James B. Butler, my great-grandfather, was a foot soldier in the Philippine Insurrection from 1901 to 1904. This card shows that he filed for an invalid pension on 26 Jul 1921.
I tried to use this information to order a copy of his pension file from NARA, but received the following message:
Please correct the following: If your ancestor died after 1930, their pension is most likely in the custody of the Dept. of Veteran’s Affairs (VA). Pension application files in the National Archives custody were considered “closed” in 1929. To access the file you need you must contact the VA at http://www.va.gov/foia/.
Jim died in 1944; however, before I contact the VA, I’m going to write a letter to NARA to confirm that they don’t have the pension file, as I understand that some from this time frame are, in fact, held at the National Archives.
Source: “Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934,” digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 4 March 2012), entry for James B. Butler; citing NARA microfilm publication T288, roll 66.
