We love
learning about records that are newly available to a broad audience, especially
if they are records typically under-utilized due to their previous obscurity!
Such is the
case with Congressional Claims.
The immediate purpose of the
[Citizen Archivist Project] work is two-fold: first, to provide box level
descriptions of claims made to Congress by participants in the Revolutionary
War, and their heirs or assigns; and second, to introduce students of history,
library and/or archival science to the user experience as researchers. To
that end, we have assigned to our student interns the work to produce box-lists
of the contents of Congressional claims files papers. The interns have
to determine from the limited finding-aides that already exist, what papers to
request for a particular committee, like the Committee on Revolutionary
Pensions, or the Committee on Military Affairs, etc. These committee papers,
petitions and memorials are requested from the legislative archivists and each
document is reviewed. A synopsis is then made listing more-or-less the
relevant data; including at the very least the names of claimants, dates, basic
nature of the claim and page count.
Read this post,
Archives Fair at the US National Archives, which talks
about what has been done in these records for the 16th Congress. Here
is an example of two entries:
Ward, Jonathan, 4 January 1820
Report of the Committee on Pensions
and Revolutionary Claims in the case of Jonathan Ward, son of Stephen Ward–
pension not granted (1)
Ward, Samuel, 21January 1820
Report of the Committee on Pensions
and Revolutionary Claims in the case of Samuel Ward– relief granted (1)
Here is a
link to a list of claimants for the 17th Congress – Project Update. I’m sure there are even more goodies
available.
Want to
become a Citizen Archivist? Check out
the Citizen
Archivist Dashboard. We wrote about this project as it went live over two
years ago. NARA Citizen
Archivist Dashboard Live!
Want to
keep upon the news from this exciting project?
If so, consider “liking” its Facebook page.
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