CHAP. CCCLXIL. – An Act granting half pay to widows or orphans, where their husbands and fathers have died of wounds received in the military service of the United States, in certain cases, and for other purposes.
| Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That when any officer, non-commissioned officer, musician or private of the militia, including rangers, sea fencibles, and volunteers, shall have died while in the service of the United States, since the twentieth of April, eighteen hundred and eighteen, or who shall have died in consequence of a wound received whilst in the service, since the day aforesaid, and shall have left a widow, or, if no widow, a child or children under sixteen years of age, such widow, or if no widow, such child or children, shall be entitled to receive half the monthly pay to which the deceased was entitled at the time of his death or receiving such wound, for and during the term of five years; and in case of the death or marriage of such widow before the expiration of said five years, the half pay for the remainder of the time shall go to the said decedent: Provided, That the half pay aforesaid shall be half the monthly pay of the officers, noncommissioned officers, musicians and privates of the infantry of the regular army, and no more: Provided, also, That no greater sum shall be allowed to the widow or to the child or children of any officer, than the half pay of a lieutenant colonel.
SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That if any officer, non-commissioned officer, musician, soldier, Indian spy, mariner or marine, whose service during the revolutionary war was such as is specified in the act passed the seventh day of June eighteen hundred and thirty-two, entitled “An act supplementary to the act for the relief of certain surviving officers and soldiers of the revolution,” have died since the fourth day of March, eighteen hundred and thirty-one, and before the date of said act, the amount of pension which would have accrued from the fourth day of March, eighteen hundred and thirty-one, to the time of his death, and become payable to him by virtue of that act, if he had survived the passage thereof, shall be paid to his widow; and if he left no widow, to his children, in the manner prescribed in the act hereby amended. SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That if any person who served in the war of the revolution, in the manner specified in the act passed the seventh day of June, eighteen hundred and thirty-two, entitled “An act supplementary to the act for the relief of certain surviving officers and soldiers of the revolution,” have died, leaving a widow whose marriage took place before the expiration of the last period of his service, such widow shall be entitled to receive, during the time she may remain unmarried, the annuity or pension which might have been allowed to her husband, by virtue of the act aforesaid, if living at the time it was passed. SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That any pledge, mortgage, sale, assignment, or transfer of any right, claim, or interest in any money or half pay granted by this act, shall be utterly void and of no effect: each person acting for and in behalf of any one entitled to money under this act, shall take and subscribe an oath, to be administered by the proper accounting officer and retained by him and put on file, before a warrant shall be delivered to him, that he has no interest in said money by any pledge, mortgage, sale, assignment or transfer, and that he does not know or believe that the same has been so disposed of to any person whatever. See. 5. And be it further enacted, That the Secretary of War shall adopt such forms of evidence, in applications under this act, as the President of the United States shall prescribe. Approved, July 4, 1836. |