First page from David Franklin's 1863 letter to his sister, from his Civil War pension file, application #236373.

Following up on my post last month regarding Revolutionary War pensions that can have troves of information, I remembered another subsection within Civil War pensions that are almost always filled with immense amounts of genealogical and biographical data. These are the “Parents’ Pensions.”

While most of us are probably familiar with veterans' and widows’ pensions, the parents’ pension was claimed by one or both of the parents of a deceased Civil War soldier. The pension act of 27 July 1868 stated:

That the laws granting pensions to the hereinafter-mentioned dependent relatives of deceased persons leaving neither widow or child entitled to pensions under existing laws, shall be so construed as to give precedence to such relatives in the following order, namely: First, mothers; secondly, fathers; thirdly, orphan brothers and sisters under sixteen years of age, who shall be pensioned jointly if there be more than one: Provided, That if, in any case, the said persons shall have left both father and mother who were dependent upon them, then on the death of the mother the father shall become entitled to a pension commencing from and after the death of the mother; and upon the death of the mother and father the dependent brothers and sisters under sixteen years of age shall jointly become entitled to such pension until they attain the age of sixteen years, respectively, commencing from and after the death of the party who, preceding them, would have been entitled to the same: And provided further, That no pension heretofore awarded shall be affected by anything herein contained.

The second and third pages of David Franklin's letter of 12 October 1863.

Essentially parents, and in some cases minor siblings, had to prove dependence on the labor of the deceased veteran who died unmarried without children. The most interesting example of a parents’ pension I have found was for my great-great-great-grandmother’s first cousin David Franklin (1841-1864) of Steuben County, New York. David was killed at the battle of Rasaca in Georgia, unmarried and with no children, and so his mother was a candidate to receive such a pension. The interesting thing in this case was that his father was alive but separated from his mother, and living in the poorhouse. The details of David’s father Rufus Franklin's life were colorfully detailed by several affidavits describing his depraved habits as “bad [in] that he was an inebriate and had the reputation of being a libertine, that he spent a great part of his earnings and income for drink and with lewd women.” (This statement comes from the son of Rufus’s sister, with many statements confirming his bad character from several members of his family.)

Part of the examination of Rufus Franklin to be found in the Parents' Pension file for his son David.

For this reason, the pension is filled with many juicy details, and provides a lot of genealogical information about a fairly poor family in western New York otherwise left out of the records. The pension goes on for nearly 300 pages, including letters David wrote home to his family from Virginia; a deposition giving his parents’ marriage date and names and birth dates of all of his siblings; and an interesting index of witnesses who provided testimony, indicating their reputation as excellent, good, fair, or “not very reliable.”

The first page of Jane Franklin's deposition.

Ultimately David’s mother Jane received the pension until she died in 1888 and then David’s father Rufus was allowed the pension until his death in 1894. If not for their son’s service, their own tumultuous relationship, and the benefits of a parents' pension, such details of their lives would likely never be known.

Note

Further information on this family may be found in Christopher C. Child and J. Kelsey Jones, “Family of John and Esther (Daggett) Franklin: A John Billington Line,” Mayflower Descendant 60 [2011]: 158-78.