Revolutionary War Pension applications and where to find them

Where do you find those Revolutionary War Pension applications and what do they hold? They are great sources of information, often providing details of the residences of the applicant, names of members of the family, and the applicant's memories of service. It can be a genealogical gold mine. Most applications appeared in the 1830's, after an act to relieve the financial burdens of Revolutionary Patriots was passed. Some applications are from family members, because the soldier has already passed away. Others are in the words and writing of the patriot himself.
I have found that the American Ancestors website (also known as NEHGS) has summaries of these applications, including indexes of names for each application. That is very appealing, but of course it makes the reader want to see the entire application. The reader wonders, why was so and so mentioned? Let's see it and read it! The indexed applications at American Ancestors are provided by Fold3. The indexes will allow readers to see the pension applications in their entirety for a subscription fee. But it turns out that ancestry.com has many of these pensions scanned as well.
Consequence? For those who have ancestry.com subscriptions, the Fold3 may not be necessary for this particular type of genealogy resource.
It is always uselful to check here and there to see if you can get access to information that you had expected to pay for.
Other great alternatives include free census information available from The USGenWeb Census Project at  us-census.org (http://www.us-census.org/), and vital records that are compiled by volunteers for the State GenWeb websites.

War of 1812 Pension Requests

Fold3, formerly called Footnote, has taken on the task of scanning War of 1812 Pension applications. It appears that it is a large project that has barely begun, but the quality of the records, and the information that can be gleaned from them is certainly valuable. I have looked at the indexing of the records and have read over some of the records. My ancestors don't show up yet, but I do look forward to reading about them when they do turn up. The records can be searched by name, and then are sorted by state, which is pretty helpful. The detailed information in the application is very nice to see, and since it has all been scanned, every bit of that detail is available, from the way the signatures were written to the notes here and there on the sides. The information is much more inclusive than the simple abstracts of payment information I have seen to date in free sites. It is offered free to the public so far, and is very timely, as we will soon be ready to recognize the 200th anniversary of that war.
Image source: tao.221.wordpress,.com

Footnote--going through some changes--a lot of changes

It almost seems like an April Fool's joke, but it isn't April. Footnote.com is going to change its great name and its focus.  Footnote is a great resource. The scanned records have excellent detailed information, and make great reading, even if you stumble upon records that apply to someone you have never heard of. And they can be very helpful if you find records pertaining to the ancestor you look for. Many of the records are free. It is an amazing source for those elusive southern records.I recently learned that footnote.com is are going to be increasing its number of military records dramatically, and that the company  wishes to highlight this change in focus with a name change. They will now be called Fold3 as a reference to the flag and patriotism. Say what? At first I thought--oh they are going to completely change and they won't have the great material they always provided, but I checked myself and thought--better to hope this is a good move for the company and for researchers. Well, then I read Megan Smolenyak's article for the Huffington Post on the topic, and realized it might be time to get worried about the future of footnote.com. She articulates her concerns about the change very well at: 
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/megan-smolenyak-smolenyak/google-news-archive-and-f_b_931560.html. In the same post, she comments on the changes at google news archive, one of my favorite archives. Apparently searching the site is becoming more and more difficult. Ah, and what did I recently hear about collaboration and cooperation being the wave of the future in genealogy. Au contraire--we may have to hone our old library skills.