War of 1812 Muster Rolls and Payrolls Index

The War of 1812 Muster Rolls and Payrolls Index gathers approximately 40,000 names of Virginia Militia soldiers from the following sources:

• Muster Rolls of the Virginia Militia in the War of 1812, Being a Supplement to the Pay Rolls Printed and Distributed in 1851 (not digitized)
  Published to facilitate payment of federal pensions to veterans, these two publications provide soldiers' names, ranks, dates of service, and militia regiment numbers and/or company commander’s names. They serve as the official record of War of 1812 military service for individuals in the Virginia Militia. Access is restricted to the fragile original records.

Index entries cite sources using the following abbreviations:

• PR = Pay Rolls
• MR = Muster Rolls
• HDD = House of Delegates Documents (usually accompanied by the legislative year and page number)
• B = Legislative Petitions

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).

Access

• Many of the sources included in this index are digitized. For questions about access, please ask us.
• To order copies/scans from the undigitized Muster Rolls of the Virginia Militia in the War of 1812, visit our orders page.

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