By Mark Stolzenburg
This article part 2 of 4 celebrates the Chester Zimmer Collection and the ongoing construction of the Chester Zimmer Library at the Old Stone Fort Museum Complex in Schoharie as well as taking note of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.
Pension Woes
Despite the fact that most rank-and-file soldiers of the Continental Army, Navy, states, and local militias left service after the war with pay that was mostly depreciated currency or practically worthless certificates, the U.S. Congress had little will or means to relieve them for more than three decades. The Revolutionary War Pension Act of 1818 and another in 1820 addressed the needs of Continental Army veterans who could prove they were in dire straits financially and had served in the war for nine months or more. Passed at the urging of President Monroe, these were the first attempts by the United States to offer pension money to Continental rank-and-filers who had not suffered debilitating war-time injuries. Unfortunately, however, those who fought with the militias and state troops were left wanting for more than another decade.
The Pension Act of 1832 came at a time when the U.S. Treasury was flush with cash from land sales and finally made all men who had served in the Revolutionary War for at least six months eligible to apply for a pension. Militia men, like George, and state troops were included. It required testimony from the aging Patriot applicants before a court of law, a justice, or federal official to prove their service. Additional sworn statements were often sought from others who had served with the applicant, witnessed his wartime duty, or could vouch for his good character. Some widows of veterans could apply as well. Pension responsibilities were at first mostly handled by the U.S. Congress, then largely transferred to the Department of War in 1832, and to the newly formed Department of Interior in 1849. The original documents that contain the testimony of Revolutionary War pension applicants and their friends are housed at the National Archives and stand as perhaps the most important, most candid, and most numerous first-hand accounts of the war.
George’s Service – From Memory
George Zimmer’s pension application, sadly, began and played out as a comedy of errors. It did not get sent to the Commissioner of Pensions until May 30, 1851, when he was eighty-five years old. That was not for lack of trying. He sought the help of local judge, Elias Holliday, in the 1830s, but the process ended there since the judge was of the opinion that under the 1832 Act, war service needed to be six months minimum continuous tour of duty, not six months in toto. Zimmer was misled; Holliday was wrong. George waited twenty years until he “thought proper” to apply again. His subsequent pension application file is filled with at least eighty-five pages of correspondence and testimony from 1851 to 1857.
This is how Zimmer characterized his service based on his own words, under oath, as his memory served him on May 30, 1851: He stated that he served in 1779 under Col. Peter Vroman in a company commanded by Ensign John Enders for two months plus one month at the Middle Fort. George claimed that he was offered pay only once for his service. Records indeed show that came on Nov. 28, 1779 in the amount of £0.8.10 1/3. He said he refused it, since the currency had “depreciated so much.” In1780, under Captain Christian Stubrach, he “was employed in carrying dispatches from Col. Vroman in the Lower fort to the commanding officer in the Middle Fort” for not less than four months. Additionally, he served another four months as a substitute for his brothers, Jacob and Peter. His 1781 duty kept him “constantly in the Lower Fort from early in the spring of the year to late in the fall,” again, part of the time substituting for his brothers.
His time substituting at the Lower Fort in 1781 (he was 15) probably saved his life and, tragically, left his brothers home on the Zimmer farm. Jacob was killed and Peter captured during Adam Crysler’s July 26 raid there. George’s service at the Fort made him safer than his brothers were at home.
The year 1782 brought an end to most hostility in the War for Independence, but the threat of raids in the valleys remained, and George “was from April until late fall of that year in the stone house stockade at Major Becker’s on duty as a private soldier standing guard watching the enemy excepting from the above time about three weeks that this deponent was absent to Boston by leave of Major Becker.” Two aspects from his 1782 service stand out: First, Zimmer’s pension application is perhaps the only evidence we have that the Major Jost Becker Stone House on Fox Creek, now on the National Register of Historic Places, was a stockaded fort in 1782. Second, why did George interrupt his service for leave to Boston? It just so happens that George’s brother, Peter, having been imprisoned at Niagara, travelled by British ship to Boston in late 1782 where he was released as part of a prisoner exchange. My guess is George went to greet Peter and perhaps assist him with his journey home. Peter was notoriously mistreated as a prisoner so he may have needed help.
This May 30, 1851 written testimony was mailed that day to James E. Heath, appointed by President Millard Filmore as U.S. Commissioner of Pensions with the newly formed Department of Interior.
The day after his application was mailed, May 31, 1851, Zimmer penned another letter to Washington, D.C. to say that he had forgotten to mention the fate of his brothers in the July 1781 raid. Perhaps his testimony made George nervous, or could it be his family’s trauma was something he did not want to remember? Maybe his memory had just failed him. It had, after all, been seventy years. He wrote, “It may not be important but deem it no harm in mentioning the fact.”
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