GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 29, 1886.

To the Senate: 

I hereby return Senate bill No. 1797, entitled “An act granting a pension to John S. Kirkpatrick.”

This claimant appears to have enlisted December 10, 1861, and to have been discharged December 20, 1864.  He is borne upon the rolls of his company as present up to June, 1862; in July and August, 1862, as on detached service as hospital attendant, and so reported February 28, 1863.  In March and April, 1863, he is reported as present, and in May and June, 1863, as on detached service.  There is nowhere in his service any record of disability.

He filed his application for a pension in 1880, in which he alleged that from hardship and exposure on a long march in New Mexico in the month of December, 1862, he contracted varicose veins in his legs.

As I understand the record given above, this claimant was on detached service from July, 1862, to February, 1863.

It will be observed that his claim is that he contracted his disability within that time, and in December, 1862.  He appears also to have served for two years after the date of his alleged injury, and that he did not file his application for pension till about sixteen years afterwards.

His claim is still pending, undetermined, in the Pension Bureau, and if there is merit in it there is no doubt that he will be able to make it apparent.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 29, 1886.

To the Senate: 

I hereby return without approval Senate bill No. 1077, entitled “An act granting a pension to Newcomb Parker.”

This claimant filed an application for a pension in the year 1880.

Before the passage of the bill herewith returned the Commissioner of Pensions, in ignorance of the action of Congress, allowed his claim under the general law.  As this decision of the Pension Bureau entitles the beneficiary named to draw a pension from the date of filing his application, which, under the provisions of the special bill in his favor, would only accrue from the time of its passage, I am unwilling that one found worthy to be placed upon the pension rolls by the Bureau, to which he properly applied, should be an actual loser by reason of a special interposition of Congress in his behalf.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, July 2, 1886.

To the House of Representatives: 

I return without approval House bill No. 473, entitled “An act granting a pension to William Boone.”

There is not the slightest room for doubt as to the facts involved in this case.

No application for pension was ever made to the Pension Bureau by the beneficiary named in this bill.  He enlisted in August, 1862; was in action November, 1862, and taken prisoner and at once paroled.  During his parole, and at Aurora, in the State of Illinois, he took part in the celebration of the 4th day of July, 1863, and while so engaged was terribly injured by the discharge of a cannon.  He is poor, and has a wife and a number of children.