How to Fill Out and Submit NATF Form 85: Costs, Delivery, Form 86

NATF Form 85 is the National Archives order form for federal military pension application files and bounty land warrant application files covering service from 1775 through the early 1900s. You choose one of four file types, enter the veteran’s identifying details, pay by credit card, and submit the order online or by mail. Fees run from $30 for a pension documents packet or bounty land file to $80 for a full Civil War-era pension file, and processing takes up to 90 days.¹

What You Can Order and What It Costs

The form covers federal service before World War I, roughly 1775 to 1903. That includes the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Indian Wars, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the Philippine-American War.² Confederate service and state militia pension files are not available through Form 85; it is federal service only.¹ For the Revolutionary War, only rejected bounty land applications are included.

You pick one of four file types in Block 1:

Full pension application file, Civil War and later, $80. Complete file up to 100 pages, with each additional page at $0.70. Includes sworn affidavits, medical examinations, and correspondence from the Bureau of Pensions, plus the pension documents packet.
Full pension application file, pre-Civil War, $55. Complete file for service before 1861. Includes the pension documents packet.
Pension documents packet, $30. Up to eight genealogically significant documents pulled from the file rather than the entire file.
Bounty land warrant application file, $30. Files tied to federal land grants awarded for service between 1775 and 1855.

The packet can include the declaration of pension, a widow’s pension declaration, Adjutant General statements of service, questionnaires completed by the applicant, “Pension Dropped” cards, marriage and death certificates, and the discharge certificate, to the extent those documents exist in the file.³ For many genealogical questions the packet is enough. If you want every affidavit, deposition, and letter, order the full file.

Information You Need Before You Order

Blocks 1 through 6 are mandatory. NARA will not search the archives unless all six are filled in:¹

Block 1, type of file (one of the four options above).
Block 2, veteran’s last, first, and middle name as it would have appeared in government records.
Block 3, branch of service: Army, Navy, or Marines.
Block 4, state from which the veteran served, meaning the state of enlistment, not necessarily residence.
Block 5, the war or approximate dates of service.
Block 6, kind of service, such as volunteer unit or regular Army.

Blocks 7 through 17 are optional but sharply improve your chances. Regiment or company, pension or bounty land warrant application number, and the name of any widow or dependent who filed for benefits all help NARA distinguish your veteran from someone else with the same name. Nineteenth-century federal records were kept by hand in ledger books, and two veterans sharing a name and state are common enough that a unit designation often decides whether a search succeeds.¹

If you can find the pension or bounty land warrant application number before ordering, put it on the form. FamilySearch hosts a free digitized index of Civil War and later pension applications covering service from 1861 to 1917.⁴ For earlier wars, NARA’s online catalog and published indexes at research libraries are the usual starting points. Census records and county histories can confirm regiment and company details.

How to Submit the Form

You can order online or by mail. Online is faster: NARA receives the request immediately, sends email confirmation, and lets you track the status at no extra cost.¹

Online

Use the National Archives Order Online portal at eservices.archives.gov/orderonline. You enter the same information as the paper form and pay by credit card. NARA accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover.¹

By Mail

Download the PDF, fill it out, and mail it to:

Archival Operations Washington D.C.
Form 85 – Pension
National Archives and Records Administration
700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20408-0001

Payment is by credit card only. The form explicitly says not to send cash or checks. Include your credit card number and the three- or four-digit card validation code; NARA destroys forms with incomplete credit card information. Print your return name and address on the form as well. Requests without a return address are also destroyed.¹

Processing Time and Delivery

Allow up to 90 days for NARA to process the order.¹ There is no rush or expedited option. Online orders reach the queue sooner than mailed forms, but the archival search itself takes the same time either way.

When the order is ready, you choose how to receive it. Electronic transfer sends a download link to the email address on your order. If you prefer paper, NARA mails reproductions via USPS to the return address on the form. Most reproductions are grayscale images of the original handwritten documents.¹

If the File Cannot Be Found or Is Hard to Read

If NARA cannot locate a file matching your information, you will be notified. Common reasons a search fails are a misspelled name, the wrong state of enlistment, or a missing regiment. Veterans with common names are especially hard to identify without a unit designation, so it is worth checking the pension index or census records before you order.

Refunds are limited. If your order was processed incorrectly, contact NARA within 30 days of delivery. Once the error is verified, NARA will correct it and resend the documents; if it cannot be corrected, you get a refund. If the reproduction accurately reflects the original, no refund is issued even when the original is faded or partially illegible.¹ The fee covers the search and reproduction, not the legibility of a nineteenth-century document. That is another reason to give NARA as much identifying detail as you can up front: a file pulled for the wrong veteran because your inputs were vague is unlikely to qualify for a refund if the match was reasonable.

Form 85 vs. Form 86

Form 85 and Form 86 are easy to confuse. Form 85 is for pension and bounty land warrant application files. Form 86 is for compiled military service records, meaning enlistment cards, muster roll entries, and similar documents showing unit assignments and rank.⁵ If you want both the service history and the pension file, submit each form separately. Compiled military service records under Form 86 cover Army volunteers from 1775 to 1902, but no compiled records exist for Navy or Marine Corps personnel from that era.⁶

1
National Archives. NATF Form 85 – Federal Pension or Bounty Land Warrant Applications
2
National Archives. Requesting Copies of Older Military Service Records
3
National Archives. Pension Documents Packet – Order Online Help
4
FamilySearch. United States, Civil War and Later Pension Index, 1861-1917
5
National Archives. National Archives Forms
6
National Archives. NATF Form 86 – Order for Copies of Military Service Records