Those gravesites and those homes are still there - somewhere.
All you need to do is find them....
One of my favorite personalities in my book is real-life Thomas Flynn. His final home was at the corner of Coalpit Road in Danbury. That spot is now occupied by the Italian deli in the photo. But what boney figure standing at the door? Why did Irish green lights surround both front windows? It was Hallowe'en 2018, and Tommy had come out to greet me!
Regarding Lambert Lockwood recounting the retreat from New York: incredibly sad entry on Revolutionary War Research site. Below letter refers to the loss of New York on 1776.
This officer is in shock. Here is a partial of what Mr. Tony Gerring has transcribed:
"Charles Thomson’s Notes on Information of Gen Mifflin – Nov. 22. 1776."
cloathing wretched. gen[eral]. want of blankets, stockings &
shoes. none in store
loss in qr mr st at fort Lee small, [?] 7 of artill 7 large in
[? ? ? ?]
Gen Bell’s brigade lost whole baggage
2000, bbls flour, cloathing of Col. Hand’s bat. 2000 bbls in fort Washington
Many stragglers of regts broke camp with arms.
Hand lost 100 of his men at fort Washington
Great complaints respecting Surgeons +
Sick removed to Springfd other towns in rear of Newark-
Numbers of disaff[ected] in neyhborhd of army
Capt Waters of Smallwoods lost for want of timely assist
Great complaints for want of pay. But often with cause--
Arms to the eastward not yet sent for proper sta.
Source: Continental Congress – Papers, Ltrs from General Officers 1775-89, Volume 1, Page 4-5.
Now, to help in furthering your research:
If your ancient Google reference bookbook (that should be free) is not accessible on line when you try to find it again, try IE instead of your current browser. Different search engines have different algorithms and find different things.
There is always something more:
I began research on the town map in the 1800s, and found out that a location must be changed for accuracy. Another character (real person) then entered the script. (This is right before formatting - as in, a day before!) Googling this person resulted in specific reference to her in the old documents, reference so specific that it depicted her on the same day she was already mentioned in the book!
How sad...I went in June 2018 to the annual meeting of the Association for gravestone studies in Danbury. I saw some ancient headstones that were perfectly legible, meant for the ages. Alas, pragmatism in the Hamilton famnily must have indicated not spending too much on the dead.
I found not a single Hamilton gravestone that was legible. I admit that I didn't find them at all, believing that some were buried at the farm (John, James, Si, Jr. and the Captain).
Benedicts, Lockwoods, Starrs - never ones to stint on their stones -- although some folks in those families hired very poor engravers (Yes, Zadock Benedict survivors, this means you!)
Slate trumps granite. Given that it shales, who would have believed that?
I was pleased that remembered phrases led me unerringly to the Lockwood graves; in Danbury, Wilton and Bridgeport. But arriving at the Lockwood mausoleum in Bridgeport, not a single individual name stood on the exterior, although I knew from my research that Lambert Lockwood was in there, rehomed from his original burial site.
I worked on the Danbury book for 7 years, slaving away at research instead of writing fiction.
All that time and I never knew... (herein lies a warning!)
If you wrote about the week of 9/11 and no one in your novel mentioned it, that would be so crack-in-the-mirror. I found my own cracked mirror.
On Monday of the week when my book takes place, there was a big military trial in Danbury. General Parsons came for a court martial of a spy, who was condemned to hang.
I had never heard of it.
Therefore, my characters had never heard of it, although they lived in a village of 2500 people.
You can bet that my characters know about it now!
Searching for something? Are there museums dedicated to your subject? Little tiny unknown museums who may have just that very book you need? Search online and you may find museums for the state or county where the event took place. Many tiny museums are starving out there while trying to preserve their collections. Such as the Civil War Medical Museum in Fredrick MD. /www.civilwarmed.org/ Go there, they're fun!
And they're really excited to see you.
Don't ever give up on family legends. I visited Little Big Horn in Wyoming in July and mentioned to a park ranger that I had a relative in "Custer's Last Stand." I gave his name, Archibald McIlhargey, and how he ended up in that position (unfortunate to say the least.) The ranger found it sad that people arrive there armed only with vague rumor and not even the name of the relative involved.
If you know nothing about the "who" in the case, go to the caretakers of the flame, in this case the people who work at whatever historic site is involved. They will be happy to show you lists that allow you to see not just names, but where the persons were born and their family histories, wives and children, which may give you the clues you need in order to choose the correct name.
Of course, it may be easier to follow Dewitt Winney than James Butler....
Cycles of Research - Anniversaries of occurrences are occasions for added research and interviews. In the 1870s, at the Centennial of the Revolution, unbelievable research was done, considering the strictures of the mails. Huge volumes came forth. Never discount things published then as "old hat". Those folks were closer to the real truth than we are.
Another milestone came around the fifty year mark, when the survivors were dying out. Benson Lossing's "Field Book of the Revolution" and its small successor were miracles to me. Lossing's three volume Pictorial History of the Revolution is beautifully written. To be able to see his drawing of Ben Knapp's real house! To hear Lossing's interview with Mr. Dibble's son as he describe "the boys" trying to kill him by drowning! (You can't make this stuff up...)
Even churches did "century sermons," describing early members.
Another track for your resesarch is wills. Who were the daughters married to? Who were the granddaughters married to? A bequest in Capt. Silas' will referred to a "Brush." Had no idea who that was. Well! Getting a tip to check a nearby library brought me invaluable Hamilton info to trace! Julia Brush was his granddaughter.
Using your search engine.
It is like applying for a job or asking for a date: you have to use just the right words in the right combinations.
No matter how much or little sense they make, other words will not do.
Imagine putting in the name of a book character with that of George Washington and getting anything at all!
I did.
Example: you will not get the same results with Silas Hanilton, Silas Hamilton, Sr., or Captain Silas Hamilton, or any of the above, with 'Danbury' added.
Everything your relatives told you about your family is correct, right?
No. Stories were told to those folks when they were ten. Ten-year-olds mix up facts.
For example: My father had a researcher do our genealogy. In Colonial times, the genealogy showed Captain this and Captain that. My father swore that these individuals were Colonial militia.
When I first began researching in the Library of Congress, I was very angry that the 'genealogist' had put down false information. Those early Trowbridges were for sure not in the militia! They were ship captains, plying the waters up and down the east coast, yet no word of the sea was carried down the generations.
Research in the old days:
I was researching in fold3, and there were 96 pages on the family I was researching -- all right there in one, printable place. The contrast was amazing. Oftentimes the microfilm that we used to think so wonderful in 1960 is too faded to read when printed.
If you have original documents, it would be so noble of you enter them on the Fold3 site. If not military, please check all possible libraries and historical societies to see that some ancient family member didn't already donate material. Then add yours nand maybe change the title: don't start a new thread.
You can subscribe to sites like Fold3, but subscribing to genealogical sites might do double duty. State societies may provide free access with your membership. Plus, some libraries have subscriptions.
Historical novels can become too factual.
In an audiobook set in the court of Catherine the Great, I never passed the first CD. When the central character arrived at court, she only did two things: suffer and repeat meaningless fine detail: that was the entire CD.
You might be surprised what 'experts' would be grateful for your help. If your ancestors participated in a war --any war, somebody wants to know all about them. Many people express interest by hosting sites, but depend on others to add information -- maybe it is for participants in a battle, or just names in a regiment. The may have the name, but not the age, home town, whatever they need. Someone wants your knowledge of that person. I happened today on a beautiful English website specializing in the Battle of Little Big Horn -- and English groups obsessed with Cavalry versus Indians. Who knew? (Can't forget losing two wars against us, maybe?)
The internet gives, but a used book store or sale, gives just as much. Any book sale -- people throw out old stuff and that's just what you want! I found a book on Lafayette, who figured in the last big scene of my book character's life. Published in 1936, its frontispiece was a portrait of the Marquis at the age when my characters last saw him. Lafayette: A Life by Andrea Latzko.
The other book I purchased was a lovely book about life after the revolution. Tons of information about life as it was lived. After the Revolution by Barbara Clark Smith, 1985.
The joys of Online Library from the Library of Congress! Did you ever find just the right link -- and then it turned out to be 500 tiny pages -- without an index?
Ha! Online Library is only playing with you and is more modern that your IPhone!
On the left, it will offer different formats. I read books 'online' and choose that. You may have to click on the format choice several times to get it. In search engines, you can use Boolian choices, but only single words work here. Use the 'search inside' feature. Either a vertical or horizontal line will eventually appear giving incidents of the word. Say you choose 'Hamilton' -- irrelevant ones will show, but you can hover the cursor and the whole paragraph will appear, giving you an idea of what is relevant, names, dates, etc.
The print is often unreadably small, but you can enlarge, but you may never be able to see the entire page unless the item remains its original size.
Capture pictures and everything else with the "snipping tool" -- world's greatest invention:
Go to edit>copy and put into a word doc to paste.
If the book's search feature stops working (returning nothing when you know that isn't right), you just timed out. (On occasional books, this book feature does not work at all.)
Problem -- the material you are researching from the Revolutionary War does not exist. Don't be so quick to think so. If you have specifics, they came from somewhere. Many crimes again the written word happened in olden times. Working in Fold3 you will see occasions of 'proofs' to validate service -- these are always items ripped from the place where they belong and sent to the pension office. Surprise: now they can't be found in the place where they belonged. On the other hand, if you can find the item in Fold3, you might never have found it in the place it was before. Since I am interested in Noble Benedict's company, I would see it as worthwhile to go into Fold 3 for every single person in the company, because that person's pension application or other info might lead you to the same campaign, town, events that your subject was involved in.
Every time I think I have mined everything there is, I missed something. Yesterday's joy was finding sites about the many dead in the British prison ships anchored off Manhattan. Joe's cousin, Jonah Benedict, was held on the Grosvenor after capture at Ft. Washington. To me this was one person and one of a few atrocities. I had no idea.
Twice as many men died on the prison ships, all anchored off New York, as died in battles of the Revolution. Percentage of deaths was higher than Andersonville.
Brooklyn's Greene Park has a war memorial to the thousands of dead, as discussed on a wonderful blog about New York, http://www.mindfulwalker.com/explore-new-york/in-our-midst-the-prison-ship-martyrs The bones of corpses buried in the sands would come to the surface for years, enraging the residents on Long Island. Two books on the prison ships are available online.
Did you ever remember something from your youth and the family says your memory is just plain wrong? Lots of information about the Revolution is that way, too. For example: In 1839, a Daniel Hoyt, who had known Lambert Lockwood, was deposed regarding his service in the war. The deposition sounded detailed and reasonable. But this information about doings in 1775 was taken in 1839. The deponent confused paths of the campaigns of 1775 with those of 1776. He stated that Lambert signed on in 1776 with the Norwalk militia, when he was with Danbury. He called him 'Captain,' thus perpetuating the confusion of rank that lasted from the time of our story until the last word, from Lambert's widow, wherein she states (Fold3) that he left the service with the militia rank of private. If the man heard Lambert referred to by a higher rank, it was in the Commissary.
It is so easy to go off line, that and similar names. Lambert's father, Peter, married Hannah Starr. Lambert's son, Peter, married Hannah Fitch. I have seen the two Hannahs confused in genealogies. I have seen a book with two Silas Hamilton's confused; one from CT and one from VT.
What organizations were popular in the time frame you are researching? I knew that Lockwood was involved with the Masons in later life, but in trying to establish whether the persons in the book truly knew the other characters, I retrieved a co-signed application to establish a commandery. (Thaddeus Benedict and Lambert Lockwood)
Revolutionary War pensions were not universal. Believe that you were lied to regarding Revolutionary War service? Maybe your ancestor was just rich!
Application for pension (a brand new concept at the time) was based on need. If you had any hope of making a living, you didn't qualify. Later, rules relaxed as survivors thinned out.
One of the joys of learning history is seeing it repeat itself. 'Waterboarding' of Iraqis was considered a new atrocity. Remember 'ducking' of witches in the seventeenth century witch hunts? It comes into play in the Danbury story, too...
Here is another great RevWar resource: Google 'American Archives , documents of the American Revolution'.
Northern Illinois University has produced this wonderful site: http://dig.lib.niu.edu/amarch/
The search function is wonderful, but exact parameters required may be found under 'user documentation.'
We see how close the Patriots came to failure in the months before the burning of Danbury.
Letters of George Washington and his generals are both fascinating and horrifying. For example, the commissioner for prisoner care was using his own money to feed and clothe prisoners -- then Congress resisted repaying the $27000, a huge sum, probably representing twenty times that amount now.
Goodness, coming down to the last chapter and still finding new information, which means there was an error in the old information. Be careful of titles, folks. The wartime atmosphere of the revolution caused everyone to want a title. For the men in the commissary department and quartermaster department, I am not sure where the pressure to have a military title came from, but it was there. Then someone got the idea of equating the pay scales: if you made the same money as a colonel, you were equal to one. If a colonel tried to backtalk you, he might not, if you called yourself a colonel, too! This must be where the confusion began that caused so many references to Lambert Lockwood as 'Lieutenant,' which he never was. His superior, Dr. John Wood gained the title of 'Major,' but everyone went on calling him 'Doctor.'
Do not trust anything but the oldest books. Certain valuable New England Books are digitalized, but it is hard to make them show up. The Commemorative Biographical Record of Fairfield County is hard to find just by accident, whereas the History of Fairfield County comes right up. Focus on middle names and mothers' names and place of birth. If somebody had a baby in 1740, their relatives in that year and the next named their babies the same first name. In the following generation, the mothers' last names may appear and you can straighten the family out.
Uh-oh - your family tale has soldiers in the Revolutionary War: you look them up and it says they deserted! No need to feel ashamed: if soldiers were taken sick (as about a third of the forces were), the orderly books marked them as deserted. (Joe's Uncle John deserted on the way to Ft. Washington: wise decision.)
Uh-oh indeed. I applied for approval of an ancestor with the DAR, but they will not accept someone whose only proven listing in a regiment shows him as deserted. This despite the comment in the The Commemorative Biographical Record of Fairfield County saying that he served throughout the war... I got my own DAR number on his father, the Capt. Hamilton of my book.
I looked at Noble Benedict's regimental return dozens of times. How could Gould Lockwood have just died there, almost to safety, on January 2, 1777? Gould Lockwood was erased from the face of the earth at sixteen years of age... His brother Lambert may have dreaded the mention of his name forever after.
I hope to have unraveled the mystery of this young man's sad fate, run off to the war under the Danbury militia's last minute call to aid in the doomed defense of New York, under British attack in August, 1777.
The Danbury militia return lists the soldiers of the company. But what if someone (Gould and his brother Lambert) wanted to conceal Gould's identity?
My background supposition runs as follows:
Why the ruse? Possibly to keep Hannah Lockwood from forbidding the underage boy, possibly her legal ward (more likely Eliphalet's), from following her own son to an early grave, not to mention possible explicit direction from the boys' dead father.
Gould may have been under sixteen when he enlisted. Hannah Lockwood could have raised hell with Captain Noble Benedict and Colonel Joseph Platt Cook because she was a leading social figure of the town.
Writing an historical novel means assuming responsibility for the characters' motivations staying real.
I had first believed that Lambert Lockwood's nobility of soul and religious upbringing had caused him assume the mission of remaining with the regiment's sick on the treacherous road home to CT after the retreat of Washington into New Jersey.
Now I submit that Lambert Lockwood returned with the sick because Gould Hawley was Gould Lockwood. Gould Hawley was mentioned in the returns as dead January 2, 1777. Lambert Lockwood is noted as returned, living, January 11, 1777. If he had 3 older sargeants in the party, they should have had a better chance to survive, but the military hospital at Fishkill, New York may have refused to accept the Danbury infirm. They had to keep on moving to where Gould would never arrive.
Lambert Lockwood never went to war again, but worked under Dr. John Wood of the commissary, first item of business being to set up a military hospital in Danbury on Park Avenue, in March, Dr. Foster supervising.
It is like applying for a job or asking for a date: you have to use just the right words in the right combinations.
No matter how much or little sense they make, other words will not do.
Imagine putting in the name of a book character with that of George Washington and getting anything at all!
I did.
Example: you will not get the same results with Silas Hanilton, Silas Hamilton, Sr., or Captain Silas Hamilton, or any of the above, with 'Danbury' added.
Everything your relatives told you about your family is correct, right?
No. Stories were told to those folks when they were ten. Ten-year-olds mix up facts.
For example: My father had a researcher do our genealogy. In Colonial times, the genealogy showed Captain this and Captain that. My father swore that these individuals were Colonial militia.
When I first began researching in the Library of Congress, I was very angry that the 'genealogist' had put down false information. Those early Trowbridges were for sure not in the militia! They were ship captains, plying the waters up and down the east coast, yet no word of the sea was carried down the generations.
Research in the old days:
- "I have not heard from you in seven months. Please let us know that you
received our letter regarding the pension application." - "I know there was a document. I was told there was a document."
- ... and the most destructive of all: "Enclosed find the page from the family Bible that shows
the...." So we know where the Bible is, but where is that page now? - "We know what was written in our family Bible, but the pages are gone -- stolen." See above. My neice and I stared in shock at our own family Bible. But the person we suspect of stealing the pages died years ago...
- "It was burned in the fire." Alternate: "The basement flooded."
I was researching in fold3, and there were 96 pages on the family I was researching -- all right there in one, printable place. The contrast was amazing. Oftentimes the microfilm that we used to think so wonderful in 1960 is too faded to read when printed.
If you have original documents, it would be so noble of you enter them on the Fold3 site. If not military, please check all possible libraries and historical societies to see that some ancient family member didn't already donate material. Then add yours nand maybe change the title: don't start a new thread.
You can subscribe to sites like Fold3, but subscribing to genealogical sites might do double duty. State societies may provide free access with your membership. Plus, some libraries have subscriptions.
Historical novels can become too factual.
In an audiobook set in the court of Catherine the Great, I never passed the first CD. When the central character arrived at court, she only did two things: suffer and repeat meaningless fine detail: that was the entire CD.
You might be surprised what 'experts' would be grateful for your help. If your ancestors participated in a war --any war, somebody wants to know all about them. Many people express interest by hosting sites, but depend on others to add information -- maybe it is for participants in a battle, or just names in a regiment. The may have the name, but not the age, home town, whatever they need. Someone wants your knowledge of that person. I happened today on a beautiful English website specializing in the Battle of Little Big Horn -- and English groups obsessed with Cavalry versus Indians. Who knew? (Can't forget losing two wars against us, maybe?)
The internet gives, but a used book store or sale, gives just as much. Any book sale -- people throw out old stuff and that's just what you want! I found a book on Lafayette, who figured in the last big scene of my book character's life. Published in 1936, its frontispiece was a portrait of the Marquis at the age when my characters last saw him. Lafayette: A Life by Andrea Latzko.
The other book I purchased was a lovely book about life after the revolution. Tons of information about life as it was lived. After the Revolution by Barbara Clark Smith, 1985.
The joys of Online Library from the Library of Congress! Did you ever find just the right link -- and then it turned out to be 500 tiny pages -- without an index?
Ha! Online Library is only playing with you and is more modern that your IPhone!
On the left, it will offer different formats. I read books 'online' and choose that. You may have to click on the format choice several times to get it. In search engines, you can use Boolian choices, but only single words work here. Use the 'search inside' feature. Either a vertical or horizontal line will eventually appear giving incidents of the word. Say you choose 'Hamilton' -- irrelevant ones will show, but you can hover the cursor and the whole paragraph will appear, giving you an idea of what is relevant, names, dates, etc.
The print is often unreadably small, but you can enlarge, but you may never be able to see the entire page unless the item remains its original size.
Capture pictures and everything else with the "snipping tool" -- world's greatest invention:
Go to edit>copy and put into a word doc to paste.
If the book's search feature stops working (returning nothing when you know that isn't right), you just timed out. (On occasional books, this book feature does not work at all.)
Problem -- the material you are researching from the Revolutionary War does not exist. Don't be so quick to think so. If you have specifics, they came from somewhere. Many crimes again the written word happened in olden times. Working in Fold3 you will see occasions of 'proofs' to validate service -- these are always items ripped from the place where they belong and sent to the pension office. Surprise: now they can't be found in the place where they belonged. On the other hand, if you can find the item in Fold3, you might never have found it in the place it was before. Since I am interested in Noble Benedict's company, I would see it as worthwhile to go into Fold 3 for every single person in the company, because that person's pension application or other info might lead you to the same campaign, town, events that your subject was involved in.
Every time I think I have mined everything there is, I missed something. Yesterday's joy was finding sites about the many dead in the British prison ships anchored off Manhattan. Joe's cousin, Jonah Benedict, was held on the Grosvenor after capture at Ft. Washington. To me this was one person and one of a few atrocities. I had no idea.
Twice as many men died on the prison ships, all anchored off New York, as died in battles of the Revolution. Percentage of deaths was higher than Andersonville.
Brooklyn's Greene Park has a war memorial to the thousands of dead, as discussed on a wonderful blog about New York, http://www.mindfulwalker.com/explore-new-york/in-our-midst-the-prison-ship-martyrs The bones of corpses buried in the sands would come to the surface for years, enraging the residents on Long Island. Two books on the prison ships are available online.
Did you ever remember something from your youth and the family says your memory is just plain wrong? Lots of information about the Revolution is that way, too. For example: In 1839, a Daniel Hoyt, who had known Lambert Lockwood, was deposed regarding his service in the war. The deposition sounded detailed and reasonable. But this information about doings in 1775 was taken in 1839. The deponent confused paths of the campaigns of 1775 with those of 1776. He stated that Lambert signed on in 1776 with the Norwalk militia, when he was with Danbury. He called him 'Captain,' thus perpetuating the confusion of rank that lasted from the time of our story until the last word, from Lambert's widow, wherein she states (Fold3) that he left the service with the militia rank of private. If the man heard Lambert referred to by a higher rank, it was in the Commissary.
It is so easy to go off line, that and similar names. Lambert's father, Peter, married Hannah Starr. Lambert's son, Peter, married Hannah Fitch. I have seen the two Hannahs confused in genealogies. I have seen a book with two Silas Hamilton's confused; one from CT and one from VT.
What organizations were popular in the time frame you are researching? I knew that Lockwood was involved with the Masons in later life, but in trying to establish whether the persons in the book truly knew the other characters, I retrieved a co-signed application to establish a commandery. (Thaddeus Benedict and Lambert Lockwood)
Revolutionary War pensions were not universal. Believe that you were lied to regarding Revolutionary War service? Maybe your ancestor was just rich!
Application for pension (a brand new concept at the time) was based on need. If you had any hope of making a living, you didn't qualify. Later, rules relaxed as survivors thinned out.
One of the joys of learning history is seeing it repeat itself. 'Waterboarding' of Iraqis was considered a new atrocity. Remember 'ducking' of witches in the seventeenth century witch hunts? It comes into play in the Danbury story, too...
Here is another great RevWar resource: Google 'American Archives , documents of the American Revolution'.
Northern Illinois University has produced this wonderful site: http://dig.lib.niu.edu/amarch/
The search function is wonderful, but exact parameters required may be found under 'user documentation.'
We see how close the Patriots came to failure in the months before the burning of Danbury.
Letters of George Washington and his generals are both fascinating and horrifying. For example, the commissioner for prisoner care was using his own money to feed and clothe prisoners -- then Congress resisted repaying the $27000, a huge sum, probably representing twenty times that amount now.
Goodness, coming down to the last chapter and still finding new information, which means there was an error in the old information. Be careful of titles, folks. The wartime atmosphere of the revolution caused everyone to want a title. For the men in the commissary department and quartermaster department, I am not sure where the pressure to have a military title came from, but it was there. Then someone got the idea of equating the pay scales: if you made the same money as a colonel, you were equal to one. If a colonel tried to backtalk you, he might not, if you called yourself a colonel, too! This must be where the confusion began that caused so many references to Lambert Lockwood as 'Lieutenant,' which he never was. His superior, Dr. John Wood gained the title of 'Major,' but everyone went on calling him 'Doctor.'
Do not trust anything but the oldest books. Certain valuable New England Books are digitalized, but it is hard to make them show up. The Commemorative Biographical Record of Fairfield County is hard to find just by accident, whereas the History of Fairfield County comes right up. Focus on middle names and mothers' names and place of birth. If somebody had a baby in 1740, their relatives in that year and the next named their babies the same first name. In the following generation, the mothers' last names may appear and you can straighten the family out.
Uh-oh - your family tale has soldiers in the Revolutionary War: you look them up and it says they deserted! No need to feel ashamed: if soldiers were taken sick (as about a third of the forces were), the orderly books marked them as deserted. (Joe's Uncle John deserted on the way to Ft. Washington: wise decision.)
Uh-oh indeed. I applied for approval of an ancestor with the DAR, but they will not accept someone whose only proven listing in a regiment shows him as deserted. This despite the comment in the The Commemorative Biographical Record of Fairfield County saying that he served throughout the war... I got my own DAR number on his father, the Capt. Hamilton of my book.
I looked at Noble Benedict's regimental return dozens of times. How could Gould Lockwood have just died there, almost to safety, on January 2, 1777? Gould Lockwood was erased from the face of the earth at sixteen years of age... His brother Lambert may have dreaded the mention of his name forever after.
I hope to have unraveled the mystery of this young man's sad fate, run off to the war under the Danbury militia's last minute call to aid in the doomed defense of New York, under British attack in August, 1777.
The Danbury militia return lists the soldiers of the company. But what if someone (Gould and his brother Lambert) wanted to conceal Gould's identity?
My background supposition runs as follows:
- Peter Lockwood first married Abigail Hawley, the oldest of their children was Eliphalet Lockwood.
- Abigail died and Peter married Elizabeth Lambert, having two children (Lambert and Gould) before she died in Wilton, where the family lived. Lambert was thirteen and Gould eleven.)
- Peter Lockwood then married Hannah Shove Starr and moved Danbury, where Hannah was a wealthy widow. Who knows what the two lads made of their father's remarriage and removal to Danbury.
- Lambert Lockwood went to live in Norwalk with his half-brother Eliphalet and acted as an apprentice in their father's hardware business It is recorded that he interacted first with Gov. Tryon there in Norwalk. It is not known where Gould lived, but the following string of imagination takes him to Norwalk, too.
- Peter Lockwood died in August, 1775, with Lambert already in service with the Norwalk militia. Gould may have been living there, too, perhaps assuming Lambert's apprenticeship at that time.
- Lambert came to know the Danbury militia while on maneuvers. The Norwalk militia had losses in the northern New York campaign of '75. Danbury lost no one. One thing sure: Lambert Lockwood decided that a switch was in order. Plus, Hannah Starr had lost a son who was 19, just Lambert's age. She may have tried to make amends and offered housing to him. He would also have know Pomp and Peg, real persons owned by Peter Lockwood.
- When the Danbury militia went to the aid of New York City in August, 1776, Lambert Lockwood enlisted. But Danbury officers might not have recognized Gould Lockwood by sight if he had remained in Wilton with his grandparents or in Norwalk. Thus,no one identified Lambert's 'relative,' the lad who enlisted under the name 'Gould Hawley' (taking Eliphalet's mother's name). No other Gould Hawley seems to have existed in that period. At the same time, any Lockwood family member hearing the name could have known exactly who it was (This type of family ID was important, in case of injury/casualty in those times of poor to no medical care.)
Why the ruse? Possibly to keep Hannah Lockwood from forbidding the underage boy, possibly her legal ward (more likely Eliphalet's), from following her own son to an early grave, not to mention possible explicit direction from the boys' dead father.
Gould may have been under sixteen when he enlisted. Hannah Lockwood could have raised hell with Captain Noble Benedict and Colonel Joseph Platt Cook because she was a leading social figure of the town.
Writing an historical novel means assuming responsibility for the characters' motivations staying real.
I had first believed that Lambert Lockwood's nobility of soul and religious upbringing had caused him assume the mission of remaining with the regiment's sick on the treacherous road home to CT after the retreat of Washington into New Jersey.
Now I submit that Lambert Lockwood returned with the sick because Gould Hawley was Gould Lockwood. Gould Hawley was mentioned in the returns as dead January 2, 1777. Lambert Lockwood is noted as returned, living, January 11, 1777. If he had 3 older sargeants in the party, they should have had a better chance to survive, but the military hospital at Fishkill, New York may have refused to accept the Danbury infirm. They had to keep on moving to where Gould would never arrive.
Lambert Lockwood never went to war again, but worked under Dr. John Wood of the commissary, first item of business being to set up a military hospital in Danbury on Park Avenue, in March, Dr. Foster supervising.
