USCT PENSION FILES

The United States Colored Troops

As Bernice Bennett notes in her article USCT Pension Files: A Rich Resource for African American Genealogy, pension files can reveal many biographical details about ancestors who served in the United States Colored Troops (USCT). Because events in USCT veterans’ lives before the Civil War were seldom recorded in the documentary record, veterans had to go to great lengths to prove their identity, their service in the Civil War, their dates of marriage, names and ages of children, and other biographical details that had to be documented in order for them to draw a military pension. 

This frequently meant gathering the testimony of others who witnessed their marriage, the death of a spouse, the births of their children or other life events. Veterans often relied upon the testimony of others who served in the same regiment and company to help them prove their identity and service.

The testimony of supporting witnesses revealed much about the military veteran applying for a pension. Along the way, witnesses also revealed a lot about their own lives and families. 

Here, we gather the pension files that tell the stories of those who served in the United States Colored Troops.

We are profoundly grateful to our advisory board members Bernice Bennett and Angela Y. Walton Raji for their guidance at every phase of this project. No words are sufficient to thank our incredible volunteer Alana Thevenet, who has carefully abstracted all of the pension files in this collection.