The information used to build the dataset behind the Jersey militia 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. After transcribing 3,164 pension declarations filed by New Jersey veterans and widows on Fold3.com, I separated out the cohort of veterans who applied to receive benefits under the Act of 1832, which, as of June 2025, numbered 2,005 declarations.

The Act of June 7, 1832 finally achieved what William Henry Harrison, then a Representative from Ohio, had hoped back in 1817, while debating the merits of the first Revolutionary pension act. While he objected to allowing anyone who served from being granted a pension as it would “embrace everyone who had shouldered a musket, even for an hour… Persons, however, covered with scars and borne down by the length of service in those days ought not to be confounded with those who had been called out for an hour or a day.” Yet, he conceded that “[s]ome of the militia, he thought, were as well entitled to this pension as any regulars, of whom the Jersey militia might be particularly mentioned.” Once passed, so many New Jersey militiamen applied under this new Act, that John Blowers (S.2381) and Daniel Skellinger (S.4844) would refer to it as “the militia pension law.”

Because the War Department now had nearly 15 years of experience accepting declarations filed under the Acts of 1818 and 1820, firm regulations for all future applications under the Act of June 7, 1832 were established, and a two-page printed copy was sent to courts and pension agents across the country.