Lennon on Temple in the Revolution

Genealogists talk a lot about historical context, but Rachal Mills Lennon does something about it. Her 19-page article on John Temple, a Virginian, in the March 2015 NGS Quarterly uses it as a major pillar of her research and analysis and correlation of the scanty evidence available on Temple's Revolutionary War career and pension. (Also, don't miss footnote 67.)

Having read this article, I hope that something similar will help with my Pennsylvania patriot problem.


Rachal Mills Lennon, "Context and Comrades Illuminate a Silent Southerner: John Temple (1758-1838), Revolutionary War Pensioner," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 103 (March 2015): 49-67.

Methodology Monday with the genealogy of mislabeled records

Somehow, somewhere in the depths of the 19th Century U.S. Department of War, a unit of Revolutionary War soldiers got moved from Virginia to Connecticut. Probably it happened when the Compiled Military Service Record cards for George Markham's Revolutionary War company were created from a single 1781 original muster roll. It took a massive systematic effort by Craig Roberts Scott, in the current (September) National Genealogical Society Quarterly, to prove that they should be moved back.

The muster roll itself had "Virginia" written on its side, and no original source places them in New England. Scott first found that Markham himself was closely tied to Chesterfield County, Virginia, both before and after 1781. Then he correlated dozens of the individual officers and soldiers in the unit to same-name men on record in that county. One at a time.

A groundbreaking (or rather, ground-restoring) project of this kind doesn't have to be fancy, but it does have to be thorough and systematic. This one also reminds us to pay close attention when a derivative record makes a claim that cannot be confirmed in the original. That's like a sign saying, "DIG HERE."


Craig Roberts Scott, "Captain George Markham's Military Company: Virginia not Connecticut," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 102 (September 2014): 201-30.


Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with the genealogy of mislabeled records," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 December 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Good news for pre-1850 US "Dark Age" ancestors

My great-great-great grandfather Eliphas Thrall (1767-1834) did not serve in the American Revolution. But when I searched for his name in quotation marks in the "Revolutionary War Pensions" section of Fold3, I got two hits. His name and signature appear in the handwritten pension files of Daniel Baker and Jesse Thrall as a corroborating witness or neighbor in the place from which they applied for their pensions. Fold3 has the files indexed that deeply. (Exactly how thoroughly overall I don't know, but some of you may.)

For anyone suffering with Dark Age ancestors in the US, this kind of searching can be a godsend. It basically uses the pension files to garner information on people who are present in incidental or supporting roles -- and of course it connects them to friends, family, associates, and neighbors, all of whom may yield additional records. It will be more helpful if you can either (a) arrange to have research targets with unusual names or (b) manage to narrow down the search for a common-name geographically or otherwise.

I have a bunch of names to run through this mill in my "spare" time. I'm looking forward to having Civil War pension files and local probate files indexed on line in this fantastically productive way in the future.

BTW, this kind of all-purpose indexing is not a new idea. Some folks had it back before 1980 and created 23 volumes of books indexing these pension files in this way until 2006 (up into the "H" surnames, and using the abridged set of pension files, NARA M805), under the cumbersome title Revolutionary War period : Bible, family & marriage records gleaned from pension applications. 




Harold Henderson, "Good news for those pre-1850 US 'Dark Age' ancestors," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

William Berry and His Progeny: Property + Probate = Results

William Berry was born in Rhode Island in 1753, was bound out at a young age, served in the Revolutionary War from New York, was captured on his fourth hitch, and survived 3 1/2 years' captivity on Prisoner Island in the St. Lawrence River. His 17 October 1839 will in Allegany County, New York, named seven children (two already deceased) and a few grandchildren.

William bequeathed mostly land, and specified how his children should dispose of each parcel. In part because of that provision, children and grandchildren made numerous deeds following his death. By correlating these with probate and other records I was able to identify more than 30 grandchildren, born between 1802 and 1833. Those so far identified and traced lived in New York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Nebraska.

The two-part article appears in American Ancestors Journal 2011 and 2012, an annual supplement to the New England Historical and Genealogical Register. NEHGS members can read the articles and documentation on line.

Surnames in the children's generation: Berry, Palmer, Greenfield, Hungerford, Potter, Parks.

Additional surnames in the grandchildren's generation: Sheldon, Hornecker, Clark, McNaught, Goodrich, Green, Daboll, Saunders, Sprague, Hackett, Humphrey, Coleman, Bliss, Walrath, Weaver, Burdick, Wheeler, Swartwout, Morgan, Lauther, Sumner, Trask, Mead, Bliven, and Monroe.

William was my late mother-in-law's great-grandmother's great-grandfather. Several mysteries remain, and I hope to have a continuation article written next year on just one of William's grandchildren, a Civil War veteran with more than two dozen grandchildren himself.




Harold Henderson, “William Berry (1753-1839) and His Children and Grandchildren in Massachusetts and New York,” in 2 parts, American Ancestors Journal, third and fourth annual supplements to The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 165 (October 2011): 368-78 and 166 (October 2012):365-74.



Harold Henderson, "William Berry and His Progeny: Property + Probate = Results," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

William Berry: Where There's a Will There's a Deed

Archives.com has just posted my digest version of research on William Berry (1753-1839), who was born in Rhode Island, served in the American Revolution from New York, and lived much of his life in and around Stephentown, Rensselaer County, New York, and Hancock, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. The first installment of the full account was published in NEHGS's American Ancestors Journal last fall, with the second and final installment this fall. Berry made his will in Allegany County, New York, in 1839, naming seven children and ten grandchildren. Deeds made in the decades following his death enable us to identify twenty-three additional grandchildren.

Surnames involved include Bliven, Coleman, Daboll, Green, Hackett, Hungerford, Monroe, Palmer, Parks, Potter, Saunders, Sprague, Sumner, Swartwout, Trask, and Walrath. Some stayed in New York; others went west to Illinois, Wisconsin, and beyond.

Studying those records was a bit like walking into a party where everybody knows everybody else and assumes you do too. Even though this party was more than 150 years old, enough of the participants were willing to "talk" so that eventually most of it made sense. There are still some descendants on the loose!


[Note to fanatics: this is my sixth article on Archives, but the site lists only the five most recent under my name. The first one, no longer listed in that way, is "Indirect Evidence to the Rescue," 25 August 2011.]


Harold Henderson, "William Berry (1753-1839) and His Children and Grandchildren in Massachusetts and New York," part 1 of 2, American Ancestors Journal, third annual supplement to The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 165 (October 2011): 368-78.


Harold Henderson, "William Berry: Where There's a Will There's a Deed," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Revolutionary patriot Stephen Simmons in The Genealogist

Of the five most highly regarded US genealogy journals, The Genealogist publishes by far the longest articles. In the Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 issues, Dan W. Olds chronicled the parents and descendants of Stephen Simmons, who served in the Revolution from Connecticut and died near the banks of the Wabash in southeastern Illinois in 1835. The article occupies 57 pages (some books are shorter), and even so it followed the descendants of only three of the five children of Stephen Simmons and Mabel Hunt who lived to maturity.

The family moved west from Windham County, Connecticut, to Greene (then Albany) County, New York, before 1790; on to Scioto County, Ohio, about 1807; and to Wabash (then Edwards) County, Illinois, before 1820. The stories about Stephen, from a variety of sources, suggest a versatile and interesting person to know -- unless perhaps you were a sheriff delivering a court summons. One reported that Simmons "ansearede it by riding out of hearing."

The article rests in part on several wonderful sources -- Simmons's own declaration for a Revolutionary War pension in September 1832, a transcript of the family Bible record, and a collection of family letters from the Gunn family (into which one daughter married) 1808-1862. Most lines are carried to Stephen and Mabel's grandchildren, and two families of great-grandchildren are given as well.

The logistical challenges of managing such an extensive project have to be imagined, as it's so smoothly done. My only disappointment was that the article often cites marriages to index entries rather than to the original records -- an odd choice given that Illinois marriages are readily obtained through the relevant county or the Regional Archives Depository system. Citing derivative sources when originals are available does not seem in keeping with the publishing society's stated goal "to advance genealogical research standards," but perhaps there's more going on here than I know about.


Dan W. Olds, "Stephen Simmons (1765-1835), from Connecticut to Illinois: A Revolutionary Soldier and his Family," The Genealogist 25, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 169-199, and 26, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 133-160.


Harold Henderson, "Revolutionary patriot Stephen Simmons in The Genealogist," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Sergeant John Smith in The Genealogist

We all get to cheer whenever another John Smith is pulled out of the swamp of ancestral ambiguity -- and that's what Gail Blankenau does in the lead article of the Spring 2012 issue of The Genealogist, a twice-yearly magazine published by the American Society of Genealogists.

This Revolutionary veteran left no birth, death, pension, land, probate, or cemetery records -- but he did leave four notebooks of a journal of his four years at the war. (In addition to hard fighting, as first sergeant he was involved in training the Rhode Island regiment of black soldiers.) Historical information is brought in to good effect, as are eight children and 37 grandchildren.

Two Smith sons settled in Washington County, Ohio; a grandson continued on to Alabama, where a great-grandson ended up fighting against the country his great-grandfather had helped establish.


Gail Blankenau, "Sergeant John Smith of Rhode Island, With Descendants Early in Washington County, Ohio," The Genealogist 26, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 3-23.


Harold Henderson, “Sergeant John Smith in The Genealogist,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post.]

Indiana conference and databases

Members of the Indiana Genealogical Society have a conference Saturday in Indianapolis, featuring military records and Pamela K. Boyer. The stay-at-homes have four new members-only databases on the website to explore, three of them offering leads to military records (these are not images of the records themselves and should not be cited as such):

Revolutionary War Veterans Living in Indiana Who Received Pensions (1835)

Students of Earlham College, Richmond (1859)

Roster of 79th Indiana Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War (1861-1865)

Public Service Company of Indiana Employees Serving in World War II (1944), list from the Danville Republican newspaper

Three cemetery indexes from Noble and Wabash counties are newly available to all visitors.

Tracking Revolutionary War Pension Payments

I've heard top genealogists complain that we spend far more time learning where records are than what to do with them once we find them. NARA archivist Claire Prechtel-Kluskens does her darndest to right the balance with a blockbuster article in the Winter 2008 issue of Prologue, "Follow the Money: Tracking Revolutionary War Army Pension Payments." She writes,

Pension files of Revolutionary War veterans and their widows are well known as excellent genealogical and historical research sources. Few researchers, however, venture beyond the pension file to follow the "money trail" of records documenting the actual pension payments. . . .

Researching the records relating to pension payments is time consuming and involves understanding and using arcane, obscure, and unindexed records. It is not surprising, therefore, that no guide to this research has ever been published. This article attempts to fill this gap by going step-by-step through the research process . . . .

And what a gap it is. She leads the reader through a dozen or more record groups, following her example couple, Massachusetts patriot William McCullar and wife Chloe, through the decades to Chloe's probable death in the early 1840s in Licking County, Ohio. If you aspire to squeeze every ounce of information out of these records, print this one out and study it.

Cato Mead in Lee County, Iowa

Marian Pierre-Louis on the APG email list points to an article in the Daily Gate City (Keokuk, Iowa), about a Memorial Day observance involving Cato Mead, one of the few black Revolutionary War veterans buried west of the Mississippi. Originally from Norwich, Connecticut, he came to southeast Iowa in 1840 and lived there six years before his death at the age of 79.

(FYI, Keokuk is at the triple corner of Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois.)