There are actually three different index cards that the National Archives has microfilmed for Civil War era pension indexes. This is the pension payment card for Clinton Burch who served in an Illinois regiment. These cards cover individuals who received pensions between 1907 and 1933 and are available on FamilySearch. The other index cards located earlier for Burch were the General Index card and the unit index card.
There are different little clues on each card. This one mentions the name of the widow and her residence. The General Index card indicates that his original pension was filed in Minnesota. Before I pay to obtain a copy of the pension, I like to view all three cards just to make certain I have the "right" person. Archive.org may eventually add them all to their site (the payment cards are already on Archive.org).
Viewing all those cards was helpful to me as Burch was a collateral relative and I wanted to make certain I had the right guy before going on a fishing expedition to obtain his pension records. We'll be discussing some of those materials in a future issue of Casefile Clues.
Burch's other two cards can be seen in an earlier post.
