Sources - The 1818 Pensioners

The information used to build the dataset behind the Continental veteran migration maps comes from the Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land-Warrant Application Files, NARA Record Group 15, Microfilm Publication 804, held by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

The first in what would become a series of acts to provide service-based pensions to Revolutionary veterans, many of whom were in poor health and indigent circumstances, was spearheaded by James Monroe, a President who was himself a veteran of the war and who had shed his blood on the streets of Trenton. In 1817, a committee was established in the House of Representatives to work out the legislation, led by Representative and former Major of the 3rd New Jersey Regiment, Joseph Bloomfield. The bill which came out of this committee initially proposed to allow half-pay pensions to all soldiers who had served in the Revolutionary War, who were “reduced to indigence” or who could not “procure subsistence by manual labour” due to health or age. 1 The final act passed on March 18, 1818 would grant a lifetime pension of $96 per year to enlisted men, sailors, and marines and $240 to officers who served at least nine months on the Continental establishment.

In order to identify the men belonging to the cohort of veterans who applied for pensions under the Act of 1818, I transcribed a total of 3,164 pension declarations filed by New Jersey veterans and widows on Fold3.com. After these pensions declarations were transcribed, I separated out the cohort of veterans of the New Jersey Continental Line who applied to receive benefits under the Act of 1818, which, as of June 2025, numbered 690 declarations. There were an additional 87 men from New Jersey who applied for pensions under the Act of 1818 and who served in other Continental corps, such as Lamb’s Artillery, Pulaski’s Legion, and other regiments from New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, but I limited the subjects of this study only to the men who served in New Jersey battalions.