Heritage Quest has just released a new set of CD-ROM disks with
a long name: Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrants. In fact,
this huge set of 898 CD-ROM disks contains images of the original applications.
I didn’t have time to test all of the 898 CD-ROM disks, but I did spend
some time this week with one of the disks.
The CD-ROM disks offers enhanced digital images of the National
Archives M-805 microfilm series in an easy-to-use CD-ROM format. Each CD is
copied from the microfilm and assigned a number to correspond with the microfilm's
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) identification number. I
used disk M805-293, which conveniently has all Revolutionary pension applications
for men named Eastman as well as other names that are close to Eastman when
arranged alphabetically. Some years ago I examined the same records on microfilm.
I inserted the CD-ROM into my PC, loaded the software, and dove
in without reading any instruction. I was soon able to find ancestors in the
index and then see the original pension application records. These are not transcribed
records; they are images of the original handwritten records. Most applications
contain six or more pages on each individual.
Quoting from Heritage Quest’s description:
The records contain both genealogical and historical information.
A veteran's pension application normally gives his former rank, unit, and
period of service, age or date of birth, his residence, and sometimes his
birthplace. Property schedules often give names and ages of a veteran's
wife and children. The application of a widow seeking a pension or a bounty
land warrant may give her age, residence, maiden name, date and place of
her marriage, and date and place of death of her husband.
Application papers submitted by children and other heirs or
dependents seeking pensions or bounty land warrants generally contain information
about their ages and residences. Applicants often submitted the family-record
pages from family Bibles and other documents to substantiate their claims.
These Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application
Files contain genealogical records from an estimated 80,000 individuals
who served in the American military, navy, and marines, both officers and
enlisted men, in the Revolutionary War. Most of the records were dated between
1800 and 1900.
I found the navigation of the Heritage Quest software to be a
bit confusing at first. However, within a few minutes I was able to figure out
the indexing software and then I was able to navigate easily. There is no manual
with the CD-ROM, but there is a built-in Help file. Once I had used the CD-ROM
disk for a while, I found that I could navigate through all the images and then
enhance, magnify, zoom, copy, save and print any of the original source documents
that I wished.
Printing one of the documents on the CD-ROM produced a better
image than most of the photocopies of the microfilm images that I have made
in past years. Also, I was able to enhance some of the images within the Heritage
Quest software. I was able to adjust the brightness, contrast, and gamma. However,
for more advanced image enhancement, I simply saved the image to my hard drive
as a .TIF file and then used a more sophisticated image-editing program. I could
then import the image into a word processing document or into many modern genealogy
programs. You can use the image of the Revolutionary War pension application
in the same manner as any other scanned image.
The handwriting on these records varies a lot. Some of the records
are in beautiful penmanship while other applications appear to be filled out
by paintbrush. By zooming in on individual letters and occasionally enhancing
the images in a sophisticated graphics editor, I was able to decode words on
a letter-by-letter basis, something I could not have easily done had I seen
the same images on microfilm. In short, I found the CD-ROM images to be better
than the microfilmed images of the same records.
Heritage Quest’s new "Revolutionary War Pension and
Bounty Land Warrants" CD-ROM disks require Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000, a
100 MHz Pentium or faster CPU, at least 16 megabytes of RAM memory, a 4-speed
or faster CD-ROM and 88 megabytes free hard drive space.
These new digital CD's are offered with a special "Buy 3
Get 1 Free" offer through September 30th. The retail price is $19.95 although
members of the Heritage Quest Research Club pay $14.95. Those prices do not
include postage or any possible taxes.
Earlier I wrote that the "Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty
Land Warrant Application Files" CD-ROM disks are new. In fact, they are
so new that I could not find them listed on Heritage Quest’s Web site.
Dick Eastman Online
