Southern Claims Commission, 1871 - 1880 - Hyde County, NC - Miscellaneous Submitted for use in the USGenWeb Project Archives by Hyde County NCGenWeb (jmack@bbs.carolina.net) SOUTHERN CLAIMS COMMISSION, 1871-1880 Every war has had conflicting viewpoints, from the American Revolution to more recent comflicts. The Civil War was no different. The Confederacy was far from being a Solid South. Many Southerners felt that the slavery was a less important issue than the need to preserve the Union, which many of their grandfathers had sacrificed their lives to establish. Between 1861 and 1865, some of these pro-Union Southerners supplied, or had taken, goods or property by Union forces. In wartime, armies seldom stopped long enough to ask if citizens were loyal or not. On March 3, 1871, Congress enacted legislation which allowed pro-Union Southerners to apply for reinbursement for their losses to the US Army and Navy. The Southern Claims Commission, a three man board, was set up to consider their claims for goods taken by or supplied to Federal forces. The original two year commission was extended several times, finally terminating in March, 1880. During this period, 22,298 claims were filed and of these, 7,092 were approved. The large amount of data from these claims and the testimony given by some 220,000 witnesses is now on file at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Below are the names of the 17 persons from Hyde County, NC who made claims. Although some of the files are missing, At least 9 of these claims were approved. If you have information on any of these persons or their families, and would like to be linked to their name in order to exchange information with others interested in the same person, as I have done below with my great grandfather's cousin, Sylvester McGowan, please let me know by email. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Name - - - - - - - - - Case # Ballance, James - #17,501 Bragg, Sam D. - #18,582 Cox, Wm. S. - #4,103 Chester, Wm. - #17,498 Farrow, Tilmon - #18,893 Fisher, Timothy M. - #4,110 Glover, Andrew J. - #17,499 Guirkin, Eli H. - #17,502 Harris, Thos. D. - #17,766 Howard, Abner B. - #19,245 Jones, Edward (Estate of) - #4,122 Mason, Jesse S. - #17,768 McGowan, Sylvester - #17,769 - John B. McGowan Midgett, John - #17,503 Owens, Pembrook - #17,770 Saunderson, Erasmus H. - #4,143 Tooly, Wm. B. & Nancy T.M. - #17,500 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sources: The National Archives, Washington, D.C. The Southern Claims Commission, Klingberg, Frank W., Sacramento, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1955. Civil War Claims in the South, Mills, Gary B., Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1980. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 1997 ============================= USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free genealogy information on the Internet, data may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than as stated above, must contact the submitter or the listed USGenWeb archivist.