Daniel Shays Draws a Pension

At the beginning of his book The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution, David O Stewart lays out some of the events that prepared the United States for the constitutional convention that would create a new and more robust system of government.

Stewart describes Shays Rebellion as one of those preparatory events and then mentions that after the rebellion was over, Daniel Shays, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, fled to Vermont, asked for and received a pardon and later drew a pension for his service in the Revolution.

That got me thinking, so I poked around the Footnote site to see what I could find on Mr. Shays.

I found several things related to his military service, including his Revolutionary War Service Record. Here's the first of 17 pages:

He also appears several times in the Revolutionary War Rolls for the Massachusetts 5th Regiment. Here's a muster roll for his company from October of 1779:

And here's a record from the Revolutionary War Pensions collection. After Daniel's death, his wife asked for and received a continuation of the pension he was so generously given despite the fact that he gave his name to Shays Rebellion:

The 58 page pension file even includes this 1945 letter, written in response to a request for information, which reviews details of Shays' service and pension: