Deborah A. Carder Mayes

Pension files are a great place to find our female ancestors. I didn’t know who my great, great grandmother was until I obtained my great, great grandfather, John Malin Carder’s Civil War pension files. In those files, I learned that John had been married three times.  First, to Elizabeth Steen and then to Caroline Morris. Both died very young. John then married Eliza Jane Dobbins to whom he was married until his death nearly sixty years later.