worried down two or three drinks), and listened to my tissues break down and the beads of perspiration explode delicately out of the ducts embedded in the ample flesh of my companion."
--- Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men, 1946.
::: posted by tom at 8:08 AM
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