Research

Scope and Content Note

This series contains petitions and correspondence relating to the "Act for the relief of surviving members of the first regiment of New York Volunteers who fought in the war with Mexico," which was first enacted in 1870 and subsequently amended in 1874, 1875, and 1878. The documents usually take the form of letters and affidavits written from petitioners or their lawyers to the comptroller, as well as notes of identification written by comrades or commanding officers on a claimant's behalf. The documents contain information about the claimant's service, including his rank, his company, the battles he engaged in, and any wounds he received. Many of the more formal applications were notarized and contain official stamps, seals, and attachments related to the authority of the notary public. In many cases where an application was approved by the commission created to verify claims, a petitioner's file contains a note he enclosed with his signed voucher, confirming his address so that he might receive his check. Letters of inquiry or applications initially sent to the wrong government agency and forwarded to the comptroller occasionally contain attached notes summarizing contents.

The 338 documents in this series were completely unarranged when they were transferred to the State Archives. To facilitate access, documents pertaining to each claimant's case were united in a single folder bearing his name. Documents pertaining to multiple claimants and documents in which no claimant is specified were filed under the name of the correspondent, typically an attorney or government agent who corresponded on claimants' behalf. There are 114 folders in this series.

The letters, though frequently in the form of formal affidavits, expose the often desperate conditions under which these veterans lived, having survived the course of the years surrounding the Civil War. They provide insight into a societal cross-section of mid-nineteenth-century America and reveal the relationships between comrades, between lawyer and client, and between soldier and officer.