Pension to Bishop, William

The following data is extracted from Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Grover Cleveland.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, June 23, 1886.

To the House of Representatives:

I hereby return without approval House bill No. 6688, entitled "An act for the relief of William Bishop."

This claimant was enrolled as a substitute on the 25th day of March, 1865. He was admitted to a post hospital at Indianapolis on the 3d day of April, 1865, with the measles; was removed to the City General Hospital, in Indianapolis, on the 5th day of May, 1865; was returned to duty May 8, 1865, and was mustered out with a detachment of unassigned men on the 11th day of May, 1865.

This is the military record of this soldier, who remained in the Army one month and seventeen days, having entered it as a substitute at a time when high bounties were paid.

Fifteen years after this brilliant service and this terrific encounter with the measles, and on the 28th day of June, 1880, the claimant discovered that his attack of the measles had some relation to his army enrollment and that this disease had "settled in his eyes, also affecting his spinal column."

This claim was rejected by the Pension Bureau, and I have no doubt of the correctness of its determination.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

Source: Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Grover Cleveland

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