236th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War

our own colonial Nathaniel

Several of our ancestors participated in the Revolutionary War!  

Quebec

Jeremiah Hatch (Welch line) was our most remembered Revolutionary War veteran, since he later joined the Church and moved to Nauvoo.  When he enlisted as a teenager, he was too small for regular service and was a fifer in the musician corps.  His father, Nathaniel Hatch, had also been a soldier who fought in the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, participated in the unsuccessful attempt to capture the citadel at Quebec, and then died of smallpox. 

family at Mount Vernon 2006

Jacob Broom listed under Delaware signers,
plaque at Washington Cathedral

Five of (Wells line) Hannah Tupper’s uncles fought in the Revolutionary War.  Thomas Grover’s grandfather was a leader of Shay’s Rebellion. This same Captain Thomas Grover was a minuteman in the Continental Army and witnessed the surrender of General Burgoyne.  His son Thomas (father of our pioneer) was a soldier in the Revolutionary War for one year.  Pioneer Rachel Sander’s grandfather, Constitution signer Jacob Broom, also surveyed and provided maps for General Washington in the Battle of Brandywine.  As a Quaker, he was religiously opposed to fighting.

Aldura Hatch’s (Welch line) Sumner father and grandfather, however, were loyal to the British crown during the Revolutionary War and exiled to Canada.  Thus Lorenzo Hill Hatch was the grandson of both an American vet (Jeremiah Hatch) and a Tory loyalist (John Sumner).  And many of our other ancestors were no doubt protesting the war as they lived in England at the time...

Eliza in the stocks at Williamsburg

headstone of Cramer line Revolutionary War soldier Philip Wentzel

Here's to liberty and America!