Research

Scope and Content Note

This series consists of sworn declarations of military service and real and personal property made by Revolutionary War veterans who intended to apply for pensions under an act of Congress passed on March 18, 1818.

Each affidavit gives the date, name of applicant, his age, present residence, former military rank, physical disability if any, and a statement of his war service. The declaration further states that the applicant is a citizen of the U.S. and has not sold or put in trust any property since passage of the act. There follows a schedule of his real and personal property. The signature or mark of the applicant is at the end of the declaration. Appended to it is the certificate of a clerk of the Supreme Court of Judicature attesting to the value of the property listed on the schedule. All but one of the applicants resided in Albany County. The declarations of property could be made in any court of record. The overwhelming majority of them were made not in the Supreme Court of Judicature but in the Court of Common Pleas, whose records are maintained by the county clerks.