05/16/2022
Census records, certificates of birth, marriage, and death, military records, and ship logs and immigration documents, are amongst the bread and butter of genealogical research primary sources. But there are a wide range of other types of primary sources. For those with family in the American South during the Civil War, the Southern Claims Commission may be of interest. Several years ago, I discovered that my 2rd and 3rd great-grandmothers were mixed-race, and that the latter had owned land during the Civil War. After that discovery, I wondered if that family might have made a claim to the Southern Claims Commission, and, in fact, my great-great-great grandmother, Lucretia “Craty” Blake, had indeed made a claim.
The Southern Claims Commission was set up after the Civil War to allow Union sympathizers in the south to file for compensation for quartermaster stores or supplies officially taken from their property by the Union Army or provided to the Union Army without compensation. It took claims from March 1871 – March 1873.
The claimant had to prove two points for a claim to be paid:
The person was loyal to the Union during the Civil War.
The person had quartermaster stores or supplies taken by or furnished without compensation to the Union Army during the rebellion.
I found online in the Records of the Commissioner of Claims that Craty Blake made a claim in Wake County, North Carolina. The claim number was 1,849. The amount of the claim was for $700. But I had no idea if she was awarded anything.
I contacted the Center for Legislative Archives and found the archivists there to be very responsive and helpful. An archivist informed me that the claim was allowed in part. Craty Blake was awarded $325 of the $700 she claimed. I was advised that “allowed” claims were forwarded to the Treasury Department because the Treasury Department paid out the claims. The Center for Legislative Archives retains only those files for “barred” or “disallowed” claims.
I wrote to the Treasury Department only to find out that Treasury did have all those files but they were long ago sent to the reference unit at the main National Archives building, which is a separate division from the Center for Legislative Archives.
An archivist at the National Archives (again very responsive and helpful people) from the reference unit got back to me very promptly to say they could not find a digital file on Craty Blake. So, to view the entire file I will have to go to the National Archives one day.
However, I had an additional discovery. The Records of the Commissioner of Claims showed that another Blake in Wake County, Marinda Blake, also made a claim about the same time of Craty Blake’s claim. I had already come across Marinda Blake in my other research, but was unable to establish a familial relationship between Marinda and Craty. Marinda Blake’s claim number was 1,844 (only four numbers away from Craty’s claim number). The amount of the claim was for $638.
I wrote back to the same archivist at the Center for Legislative Archives who had responded to my original query. The next day she confirmed that Marinda Blake’s claim had been partially allowed in the amount of $339 and paid in 1873.
Since the testimony of friends and relatives was one of the main ways claimants proved that they had been loyalists during the Civil War, my hope is that Marinda might mention Craty, or that Craty might actually have testimony in Marinda’s file. That, too, would give a picture of their times, and, perhaps, clarify the relationship between Marinda and Craty.
In the meantime, I learned that my third great grandmother and her family were Southern Unionists.
