Pension records will more likely tell something about your family than a service record. Date of birth and death, marriage, children, property value, battles in which he fought, who he fought with, where he may have been wounded etc is some types of the information you have a chance to find on pension records. It ultimately depends on how easily they were able to obatin their pensions. For example, my great-grandfather Roberts has a Louisiana Pension file somewhere in excess of thirty pages. His father-in-law (my 2nd great-grandfather Chaddick) has only two pages in his pension files. They fought side by side in the same company.

I can't suggest too strongly that is in your interest to order the pension files. If you need help doing this I suggest contacting Alan Pitts. You can contact him off our Military Records Research Services page. There is a banner link to that page at the top of this one.