EXECUTIVE MANSION, _June 23, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I return herewith without approval House bill No. 3205, entitled "An act
granting a pension to George W. Guyse."
The claimant filed his declaration for a pension in 1878, alleging that
about the 25th day of December, 1863, he received a gunshot wound in his
left knee while engaged in a skirmish.
There has been much testimony taken in this case, and a great deal of
it is exceedingly contradictory. Three of the claimant's comrades, who
originally testified to the receipt of the injury by him, afterwards
denied that he was wounded in the service, and a portion of the evidence
taken by the Bureau tends to establish the fact that the claimant cut
his left knee with a knife shortly after his discharge.
An examining surgeon in November, 1884, reports that he finds "no
indication of a gunshot wound, there being no physical or rational signs
to sustain claimant in his application for pension."
He further reports that there "seems to be an imperfect scar near the
knee, so imperfect as to render its origin uncertain, but in no respect
resembling a gunshot wound."
I think upon all the facts presented the Pension Bureau properly
rejected this claim, because there was no record of the injury and no
satisfactory evidence produced showing that it was incurred in service
and in line of duty, "all sources of information having been exhausted."