Teaching folks how easy it is! Those gravesites and those home are still there - somewhere.
All you need to do is find them....
If your ancient Google book that should be free is not accessible on line, try using IE instead. The book on the Hamiltons in America by Phelps came right up! It shows in different libraries around the country and some have live links to the digital version.
Reading the book only proved what I have always said about the Hamiltons: many only vaguely related came to the US about the same time. Not all Hamiltons are closely related, but all Trowbridges are. Closely related Hamiltons in my story and my family seem to have a genetic marker known as A.
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 after cover is prepared and 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 is 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 must have indicated not spending too much on the dead:they don't appreciate it.
I found not a single Hamilton gravestone that was legible. I admit that I didn't find them at all. Certain other folks, I found with ease.
Slate trumps granite is all I can say. Given that it shales, who would believe that?
I was pleased in my heart that all my research of varying years led me unerringly to the Lockwood graves; in Danbury, Wilton and Bridgeport, without referring to any reference material. But arriving at the Lockwood mausoleum in Bridgeport, not a single name was mentioned on exterior.
I have worked on the Danbury book for 5 years, slaving away at research instead of writing fiction.
All that time and I never knew....
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, wouldn't it?
Well, I found my own crack in the 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.
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? Where is the modern-day ultimate source? 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. Especially in winter!
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 (sic), and how he ended up in that position (unfortunate to say the least.) The ranger found it sad that people sometimes come there armed only with vague rumor and not even the name of the relative involved in such an historic occasion.
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, people saw the 100th anniversary of the Revolution and 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 comes around the fifty year mark, when the survivors are dying out. Ambitious authors start surveying the remains of battlefields and their original populations.
The items below now count as archive and I will add all my new information and hints on the top - the way intelligent people do....
ONE: 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 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.
A 100 mile per day commute certainly helped me think of combinations!
TWO: 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. Such stories were the only ones passed down to him.
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!
The truth: they were ship captains, plying the waters up and down the east coast, yet no word of the sea was carried down the generations.
THREE: Whatever it is, write it down--on paper, not email! Then copy it and give to those concerned.
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 to have them entered on the Fold3 site.
FOUR: The joy of finding Lossing's three volume Pictorial History of the Revolution. I could only afford the first volume, but it had everything I needed. I am no stranger, but reading on the internet is nothing compared to holding it in my hands.
It did give me a turn to see a manga in the bookstore. It was on the Sons of Liberty. (Oops, just learned to call it a graphic novel.)
FIVE: 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. Connecticut Society of Genealogists used to include Fold3 in their membership.
SIX: Historical novels can become too involved in fact. In a CD novel 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 detail: that was the entire CD. Maybe if she had just suffered better ... as in: more than the listener.
SEVEN: 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?
EIGHT: 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 one of my book character's life. Published in 1936, its frontispiece was a portrait of the Marquis at the age when my character 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.
NINE: 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 some old book that must hold your information -- in one of its 500 tiny pages -- without an index?
Ha! It 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 appear, 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. Frustrating but true, you may never be able to see the entire page unless the item remains its original size.
OMG -- you found the answer to your question! Capture pictures and everything else with the snipping tool -- world's greatest invention. Go to edit>copy and you have it to put into a word doc.
If the book's search feature stops working (returning nothing when you know that isn't right), you just timed out. (On occasional books, the feature does not work at all.)
TEN: 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.
ELEVEN: Always more -- always. Every time I think I have mined everything there is, I didn't. 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.
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
Two books on the prison ships are also available on Amazon.
TWELVE: 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 think: this information about doings in 1775 was taken in 1839, years after Lambert died. 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 that he left the service with the militia rank of private. (Fold3) This is why 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.
THIRTEEN:What organizations were popular in the time frame you are researching? One of my characters was involved with the Masons, but when I was trying to establish whether the person had any connections with another character, I retrieved a document that they both signed applying to establish a commandery fifteen years earlier than my previous knowledge showed.
FOURTEEN: Revolutionary War pensions were not universal. Disappointed that you don't find any record of your subject? 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 a decent living, you didn't qualify.
Reading and writing could also have presented a problem, as could longevity: the older you got and less able to work, the more likely it became that those who knew you had moved or died. The battle for a pension for one of my wealthy characters went on for twenty years because communications of the time were so difficult. Although the family continued well-off, the times had changed so much that the money was needed to send a grandson to study art in Rome.
FIFTEEN: One of the joys of learning history is seeing it repeat itself. 'Waterboarding' comes up on the news all the time.
Remember 'ducking' of witches in the seventeenth century witch hunts? It comes into play in the Danbury story, too...
SIXTEEN: 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.
SEVENTEEN: Yikes! I almost confused Peekskill with Fishkill! Few recognize the name, but the Fishkill NY supply depot was what Danbury was supposed to be: big storage and supply facility with a well-stocked hospital. http://www.fishkillsupplydepot.org/tribute.html
Fishkill has 300 graves of Relutionary War soldiers.Trying to preserve their site and historic building that was General Putnam's headquarters, it all requires time, money and visitors.
EIGHTEEN: 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. Plus, Dr. Wood gained another title, but everyone went on calling him 'Doctor.'
NINETEEN: Sources of quotes -- just jam the words into Google and it will bring up the source.
TWENTY: My, but there is bad information out there for genealogy. 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.
TWENTY-ONE: 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.
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...
TWENTY-TWO: My eye just caught it. Why did I never see it before? I looked at Noble Benedict's regimental return dozens of times. How could Gould have just died there, almost to safety, on January 2, 1777? Everyone present knew how, when and where, but the knowledge was forgotten and 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? To keep Hannah Lockwood from forbidding the underage boy, probably her legal ward, from following her own son to an early grave, not to mention following possibly explicit direction from the boys' father. Lambert was over eighteen and subject to law for not following military direction during wartime. Gould may have been under sixteen when he enlisted. Hannah Lockwood could have raised hell with Captain Noble Benedict and Colonel Joseph Platt Cook.
Writing an historical novel means assuming responsibility for the characters' motivations. 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 after the retreat of Washington into New Jersey.
Now I submit that Lambert Lockwood returned with the sick because Gould Hawley was his younger brother, Gould Lockwood. Gould Hawley was mentioned in the returns as dead January 2, 1777.
Lambert Lockwood is noted as returned, living, January 11, 1777. He never went to war again, but worked in Danbury under Dr. John Wood of the commissary, first item of business being to set up a military hospital.
The military hospital at Fishkill, New York had refused to accept the Danbury infirm when on the retreat from Fort Lee.
They had to keep on moving to where Gould would never arrive.
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 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.
A 100 mile per day commute certainly helped me think of combinations!
TWO: 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. Such stories were the only ones passed down to him.
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!
The truth: they were ship captains, plying the waters up and down the east coast, yet no word of the sea was carried down the generations.
THREE: Whatever it is, write it down--on paper, not email! Then copy it and give to those concerned.
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." Did people do that? 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 to have them entered on the Fold3 site.
FOUR: The joy of finding Lossing's three volume Pictorial History of the Revolution. I could only afford the first volume, but it had everything I needed. I am no stranger, but reading on the internet is nothing compared to holding it in my hands.
It did give me a turn to see a manga in the bookstore. It was on the Sons of Liberty. (Oops, just learned to call it a graphic novel.)
FIVE: 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. Connecticut Society of Genealogists used to include Fold3 in their membership.
SIX: Historical novels can become too involved in fact. In a CD novel 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 detail: that was the entire CD. Maybe if she had just suffered better ... as in: more than the listener.
SEVEN: 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?
EIGHT: 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 one of my book character's life. Published in 1936, its frontispiece was a portrait of the Marquis at the age when my character 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.
NINE: 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 some old book that must hold your information -- in one of its 500 tiny pages -- without an index?
Ha! It 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 appear, 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. Frustrating but true, you may never be able to see the entire page unless the item remains its original size.
OMG -- you found the answer to your question! Capture pictures and everything else with the snipping tool -- world's greatest invention. Go to edit>copy and you have it to put into a word doc.
If the book's search feature stops working (returning nothing when you know that isn't right), you just timed out. (On occasional books, the feature does not work at all.)
TEN: 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.
ELEVEN: Always more -- always. Every time I think I have mined everything there is, I didn't. 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.
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
Two books on the prison ships are also available on Amazon.
TWELVE: 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 think: this information about doings in 1775 was taken in 1839, years after Lambert died. 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 that he left the service with the militia rank of private. (Fold3) This is why 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.
THIRTEEN:What organizations were popular in the time frame you are researching? One of my characters was involved with the Masons, but when I was trying to establish whether the person had any connections with another character, I retrieved a document that they both signed applying to establish a commandery fifteen years earlier than my previous knowledge showed.
FOURTEEN: Revolutionary War pensions were not universal. Disappointed that you don't find any record of your subject? 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 a decent living, you didn't qualify.
Reading and writing could also have presented a problem, as could longevity: the older you got and less able to work, the more likely it became that those who knew you had moved or died. The battle for a pension for one of my wealthy characters went on for twenty years because communications of the time were so difficult. Although the family continued well-off, the times had changed so much that the money was needed to send a grandson to study art in Rome.
FIFTEEN: One of the joys of learning history is seeing it repeat itself. 'Waterboarding' comes up on the news all the time.
Remember 'ducking' of witches in the seventeenth century witch hunts? It comes into play in the Danbury story, too...
SIXTEEN: 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.
SEVENTEEN: Yikes! I almost confused Peekskill with Fishkill! Few recognize the name, but the Fishkill NY supply depot was what Danbury was supposed to be: big storage and supply facility with a well-stocked hospital. http://www.fishkillsupplydepot.org/tribute.html
Fishkill has 300 graves of Relutionary War soldiers.Trying to preserve their site and historic building that was General Putnam's headquarters, it all requires time, money and visitors.
EIGHTEEN: 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. Plus, Dr. Wood gained another title, but everyone went on calling him 'Doctor.'
NINETEEN: Sources of quotes -- just jam the words into Google and it will bring up the source.
TWENTY: My, but there is bad information out there for genealogy. 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.
TWENTY-ONE: 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.
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...
TWENTY-TWO: My eye just caught it. Why did I never see it before? I looked at Noble Benedict's regimental return dozens of times. How could Gould have just died there, almost to safety, on January 2, 1777? Everyone present knew how, when and where, but the knowledge was forgotten and 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.)
- Lambert Lockwood at some point went to live in Norwalk with his half-brother Eliphalet and acted as an apprentice in their father's hardware business. It is not known where Gould lived, but the following string of imagination takes him to Norwalk, too.
- Peter Lockwood then married Hannah Shove Starr and moved Danbury, where Hannah was a wealthy widow. Hannah's own son with her first husband was an only child, who died at nineteen. Who knows what the two lads made of their father's remarriage and removal to Danbury.
- 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.
- 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? To keep Hannah Lockwood from forbidding the underage boy, probably her legal ward, from following her own son to an early grave, not to mention following possibly explicit direction from the boys' father. Lambert was over eighteen and subject to law for not following military direction during wartime. Gould may have been under sixteen when he enlisted. Hannah Lockwood could have raised hell with Captain Noble Benedict and Colonel Joseph Platt Cook.
Writing an historical novel means assuming responsibility for the characters' motivations. 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 after the retreat of Washington into New Jersey.
Now I submit that Lambert Lockwood returned with the sick because Gould Hawley was his younger brother, Gould Lockwood. Gould Hawley was mentioned in the returns as dead January 2, 1777.
Lambert Lockwood is noted as returned, living, January 11, 1777. He never went to war again, but worked in Danbury under Dr. John Wood of the commissary, first item of business being to set up a military hospital.
The military hospital at Fishkill, New York had refused to accept the Danbury infirm when on the retreat from Fort Lee.
They had to keep on moving to where Gould would never arrive.