revolutionary war

I have traced many of my ancestors back to the Revolutionary War period of 1775-1783. After reading an article in the November 2008 issue of Family Tree Magazine, "Operation Online Records", I thought I would try to find out which ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War. This article includes a handy chart which lists the range of birth years of men who may have fought in the war. I searched my family database for any men that were born between 1726 and 1767 and came up with a possible list to check for revolutionary war records. I wanted to focus on my direct line ancestors first, so I narrowed the search for only great grandparents and not great uncles or cousins on my collateral line. I came up with the following list:

Direct Line Ancestors that may have fought in the Revolutionary War

Joshua Bates (b. 1755)
Samuel Bates (b. 1754)
John Blackington (b. 1756)
George Lane French (b. 1741)
Abner Holbrook (b. 1741)
Pierre Labrec (b. 1756 Canada)
Samuel Torrey (b. 1761)

The first place I looked for records was footnote's database of Revolutionary War Pensions. I was only able to find two pensions in this database for the men listed above, oddly it was the first two I searched for; Joshua Bates (6th great grandfather) and Samuel Bates (5th great grandfather). My next two posts will be about these two Revolutionary ancestors.


to do list:
1. The following men are my other ancestors that are on my collateral line that may have fought in the Revolutionary War. I will look more closely at these men later. George French (b. 1766), Joshua French (b. 1764), Adam Holbrook (b. 1750), John Holbrook (b. 1765), William Holbrook (b. 1739), Cushing Pratt (b. 1759), Zanas Pratt (b. 1766), James Vining (b. 1744), John Vining (b. 1752), Jeremiah White (b. 1756), John White (b. 1760), Luther White (b. 1743)