A Project is Underway to Digitize War of 1812 Pension Files

From the The Commercial-News (Danville, IL:)

The Federation of Genealogical Societies, the National Archives and the genealogical community have started a project to digitize the War of 1812 pension files. The “Preserve the Pensions” campaign aims to raise $3.7 million to digitize more than 180,000 pension files containing more than 7.2 million pages, and to make them freely accessible online. Pension files can contain helpful information for genealogists, often identifying the soldier’s widow and next of kin.
There are three sample files on the FGS Web site at http://www.fgs.org/1812 for three veterans, John Evans of Mississippi, Porter Howe of Vermont and Henry Lightner of Pennsylvania. Anyone who had an ancestor who participated in the War of 1812 might have similar records on file.

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