War of 1812 Pay Rolls and Muster Rolls Index

Overview

The War of 1812 Pay Rolls and Muster Rolls Index gathers approximately 40,000 names of Virginia Militia soldiers from Pay Rolls of Militia Entitled to Land Bounty Under the Act of Congress of Sept. 28, 1850 (Richmond, 1851) and its supplement, Muster Rolls of the Virginia Militia in the War of 1812 (Richmond, 1852) with additional names and information drawn from Virginia Legislative Petitions and the Journals of the Virginia House of Delegates.

Search Tips

• The index uses the name listed in the original documents. This name was often abbreviated. For example, Wm., Benj., Jas., and Jno. In addition, numerous entries only have a last name, or a last name and first initial.
• Using quotes around phrases may return fewer, more relevant results.
• Boolean operators OR, NOT and AND written in ALL CAPS may be used.  By default, all search terms will be combined with the AND operator. To exclude terms, use the NOT operator before a term.
• Wildcards can be used to find variant spellings. The question mark (?) will match any one character. For instance, "Ols?n" will match "Olsen" or "Olson". The asterisk (*) will match any number of characters (including zero characters). "Ch*ter" would match "Charter", "Character", and "Chapter", and "Temp*" will match "Temptation", "Temple" and "Temporary". Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search or within phrase searches (quotation marks).

Related Resources

• Soldiers of the War of 1812 research guide

Pay Rolls of Militia Entitled to Land Bounty Under the Act of Congress of Sept. 28, 1850 (Richmond, 1851) and Muster Rolls of the Virginia Militia in the War of 1812 (Richmond, 1852) are accurate transcriptions of original documents in the records of the Office of the Auditor of Public Accounts. Published to facilitate payment of Federal pensions to veterans, they provide a soldier’s name, rank, dates of service, and militia regiment number and/or company commander’s name. Because the original records are fragile, access to them is restricted, and these publications serve as the official record of War of 1812 military service for individuals in the Virginia Militia.

A small number of names have been added to the Index from two additional sources:

• The Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The legislative year and page number are usually cited. These are published documents.
• Virginia Legislative Petitions related to individuals’ service in the War of 1812. These petitions are archival documents. They are arranged by county and date.

Abbreviations Used For Sources

PR = Pay Rolls
MR = Muster Rolls
HDD = House of Delegates documents
B = Legislative Petitions