18thVirginia
Major
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2012
I have to get my driver's license renewed this month and received a postcard informing me of all kinds of information that's required, including something that explains if my original name has changed from that on my social security card. It got me thinking about widows of Civil War veterans and the amount of trouble that it must have taken to find all the appropriate documents and deal with bureaucrats in charge of the paperwork at either the Federal level for Union veterans' wives or the state level for Confederate wives.
We have a lot of threads that cite the information in Civil War Pension files, but I thought it might be interesting to look at some individual files and consider what it was like for all the women who weren't very educated or accustomed to dealing with officialdom. Also thought that posters could share information from their own great or great great or great great great grandmothers who were dealing with what must have been a bewildering system in the 1860s-early 1900s.
We have a lot of threads that cite the information in Civil War Pension files, but I thought it might be interesting to look at some individual files and consider what it was like for all the women who weren't very educated or accustomed to dealing with officialdom. Also thought that posters could share information from their own great or great great or great great great grandmothers who were dealing with what must have been a bewildering system in the 1860s-early 1900s.