Need an update to a pre-pandemic order, please email us at twistedtwigsorders@gmail.com

2. You may hear from NARA that the Pension File has moved to NARA, St. Louis. This is especially true for many Civil War pensions that were filed or paid past the early 1920’s. At that point, you need to contact NARA-STL to investigate if the pension is really there. One would think that the National Archives would check for you but that rarely happens.

3. When you contact NARA, St. Louis, you may be told that they do not have the pension file and to contact the Veteran’s Administration. Usually pensions that were handled by the VA office have claim file numbers assigned to them. Veteran claim file numbers will start with a “C” whereas widow claim files will start with “XC”.

When a VA held pension closed, it was to be sent to the National Archives for storage but sometimes this didn’t happen. NARA in Washington DC has some of the C and XC pensions that fall between 2,400,000 – 2,650,000 like the two pensions above. The remaining pensions, that have claim numbers (we’ve seen pension index cards that have XC numbers near 7 million) should be in St. Louis or were lost in the shuffle over the last century.

4. If your pension is located in St. Louis, you now have two choices:

A) Pay NARA to provide a black & white photocopy (starting at $80 for the first 100 pages and $0.70 a page after. A 200 page pension would cost $150) and get at the end of a very long waiting line that may range from 2 months to 9 months.

B) Engage a retrieval service like Twisted Twigs. Twisted Twigs Genealogy will personally walk your request into the St Louis facility and make color digital images of the complete pension file for $50, and your wait time (depending on when the pension file is presented to us on-site) averages 60 days or less.

Have a wonderful weekend!

7th Generation Detroit Family Historian and NARA Records Retrieval Expert, Deidre Erin Denton of Twisted Twigs Genealogy and Margaret McMahon, author of “Researching Your U.S. WWI Army Ancestors, have teamed up for a series of blog posts to show you the path to researching the military records for WWI, WWII, the Korean War and more at NARA. Because of your connection to your ancestor, you are the best teller of his story, and with these records you can write and share a very personal military history.

New Years is an excellent time to tally up your family tree for 2017. The goal of this exercise is to calculate the percentage of ancestors you know of up to your 7th great grandparents.

I’ve added a little guide to calculating your family tree in less than an hour if you have a tree on Ancestry.com. A printable guide can be printed from the following link:

Time to Tally Up Your Family Tree for 2017

1. View the family tree pedigree on Ancestry.com for one of your parents.The last generation shown are your 3rd great-grandparents (GGP).

As you click the arrow after each 3rd GGP, their branch opens to show up to the 7th generation.

2. Count how many 4th, 5th, 6th, & 7th GGPs you have and added them to the box indicated on this chart

Ancestors possible for 4th – 7th generation using this chart:
4th generation column – 2
5th generation column – 4
6th generation column – 8
7th generation column – 16

Complete one of these for each one of your parents.

3. Add to the chart and calculate your percentage

After the tally, I usually find that I have neglected several branches for one reason or another. My genie senses tingle and I recall all the new collections added and/or updated on Family Search that I’ve seen and have yet to review for these ignored ancestors. The hunt is back on and I’m carrying a sledgehammer

More than what’s on the record, note what kind of record it is. A marriage will have banns (official announcement of intent to marry), a permission affidavit (an underage groom/bride obtained permission from parent/guardian to marry), a bond (financial promissory note that the marriage will take place and is legal or a fee will be charged), a license (gives permission from the state for the couple to be wed/used as return for state proof of marriage), a return (signed affidavit from the justice or minister that the wedding had been legally performed), and/or a certificate (usually given to the couple as proof of legal marriage). Just because a marriage is noted in a collection does not mean it took place or even took place on that day. Birth and Death records don’t have so many confusing forms, but can have different versions. Stillbirths, for example, may have a combined certificate that shows a birth and death date; although not every state gives a stillbirth a record. Birth and death can have short and long forms, which can have different information on them. Some of them won’t be publically accessible, depending on state.

Another thing that depends on state is when records were created! While many states have existed for centuries, most states haven’t required records to be created until the early 1900s. So here’s a handy little pinup to use which lists the first year that states required records:

Now, remember, this is just the start of regulated required record keeping for the BMD. The older the state, the older its record collection. They’ll just be less reliably curated earlier than these dates. They may not be kept at the state level, so you’ll need to contact the county or parish. They may be church registries instead of government licenses or certificates. Even if the records are out there, you also need to remember privacy laws for each state can vary. The more recent the record, the less likely you’ll find it online; the more likely that you have to be named on the record to retrieve it; and the more likely you’ll need to prove your relationship to the people named within should it be available. First and foremost, these records are created for government purposes. They’re wellsprings of information, but they weren’t meant for us when they were created. Whatever state you’re researching, research more than just your ancestor. Know your record rights and what you’ll have to do to get them. Not every archivist knows their own rules, so be forearmed on whether you have a right to the records and how you can obtain a copy. Many states recoup their administration and storage costs by charging a fee for these records; know that fee up front too.

And there you have it, the basic understanding of the BMD collections that will help you build a solid foundation for your tree. You’ll branch past them into church records, newspaper announcements, and family ephemera, but these records will be reliable sources if you know where and how to look.

~ Ana