Black Confederate Pension Records
A controversial resource for African American researchers

ATLANTA—Census records give African-American researchers valuable family information.

Only free citizens were named on the Federal Censuses prior to 1870. Slaves were listed by sex and gender only. They were counted under the names of their owners on the Slave Schedules of 1850 and 1860.

Since African-Americans were first listed by name on the 1870 census, the period of the Civil War (1861-1865) is crucial for researching African-Americans who had been slaves.

One group of records has not been given a lot of attention but is very valuable to a genealogist. They are the Confederate Pension Records. Many of the Confederate States of America (CSA) passed laws offering pensions to indigent Confederate veterans. African-Americans were not eligible to apply for the Confederate Pensions until much later than white veterans; some became eligible for pensions as late as 1923.