ROOTS & BRANCHES

You might say that Revolutionary War soldiers are a dime a dozen in my ancestry.

With all the justifiable flutter over the America 250 celebration I thought I might take a count and without getting too deep into the weeds of documentation I came up with more than two dozen.

As far as I know, all of them were in their county militias. In my family there’s none of the lore about wintering at Valley Forge or being part of Washington’s bodyguards that has been handed down by other folks.

A collateral ancestor of mine, Dielman Daub, served in the “Flying Camp” that was mobile defense force in the 1776 battles around what’s now New York City, and Daub’s pension affidavit in the 1830s gives some interesting details on his march from Pennsylvania to New York and activities while in the service at the age of 16.

Daub lived to be 89 years old, dying in 1849 (His third wife was substantially younger than him and lived until 1871, receiving a state widow’s pension of $40 a year until her death 95 years after his service!).

And most of my Revolutionary ancestors were humble privates, too (I actually thought I had at least one lieutenant, Johann Philip Spohn, but now I’m seeing indications that he was actually a private and that a different Philip Spohn was the lieutenant. Oops!).

But I take pride even in these privates, since without them drilling on the homefront, those who were inclined to be loyalists might have gotten the upper hand.

On my dad’s side of the family, my Revolutionary soldiers read like a who’s who of families in the Tulpehocken region of Berks and Lebanon counties: Trautmanns (I have descent from two brothers who both served), Weiser, Kurr, Etchberger, Walborn, Peiffer, Rupp, and Heilman.

On my mother’s side, most of these patriots lived just a little further east, centered on Bern Township in Berks County, including surnames such as Rühl, Himmelberger, Bode, Stoudt, Machemer, Ruth, Baum, Fisher, and Reber.

I had researched my lineage to Peter Kirschner to gain admission to the Sons of the American Revolution a couple of decades ago; I had “collected” lineage societies for awhile but the dues from so many organizations eventually led me to drop them one by one.

And as I study my charts further, I see a few other men with births in the “sweet spot” of being born between 1740 and 1760 who I might be able to add to my list of Revolutionaries.

Folks like Johann Jacob Kintzer and Peter Zeller. Johann Adam Wilhelm and Rudolph Manbeck. Jacob Ludwig and Jacob Dehart.

With Fourth of July coming fast, I see a detour into this research after a few other pressing deadlines are met!