In Black and White: Cross-Cultural Genealogy

Update: The North Carolina Continentals Major General Nathaniel Greene, Commander of Washington's Left Wing Courtesy Library of Congress It is amazing how a vacation...a week away...though filled with activity, offers opportunity for reading without distraction! I finished the chapter entitled, Charleston, 1780 (Chapter 11), and then read Chapter 7,  Monmouth and the New York Highlands. As I read, I highlight the details which might have effected my ancestor directly, or may have been aware of. I then check the footnotes, and work on tracing the information back to its origins, some of which include  Writings of Washington , The Diary of James McHenry , Correspondence of Colonel John Laurens , and Revolutionary War Journals of Henry Dearborn . Even though the ancestor was unable to read a newspaper, keep a diary, or correspond with his spouse, the eye-witness accounts of those serving close by offer a glimpse at shared events, the difference being a matter of individual pers

Historical Background Watercolor painting by Charles M. Lefferts Courtesy of Wikipedia.org As I pondered the idea of one day assembling a complete narrative for the 1st and 2nd North Carolina Continental Line, focusing on the men serving in the same battles our Carter and Perkins ancestors fought, my mind drifted to their common denominator: military pension application files. For those I have already transcribed, each veteran had received their pension on the merit of having served for the minimum time prescribed (at least nine months), but had not necessarily been wounded in battle. Their maladies were related to their current state of indigence, and a grateful country's financial response. Below you will find a listing of several online resources offering the basic guidelines for the military pension application: Follow the Money: Tracking Revolutionary War Army Pension Payments , by Claire Prechtel-Kluskens. National Archives, Prologue Magazine, Winter 2008, Vol. 40,