Logical Order
A Pension Office Clerk's Lament
Summer 2013, Vol. 45, No. 2 | Pieces of History
A Pension Office clerk wrote this note on the Civil War widow鈥檚 pension file for Pvt. Stephen Whitehead.
At the 威尼斯人娱乐场, and almost any other archival institution, one of the principal rules for using original records is to keep the records the same order in which they are given to you.
Maintaining order over documents has long been a primary concern of record keepers. When we鈥檙e able to productively use a collection of records, we鈥檙e benefiting from the care taken by unknown prior custodians. Their work is usually invisible, but in the case of our featured document, a clerk鈥檚 voice breaks through from the 19th century.
At the front of the Civil War widow鈥檚 pension file for Pvt. Stephen Whitehead, a Pension Office clerk wrote:
"These papers having been sorted with considerable care and for convenience arranged in something like their original order, are now fastened together in the hope that the next man may escape the annoyance and drudgery that would be entailed were they chucked back in the promiscuous condition in which they were found."
"Jany. 16, 1894. C.L.H."
The clerk鈥檚 frustration is understandable in light of the complexity of the Whitehead pension case. In 1860, Whitehead married Charian Lowrey but left her before their daughter was born in 1861. Later that year, Whitehead married a woman named Sarah, and two years later, Charian married another man. After Whitehead died in 1865, Charian applied for and received a widow鈥檚 pension. But in 1870, Sarah also received a pension based on Whitehead鈥檚 service.
The Pension Office鈥檚 investigation of the Whitehead claims continued until 1917, after Sarah鈥檚 death and Charian鈥檚 remarriage to a third husband. The final judgment: pension denied to Charian because 鈥測ou contracted more than one marriage after the death of the soldier.鈥�
Penciled notes on several pages in the file鈥攁ccompanied by question marks and exclamation points鈥攍ook like they may be in C.L.H.鈥檚 hand, but there is no proof.
The rare appearance by 鈥淐.L.H.鈥� reminds us that the existence of documents for our use today depended on the care and attention of record keepers in the past.