Caroline Boston

Pension File: 1130247, 980312
P.O.: Smith Center, Kansas
Service: member of USSC serving at Benton Barracks, July, 1863-April, 1864
Applied: 1892
Status: Accepted

As promised, we are on to a new group of nurses: Sanitary Commission nurses.    Here, for your consideration, is Caroline Boston.  This file baffles me.  Boston's service is very well documented.  She's on the books at Benton Barracks for a full ten months, and she had testimony from the ward master in Ward E where she worked, proving competent authority.  So her application should have been approved, no questions asked.
It wasn't.  And I have no explanation for this.  The Bureau rejected her on the grounds that she couldn't prove six months service.  But the file has the Bureau's request forms asking the War Department and the Auditor's Office for Boston's records, and the information they sent back, which clearly documents her ten months of service.  Short of outright incompetence and stupidity, I have no explanation for this lapse whatsoever.  Luckily, when Boston reapplied in 1898 the application was almost immediately accepted, so in the end she got what was due her.
If I told you this is just one more instance of negligence on the part of the Bureau, would you be surprised?