Widow's Weeds is a term for widow's clothing that dates from the 16th century, with "weed" originating from "waed", an Old English word for garment.

The Pension Act of 1836 was the first national Revolutionary War pension legislation specifically for widows. A significant expansion of previous widows' pension benefits, it extended the veterans' benefits provided by the Pension Act of 1832 to all Revolutionary War widows as long as their marriage occurred prior to the end of the veteran's last period of service and she had never remarried.

The Pension was not contingent on the veteran already receiving a pension in his lifetime. According to the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, well over 100,000 women, from the American Revolution through the Spanish-American War, collected some form of widow's pension from the federal government.

These widows' pensions were among the first social safety nets in our country.