GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 22, 1886.

To the Senate: 

I hereby return without approval Senate bill No. 2005, entitled “An act granting a pension to Mary J. Nottage.”

The beneficiary named in this bill is the widow of Thomas Nottage, who enlisted in August, 1861, and was discharged for disability September 17, 1862.  The assistant surgeon of his regiment, upon his discharge, certified the cause to be “disease of the urinary organs,” which had troubled him several years.

He died of consumption January 8, 1879, nearly seventeen years after his discharge, without ever having made any application for a pension.

In 1880 his widow made an application for pension, alleging that he contracted in the service “malarial poisoning, causing remittent fever, piles, general debility, consumption, and death,” and that he left two children, both born after his discharge, one in 1866 and the other in 1874.

The only medical testimony which has been brought to my attention touching his condition since his discharge is that of a single physician to the effect that he attended him from the year 1873 to the time of his death in 1879.  He states that the patient had during that time “repeated attacks of remittent fever and irritability of the bladder, with organic deposits;” that “in the spring of 1878 he had sore throat and cough, which resulted in consumption, of which he died.”

The claim of the widow was rejected in July, 1885, on the ground that “the soldier’s death was not the result of his service.”

I am satisfied that this conclusion of the Pension Bureau was correct.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 22, 1886.

To the Senate: 

I return herewith without approval Senate bill No. 342, entitled “An Act granting a pension to Marrilla Parsons, of Detroit, Mich.”

No claim has ever been made for a pension in this case to the Pension Bureau, probably for the reason that there is no pretext that the beneficiary named is entitled to a pension under any general law.

Daniel P. Parsons was her stepson, who enlisted in 1861 and died of consumption on the 13th day of August, 1864.

There are no special circumstances to distinguish this case from many others whose claims might be made by stepparents, and there are no facts stated in support of the conclusion embodied in the committee’s report that the soldier was taken sick from exposure incident to the service.

To depart from all rules regulating the granting of pensions by such an enactment as is proposed would establish a precedent which could not fail to cause embarrassment and perplexity.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 22, 1886.

To the Senate: 

I return without approval Senate bill No. 1383, entitled “An act granting a pension to Harriet Welch.”