Illinois State Genealogical Society Blog

The Illinois State Genealogical Society is pleased to announce a major donation to its War of 1812 Pension Match Challenge from the Indiana Genealogical Society in the amount of $1,812. In addition, recent contributions received during the Federation of Genealogical Societies ' 2012 Conference in Birmingham, Alabama last month along with the generous IGS gift have pushed the total received so far to $6,912. The ISGS campaign is 70% to completing its goal of $10,000 which will then be quadrupled through an ISGS match and an Ancestry.com match to equal $40,000. These monies will be used in the War of 1812 "Preserve The Pensions" campaign, with the goal of raising $3.7 million to digitize the War of 1812 Pension Application Files held at the National Archives and make them freely accessible online. The digitized pension files will be available for free on Fold3.com - see http://go.fold3.com/1812pensions/ to view the files that are available so far. Please visit the...

The Illinois State Genealogical Society (ISGS) is proud to announce its recent donation to the  War of 1812 Pensions $10,000 Match Challenge sponsored by the Indiana Genealogical Society (IGS). This challenge has been organized by IGS in support of the Preserve the Pensions project which the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS), the National Archives, and the genealogical community have started a project to digitize the War of 1812 pension files—a fitting beginning to the bicentennial commemoration of this important war. The $10,000 Match Challenge is important because not only is IGS matching all donations up to $10,000 (thus creating $20,000 in donations), but Ancestry.com will generously match up to $20,000 in donations to create a $40,000 donation. With that $40,000, the Preserve the Pensions project will be able to digitize 80,000 records related to the War of 1812 pension files. As of today, there are over 58,000 files available on Footnote.com (at  http:/...