I learned of Gopher Records during a genealogy study group that I took from Cyndi Ingalls (of Cyndi’s List fame) earlier this year and have used them to retrieve three Civil War pension files so far. Their customer service is outstanding. They kept me informed of my order status, contacted me quickly to clarify the name on one file (which seemed at first to have been commingled with another pensioner’s file), and provided the final electronic copies very quickly. (By contrast, I’d ordered a file directly from NARA before discovering Gopher and had to wait quite literally months before receiving the final electronic copies, with no communication from them in between.)
I highly recommend Gopher to anyone seeking records from the Archives; they are very professional, efficient, and knowledgeable about NARA holdings and resources. I was especially thrilled that one of the pension files they got for me helped make a connection between two of my families, one on my father’s side and the other on my mother’s, that I hadn’t realized was there — the pensioner turned out to be the older brother of a maternal 2xgreat-grandmother who had left Kentucky with their parents in the 1840s to move to Tennessee. But the connection was clear in multiple pages of this pension file: the pensioner, William Farr, had stayed in Kentucky and had married the sister of my paternal 2xgreat-grandfather, Jesse Lawrence. Since I was dealing with two burned counties, this was terrific in making a link when no other records existed!
I’ll definitely be ordering more records from Gopher again soon. Thank you, Bob and everyone at Gopher Records!
Leave a comment