An Annotated History of Pensions As I prepare to hit the half-century mark next year, certain things are starting to change. Doctor appointments are much longer than they used to be, and I now take many more pills. Trying to guard undergraduates on the basketball court is proving impossible.The other day I calculated how many more years I have until I can receive my pension.For something that I have never given much thought to, I am now seeing it as a blessing. My teacher’s pension works on a rule of 90; when my age and number of years worked equals 90, I can retire and start receiving a portion of my wages.Before now, I assumed that outside of Civil War soldiers, pensions were probably created during the Great Depression with the New Deal. Before that people lived much shorter lives and were taken care of by their families as they aged then. Today we tend to think of any kind of cradle-to-the-grave protection as modern, but pensions actually began with the ancient Romans.One of the ways Roman armies filled their ranks was through “annona militaris” or a payment for life after soldiers left the service.All through the ancient world and into the Middle Ages similar systems served as incentives for military service. These incentives came across the pond to the Americas. British colonies did not have a professional military and so relied on militias.With the onset of the Pequot War in 1636, the New England government needed a way to convince more men to join a lengthy military campaign, so they passed a law stating, “It is enacted by the Court that if any man shalbe sent forth as a souldier and shall returned maimed hee shalbe maintained competently by the Collonie during his life.”While the Virginia colony had a better relationship with the Natives than their northern neighbors, they still struggled and began displacing the Natives from their lands. Virginia passed similar legislation in 1644. These pensions only covered men who were injured. In 1675, during King Phillip’s War, the Legislature passed legislation that also provided for families of soldiers who were killed or maimed during the war.The first federal pension was granted during the Revolutionary War to any soldier wounded and could not provide a living for himself. However, where things really started to change was with the Civil War.Beginning in 1862, federal pensions were only for Union ...
