And now I wait.....

I took the plunge and ordered my first military pension file. 

As mentioned in my previous post here, my 3rd great grandfather, Emery Waller, served in the Civil War.  But as if that isn't enough, he is also my first step in punching a ticket into Daughters of the American Revolution as his grandfather, Ashbel Waller, served in the Revolutionary War.  As I'm sure you know, in order to join DAR you must "prove" that you are a descendant of the Revolutionary War patriot.  I'm 99% sure I've got the details right but until I can prove it, I'm out of luck.

After a few days of mulling it over and figuring out what I needed to do in order to request the pension file, I needed a little shove.  I put a status update on facebook asking if anyone who had ordered and received a pension file would answer some questions.  As luck would have it, Amy Coffin answered the call.  I learned about Amy's blog last fall when she was blogging about the Anatomy of a Civil War Record and as I read those blog entries, I knew that someday I would have a pension file of my very own.  So a special thanks to Amy for answering my questions and pushing me over the edge!

I will add that it took awhile to find the pension card in footnote but Amy helped me change my search so that I was able to find him by searching by the 107th Illinois Regiment rather than by his name.  Which made all the difference in the world because he was listed as Emery WELLERS even though it clearly (at least to me) said Waller.




Emery Waller's Pension Card
from footnote.com

 I hit the submit button on the National Archives order form late in the day on April 14.  So I figure it really didn't get to them until Friday, April 15 (tax day!) and now I wait my 40-120 days for the record to arrive.  I hope I got all of the information in the right place and that they find the record easily and send it on the way quickly.  I want it now!  I've already checked the status a couple of times and the status has changed from received  to servicing so it's moving along.

I'm dreaming of a treasure chest of information from Emery's file.  My hope is that I'll learn his date and place of death, his wife's maiden name, and if I'm really lucky I'll find out something about his parents.  While I do know their names, I'd love to have something to confirm it.  And if I'm really, really lucky I'll get the file before we leave for a visit to central Illinois in June as we'll be traveling through Emery's hometown and probable place of death.

So who wants to help me with some patience?