Image via Ancestry
I stumbled across a record today, a new record on Ancestry. It is actually a very old one even though it is new to me. I never even suspected that this record existed because Benjamin C. Foster was born in 1797. In my mind, he was a little too young to have served in the War of 1812. In case you haven’t been following the genealogy news this last year, Fold3, Ancestry and the National Archives have been working on a project to digitize the War of 1812 pension records. The plan is to make the records available to everyone….for FREE. The project is only 12% complete at this point. So while I found this index card today (which has made me extremely excited), I have to wait because the actual pension file has not been digitized yet. Patience is a virtue, right?
Genealogy Lady 
So he was 15 at the time of the War of 1812….was that uncommonly young to be married and serve in the war?
He wasn’t married at the time. He was married at the time he applied for his pension. At 15, he might have been a drummer. Hopefully, I won’t have to wait too long to access the actual record. 🙂
These can be really important records for those researching in states where records burned up in fires. We managed to take our one family line back two generations due to a pension application of widow of husband who died of measles in 1814 after going off to join the war.
I don’t know what I will find with the pension but Benjamin is one of my brick walls. I can’t get any further back on his line. Foster is such a common surname!