Histories

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Patriot Ancestors

One of the most interesting and surprising aspects of this hobby is discovering the military service records of our ancestors.

When I first began my own family history research, I was really surprised to learn that one of my ancestors, William Lawrence, served in the American War of Independence. Even more astounding to me is the fact that he began his service at the age of 13! I have since learned that serving at such a young age was not that unusual. In fact, it is known that in some case boys as young as 10 years old served in non-combat roles.

The idea that there were other ancestors of mine who served in the Revolutionary War never really occurred to me. Very recently a member of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) informed me that another ancestor of mine, William Cash, also served during that conflict. This has me wondering how many others in my family may have served during the Revolution. I have yet to trace any line of my family far enough back to discover their arrival in America. So far, it looks like just about every line that I descend from has been in this country since at least the 1700's. I can't yet say that is true for every line, but suffice it to say we've been around here for a long time. Therefore, I've decided that I'll try to discover just how many of them may have served. This may take a while.

I've also stumbled across some records of Civil War service. I've not even begun to chase those leads. With all the conflicts our country has been involved in, both small and great, there is bound to be a lot of leads to track down. I hope I'll discover some really interesting stories that I'll be able to tell my grandson about one day.

Linked toWilliam Cash; William Lawrence

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