Patriot or not

One thing that most people doing genealogy research like to find is Revolutionary War service. That way they can join the DAR - Daughters of the American revolution or the men's group, Son's of the American Revolution. My daughters can join the DAR on about 7-8 different family lines if they ever decide they want it.

One ancestor that I had never been able to document military service for was John Whitehurst of Carteret County, North Carolina. He was my 5th great grandfather and since he was born about 1740 would be the prime age to have participated in the war.

He lived in the Straits area of Carteret County and many of the Whitehurts in the area as well as those who moved to Cortez, Florida early last century are descended from him.

He married Susannah Fulford, daughter of Joseph Fulford and he died in 1795. His only son was Col. Richard Whitehurst, who married Margaret Burgess. I found Richard's grave marker the last time we were in the area and wrote an interesting story about it.

I've never found John Whitehurst on any Revolutionary War veteran list and over the last 200 years no one has tried to claim DAR membership via him. The DAR has really good records and an online index of all membership applications even those that were denied.

Recently Ancestry.com put SAR applications online and I found one that listed him. One of his descendants, John Norman Whitehurst filed an application in 1950. The application was approved but was somewhat vague on what service John Whitehurst had given during the war. I wrote to the national SAR office in Louisville, KY and they confirmed it was approved but they had no information, other than the application.


The application listed as sources; North Carolina Revolutionary Army Accounts, Vol IX, page 31 and the series US and NC War of the Rebellion, Book Z page 56. There is a handwritten note on the bottom of the first page stating they could not find these references. That made it even more of a question, as why did they approve the membership without checking it out?


I started looking for these books and after many tries at different libraries was able to locate both of them in the North Carolina Archives. I wrote to them and asked for copies. As I have found in the past, the NC Archives gives excellent service and I received photocopies of both the pages within a couple weeks.


Looking at the originals I see John Whitehurst received payments from the State of North Carolina in 1785 and 1789 but they don't make mention of why he was receiving the payment. I guess it was good enough for the SAR since they approved the application but what about the DAR?



The DAR web page has a list of who would qualify for membership. It's a long list and includes some you may be surprised at. I am thinking that since the 2nd document shows John was owed money that he may have been one who furnished goods, food or supplies to the Army. Not exactly something you would think would be on the same level as a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, but that is the way it is.


DAR - Acceptable Service:

Signers of the Declaration of Independence

Military Service, such as participation in:

Army and Navy of the Continental Establishment

State Navy

State and Local Militia

Privateers

Military or Naval Service performed by French nationals in the American theater of war

Civil Service, under authority of Provisional or new State Governments:

State Officials

County and Town Officials (Town Clerk, Selectman, Juror, Town Treasurer, Judge, Sheriff, Constable, Jailer, Surveyor of Highways, Justice of the Peace, etc.)

Patriotic Service, which includes:

Members of the Continental Congress, State Conventions, and Assemblies

Membership in committees made necessary by the War, including service on committees which furthered the cause of the Colonies from April 1774, such as Committees of Correspondence, Inspection, and Safety, committees to care for soldier's families, etc.

Signer of Oath of Fidelity and Support, Oath of Allegiance, etc.

Members of the Boston Tea Party

Defenders of Forts and Frontiers, and Signers of petitions addressed to and recognizing the authority of the Provisional and new State Governments

Doctors, nurses, and others rendering aid to the wounded (other than their immediate families)

Ministers who gave patriotic sermons and encouraged patriotic activity

Furnishing a substitute for military service

Prisoners of war or refugees from occupying forces

Prisoners on the British ship Old Jersey or other prison ships

Service in the Spanish Troops under Galvez or the Louisiana Militia after 24 December 1776

Service performed by French nationals within the colonies or in Europe in support of the American cause

Those who rendered material aid, in Spanish America, by supplying cattle for Galvez's forces after 24 December 1776

Those who applied in Virginia for Certificates of Rights to land for settlement and those who were entitled to and were granted preemption rights

Those who took the Oath of Fidelity to the Commonwealth of Virginia from October 1779 to 26 November 1783

Those who rendered material aid such as furnishing supplies with or without remuneration, lending money to the Colonies, munitions makers, gunsmiths, etc.

Laying down your mark

I was surprised to find I've never written about Elijah Duncan before. He is my wife's ggg grandfather from her Lawrence family. When he died on December 14, 1840 in DeKalb County Tennessee at age 83 he was one of the oldest living Revolutionary War veterans in the State.

Being a Revolutionary War veteran he received several land grants in North Carolina in payment for his service. As many in his generation, he sold them and moved west. In reading the transcript of one of these transactions it talked of his making his mark, by writing the letter A on it's side. This seemed strange since neither of his names started with the letter A.

The note said this was the sign he may have been Quaker because it was a common practice of their faith. "The custom of laying down your mark when selling property was a practice utilized by many Quakers."


I had never heard of this and I'm not sure if my Philadelphia Editor daughter has either. If you Google the term, the only hits you receive are to a song called "To Remember" by Josh Kelley.

I decided to check with some Quaker experts and see what they had to say about it. I've asked if this was in fact the way Quakers signed deeds and why the letter A?

So far I've contacted editors & Ouaker experts at Quakerpedia, The Religious Society of Friends, The Quaker Information Center, Haverford College (the oldest Quaker college in the US) and my son in law who is finishing up a PhD in Early American History. Let's see which one comes up with the answer.

One of the Ten Thousand

I saw a blog post that estimated we have 10,000 4th cousins. I have no idea if their math was correct but I am sure there are a lot of them.

I came across some photos of the house of one of my 4th cousins. Elma T. Howland was born on August 21, 1879 in Williston, Carteret County, North Carolina. We share a common set of ancestors, Joseph Fulford and Ann Martin who were my 6th great grandparents.

Elma's parents were Benjamin Tucker Howland and Josesh Ann Willis. The Howland family had several children who migrated to Florida along with a lot of other North Carolina folks in the early 1900s but their oldest daughter, Elma stayed at home.

She married Kanelium A. Bloodgood of Onslow County North Carolina and they built a nice looking home at 220 Elm Street in Swansboro around 1907. The house has survived more than 100 years and is now listed on the National Register of Historical Places.

Elma's husband died in 1938 but she lived on in the house for another 25 years. She died on October 8, 1962 but her address was still listed as the house on Elm Street.

They spelled his name wrong

Luther Marion Wilson was my grandmother Edith's first cousin, however I doubt she ever met or knew about him. He died when she was young and I suspect the family didn't talk much about him.

He died in 1921 and I had a note about him that someone had given me that said he was killed at Green Swamp which was in Pasco County Florida. I didn't know what that meant but decided to find out. Now that I know the story, I think his parents must have been confused and should have named him after Martin Lucifer, rather than Martin Luther.

Several years ago I found small newspaper article about a Luther Wilson being charged with a crime in Pasco County Florida but didn't know it was the same person. Then this year, using the Smather's Library in Gainesville, Florida newspaper collection, I came across another article that confirmed not only the first one was him but also explained how he was killed in Green Swamp!

The Bradford County telegraph from November 11, 1921 has an article on page two titled "Luther Wilson is killed by Officers." It details the account of how he had escaped from state prison where he was serving a life sentence for various crimes that started with the rape of his sister in law! He had escaped from jail and had been hiding in the swamp, probably with assistance from his family for over a year. He shot and killed a deputy sheriff at one point who had come out in the swamp to find him.

So this is one black sheep that everyone would probably just as soon forget about. If however you want to read the entire article it is online.

There is a delay

One interesting fact that you find looking at old death certificates is that folks got 'em in the ground quick. Today the norm is to have a funeral three or four days after the death. Go back 50 -75 years ago it was always the next day. They didn't expect family to come from out of town for funerals and if they waited any longer it would not be pleasant to be in the room with the dearly departed.

Of course there were exceptions. Abraham Lincoln wasn't buried for over three weeks. Even with state of the art embalming (for the time) his remains literally were falling apart by the time they got him into you know who's tomb.

I found a story of delayed burial of almost 80 years that involved one of my great uncles. John J. Kelley of Taylor County Florida was married in 1852 to Tammy Blanchard, sister of my great great grandmother. He enlisted in the Florida Fifth Infantry unit from Taylor and Madison County on August 29, 1862 and went off to fight the Yankees. Unfortunately he was taken prisoner toward the end of the Civil War at Chester Station, Virginia.

He was shipped north to the Hart Island POW camp in New York City's Harbor. There after being held for only two months he died of disease on June 6, 1865. His remains were buried in the prison cemetery along with 234 other confederate POWs. Unfortunately he wasn't to remain in his place of final rest.

In 1941, a few months before the US entered another war they decided to move the Civil War graves from the cemetery on Hart's Island to Cypress Hills National Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY. So John Kelley was dug up and moved south, I assume on a boat and not the N Line subway.

The Rich Uncle

We all wish we had one, but for most of us it didn't happen. In my wife's family it happened but they didn't know about it until it was too late.

Her great uncle was Guy Glenn from Bonham, Texas. Unfortunately he died in 1986, about five years before we knew anything about him. He was the older brother of her grandfather. The grandfather was AWOL for 50 years so no one had contact with that side of the family.

I met Guy's daughter and niece while doing family research about 10 years ago and heard from them that he had struck oil on his Texas ranch back in the 1940s. Until recently I hadn't found any other sources to confirm the stories.



As it turns out he had six producing oil wells on his 160 acre ranch near Snyder, Texas. Guy had bought the farm in 1939 when his father died and he received $600 from the estate. Guy made a pretty good investment, turning that $600 into millions.



Of note is that Guy made sure my wife's grandmother also received $600 from the estate, the share from his AWOL brother. Today you wouldn't be able to give away an inheritance that belonged to a deadbeat but I guess back in the 1930s in Texas the Judge didn't ask a lot of questions so they gave the money to the wife and children.



Standard Oil struck oil near Snyder, Texas in 1948 and shortly afterwards oil wells popped up everywhere in the area.






Guy's modest farm was in the middle of the Kelly-Snyder Oil field, one of the most prolific in the USA.


I found several newspaper articles mentioning his wells coming in, with details on how many barrels they were producing. That was front page news for the Snyder newspaper.



It wouldn't be a real Texas story without a bogus land claim that Guy had to defend to keep his title to the land. Someone tried to file a title to the land in 1952 claiming they had bought it twenty years earlier, but Guy came out as the legitimate owner.



In 1956 Guy sold the Snyder farm, bought a large cattle ranch outside of Bonham, Texas and became one of the leading citizens of this small town. He died in 1986 and his obituary lists a full lifetime of community service.

Faces in the Crowd

I used to read Sports Illustrated every week. Probably did so for twenty years, until so much sports information became available online. One of the features they had was called "Faces in the Crowd." It listed several people each week who reached an obscure sports achievement that most of us would have never heard of. I discovered a distant cousin on the pages of an old magazine.

Johnny Ray Evans was born in 1954 in Jacksonville, Florida and died in 2006 in Winter Haven, Florida. I never knew him or anyone in his family. My genealogy software says he was my 3rd cousin, one time removed. His family was originally from Taylor County Florida.

I started researching the family after I received an email from one of the members who came across my blog. I found his obituary online using Google newspapers. It mentioned he was a seven time National Judo Champion. That isn't something you see everyday.

I decided to look up other articles about him and one was in Sports Illustrated, dated November 23, 1964.

I can't copy the photo from it but the link and article are below.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1076648/index.htm

"Johnny Ray Evans, 10, of Hollywood, Fla. a 4-foot-7, 87-pound fifth-grader who took up judo two years ago, won nine bouts—eight of them by clean throws—to finish first over 53 boys in his division at the National Junior Judo Tournament in Miami Beach."

You can see his picture on page 125 using the link that says "view this issue."