Searching for a Revolutionary War Soldier?
One of the branches on my mom's side of the family goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War in the U.S. The soldier's name is Peter Simpson, Jr. and I've struggled to find more information about him. All I've found on Ancestry.com so far is an application for the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). There isn't a huge amount of information on the document, and being the novice I am, I wasn't really sure where to go from there.
I've gone to DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) and found Peter, along with the basic descendant list which starts with my grandmother's aunt, going back through the generations to Peter. I've learned he was a Private and now I want to know more. What battles was he involved in? Was he injured? Was he ever a prisoner of war? If so, where? One document I was able to find from the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Pensions, has a line for "Battles engaged in" but for Peter, they wrote "none stated." So does that mean he never saw battle and didn't actively fight?
I'm working on this today because of an article in this month's issue of Family Tree Magazine. In this article, you will find a chart/map showing the original 13 colonies along with where to go to find information from each of the colonies. Peter lived and died in New York, so I went to the websites listed for New York.
Sadly, they weren't a lot of help. One of the sites even made mention to the fact that there was a fire in 1911 that destroyed many federal Revolutionary War records, so the odds of my finding much specifically related to Peter are probably slim. I do have names for the Captains and Colonels he served under, so perhaps I can find some information that way.
On Fold3, I was able to find some documents, but unfortunately, I can't read much of it. It looks like he had applied for the pension offered to Revolutionary War Veterans, but was essentially being denied. It appeared to be a group of letters written to the government asking why they weren't responding to previous letters and talking about how terrible it was that the government was treating Peter this way after he served his country.
General information about the Revolutionary War can be found here.
I've gone to DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) and found Peter, along with the basic descendant list which starts with my grandmother's aunt, going back through the generations to Peter. I've learned he was a Private and now I want to know more. What battles was he involved in? Was he injured? Was he ever a prisoner of war? If so, where? One document I was able to find from the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Pensions, has a line for "Battles engaged in" but for Peter, they wrote "none stated." So does that mean he never saw battle and didn't actively fight?
I'm working on this today because of an article in this month's issue of Family Tree Magazine. In this article, you will find a chart/map showing the original 13 colonies along with where to go to find information from each of the colonies. Peter lived and died in New York, so I went to the websites listed for New York.
Sadly, they weren't a lot of help. One of the sites even made mention to the fact that there was a fire in 1911 that destroyed many federal Revolutionary War records, so the odds of my finding much specifically related to Peter are probably slim. I do have names for the Captains and Colonels he served under, so perhaps I can find some information that way.
On Fold3, I was able to find some documents, but unfortunately, I can't read much of it. It looks like he had applied for the pension offered to Revolutionary War Veterans, but was essentially being denied. It appeared to be a group of letters written to the government asking why they weren't responding to previous letters and talking about how terrible it was that the government was treating Peter this way after he served his country.
General information about the Revolutionary War can be found here.
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