Pike County  Georgia News- 1896 Indigent Pensioners
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Lynn Cunningham  lcunnin1@bellsouth.net 

Table of Contents page: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/pike.htm
Georgia Table of Contents: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm


The Pike County Journal.
Zebulon, Pike County, Georgia, Jan. 6, 1896

Pensions

Ordinary Blasingame has been notified that the pensions for Confederate
soldiers would be paid about the 10th inst.

Really each pensioner under the indigent act ought to have received $60
for the year 1895, but there was not sufficient money appropriated to
pay all the indigent pensioners in the state.

The legislature in 1894 passed a bill to pay a pension of $60 per annum
to each Confederate soldier who by reason of poverty or blindness or
other similar causes is unable to make a living for himself. The
legislature appropriated $30,00 for each of the years 1895 and 1896 to
pay the indigent pensioners, but the number of approved applicants was
so large it was soon ascertained that $30,000 would [be] not more than
$15 to each pensioner instead of $60. It is estimated there would be
only 500 indigent pensioners in the state, but the number will reach
2,000. The governor therefore directed that the $30,000 for 1895 be kept
in the treasury and not prorated until the legislature met in October,
1895. This legislature agreed to appropriate $120,000 to pay the
pensions for both years. This $120,000 will give to each indigent
pensioner $60, and the money will be paid to the pensioners early in
January. At the session of the legislature just closed, an amendment to
the widows' pension act was pass[ed] which will prove of great benefit
to the widows of Confederate soldiers. Under the act of December 23,
1890, all widows of Confederate soldiers who could show that they were
wives during the War and that their husbands died during the War or
afterward from the effects of wounds or injuries received in service or
disease contracted there, were entitled to draw a pension of $60 a year.
Under this act, the widows of ex-Confederates who died up to 1890 from
the effects of injuries received or contracted during the War were
entitled to draw pensions, but the widows of those who died after 1890
from the same causes were entitled to draw no pension. At the session of
the legislature just closed an amendment to this act was passed
pensioning the widows of those who have died since 1890 from the same
causes as set out in the original act. In both cases the women must show
that she has never married again, for if she marries, she is dropped
from the pension roll.

(Transcribed 11/15/02 Lynn Cunningham)