An Article Regarding War Of 1812 Research

An article by Stuart L. Butler in Prologue: Selected Articles, Winter 1991, Vol. 23, No. 4, was entitled "Genealogical Records of the War of 1812." [A variation here]

Adjutant General's Office (Record Group 94) was mentioned in the article. [Consult Fold3.com for records online]

Perhaps the most genealogically rich records for this period are the pension application files in the records of the Veterans Administration (Record Group 15).


"...Index to War of 1812 Pension Application Files (M313, 102 rolls). [NOTE: Some of the M313 records have been placed online at Fold3.com]

Often overlooked, but potentially useful, are Miscellaneous Manuscripts of the War of 1812 and its accompanying name index.

There are several National Archives publications that researchers should examine before using some of the records described herein. National Archives Microfilm Resources for Research: A Comprehensive Catalog (1990) [see article for others].

Colonel Samuel Estill

Source

Application for Samuel Estill's Revolutionary War pension [NARA record online via Fold3]:

Source

• Served for months as a Ranger or Indian spy...
• In 1778 to Kentucky and went to Boone's...

See a transcription of the pension application here.

The Late Capt. Mark W. Batman

Source

Captain Mark W. Batman's death in Alabama was announced in a letter (Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General Main Series 1822-1860):

Johnsons In 1860 Saline County

Source

United States Census 1860

State: Illinois

County: Saline

Minor Civil Division: T 9 R 6 E

Page: 96

John Johnson, age 66, male, Farmer, b. Georgia

Mary     61, female...Virginia

Next Household:

James Johnson, 31, male, Farmer,...Illinois

Nancy     22, female....Tennessee

Georgie  ?/12, male....Illinois

Court Martial At St. Mary's

St. Mary's, Georgia

Augusta, Georgia
17 August 1819




....in the cases of Captain Spencer and Lieutenant Simmons, tried before the court martial at St. Mary's, Major Davis has been transmitted to Major General Jackson for his decision....

Case Of Mrs. Acklin

Case of Mrs. Acklin, Nashville, Tenn.

2 August 1865

Union Citizens File
Full Title:Union Provost Marshals' File Of Paper Relating To Individual Civilians
Source:The National Archives

Adelicia Acklin's home was used as General Thomas's Headquarters during the Battle of Nashville.  This file appears to refer to claims of damage to her property and/or payment for the use of her resources during the Union Army's occupation of her estate.

James And Relief Richmond

Vital Records of Marblehead, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year ...,:

Name: James Richmond
Spouse's Name: Relief Belding
Event Date: 23 Mar 1816
Event Place: Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts

A letter received by the Adjutant General from Mrs. Releaf (Relief) Richmond regarding her husband, Sargeant James Richmond, dated 30 December 1823, from Marblehead, Massachusetts:

Source

Relief Richmond didn't hear from her husband"...after he arrived at Rock Island Fort Armstrong....." and asked whether he was dead or alive.

There was a James Richmond, who was born in Ireland, assigned to Fort Armstrong, who died 25 October 1827. [Source: Fold3]

Not my Richmond family; no further information.

William Roark's Pension

William Roark

Photo from Eastern Kentucky University Special Collections and Archives (http://archives.eku.edu).

My transcription below; Fold3.com has William Roark's pension is online.


Pension Application of William Roark, #S-32495

State of Illinois
Gallatin County

On the 15th day of March 1833 personally appeared in open court before the Hon. Thomas C. Browne, judge of the Circuit Court for the county aforesaid now sitting, William Roark, a resident of said county, in the state of Ill., aged 73 years in June next, who being duly sworn according to law, doth on his oath make the following declaration in order to obtain the benefit of the act of Congress passed June 7th 1832.  That he entered the service of the United States under the following named officers and served as therein stated.  That he was drafted into service in the county of Sussex, state of New Jersey first under Captain John Fleet and served a tour under him during which time we were marched to Amboy in said state.

The next tour of a similar service was under Capt. Mark Thompson, during which time we were marched to a place called Bound Brook.  The next tour was under Capt. John Maxfield.  These several tours comprised a time of...

I do not recollect many of the United States officers excepting those mentioned and General Washington who was about this time in New Jersey and General William Maxfield the brother of my captain.  Some where during this time Capt. John Maxfield received a commission of captain in the regulars, and enlisted a company at the Grand Camps and I enlisted in it under him.  I was at the battle of Millston and took a prisoner at or near the settlement of Monmouth.  I had lived with an uncle who was acquainted with the General and he came down and got me off from further service at this time.  I moved and settled on the Monongahela waters but at what particular period these transactions transpired I am unable to recollect as I have no record of them or of my age.  In the year 1782 I think in June, but maybe in Aug. or Sept., an order came from Gen'l Clark for men and there was a draft.  He came down the Alleghany.  I again entered the service under Captain Michael Catt, and went to Wheeling on the Ohio river where we were to join Gen. Clark, but he had gone on down the river.  Colonel Lochry had not come in.  The general intention was to go to the falls of the Ohio, to get a reinforcement from the Kentucky settlements thence to proceed against the Indian towns.  We started under Col. Lochry or Laughery and had nearly overtaken Gen'l Clark, but got defeated by the Indians in June or July about ten miles below the Big Miami as it was said, some said it was further.  All were killed but forty-seven who were taken prisoners among which I was also taken.  The Indians took us to their town and after some time we were taken to Detroit.  From Detroit we were taken to Canada and confined about forty miles from Montreal where we were kept ten months or upward.  Then we heard of the surrender of Cornwallis at York.  Then under British orders we were taken to Quebec and put on board of a ship and taken to New York where we were discharged on parole (17th March 1783) for there was not prisoners to exchange for us.  I heard afterward the British got prisoners for us and I got home in January or February 1784.  After this time I resided on the waters of the Monongahela in Virginia from whence I moved to Muhlenberg county where I resided ten years.  Thence I moved to Gallatin county, Illinois, in the year 1810 where I have resided ever since.  I hereby declare I have received no compensation from the government of the U.S. and that I relinquish all claims to a pension except the present.

Sworn to and subscribed this 15th March 1833.
William his X mark Roark
in...
Leonard White  3-15-1833

Move Towards Florida

River In Northern Florida

From Letters Received by the Adjutant General, 1805-1821:

Source [Page 2]

Augusta, Georgia
17 August 1819

Directed by Major General Gaines...forward a Copy of his order to Major Twigg to arrest the Fowl Town Chief of Warriors [Eneheemauthla was the 1st Chief] dated November 1817...also [whatever] was written by the Indian Agent to his son in the early part of 1818...Major General Jackson is also anxious to obtain a copy...


Synopsis of the action at Fowl Town:

United States troops, under the command of General Edmund P. Gaines, occupied Fort Scott, near the junction of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers. In Georgia, near Fort Scott, was an Indian village called Fowltown, containing forty five warriors whose chief had set up the red war pole around which the warriors danced in the evening. General Gaines, on hearing this intelligence, sent for the chief who refused to come. Then he dispatched a force of two hundred and fifty troops under the command of Colonel Twiggs, with orders to bring to him these forty-five warriors and their chief peaceably if they could, forcibly if they must.

The detachment reached Fowltown just before the dawn of day November 21, 1817. The warriors fired upon them. The troops returned the fire, upon which the Indians fled, leaving behind them two men and one woman slain besides several wounded. Colonel Twiggs, on searching the town, found in the house of the chief a red coat of the English uniform, a pair of golden epaulets and a certificate in the handwriting of the British Colonel Nichols that the chief of the Fowl town warriors had always been a true and faithful friend of the British. Colonel Twiggs remained near the town, which was burned on the following day by the order of General Gaines himself.

James Richmond In The Army

From the Army Register…, 1798-1914 Registers of Enlistments 1835-1839 A-Z Page 407, at Fold3 (NARA records):

25 May 1839

Born: Scotland, Ayr

Plattsburgh

21

Carpenter

William Roark, Deserter In 1780?

R 4 Pa

Willm Roarke

Appears with the rank of Private on a 

List

of Mens Names who have Deserted from the 4th Pennsa Regt, in Winter Quarters

(Revolutionary War)

List dated April 14, 1780

Years old, 26

Size 5 feet 1 Inches

Hair, Black

Complexion, Brown

Where Born, Ireland

When Deserted, 12 April, 1780.

From the NARA records at Fold3

A Past Event

The American Revolution is a past event. The men of that day, our honored and beloved ancestors, are long since gone back to God, their work accomplished, their career complete. To keep them in memory; to study their work; to draw lessons for our guidance from their experience; these are, of course, the things first proposed.  [Source]

Source: Fold3

Reuben Hogans In The Florida Mounted Militia

From the Fort Gatlin post (link added):

"Military correspondence from Fort Gatlin in 1852 mentioned that David Thompson was accidentally killed by his friend, Reuben Hogans."

Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Soldiers Who Served During Indian Wars and Disturbances, 1815-58, included Ruben Hogan(s)' index card indicating that he was a private in Curry's Company, Florida Mounted Militia:

Source at Fold3

Joseph Clovese, Michigan's Last Man Standing

Source: Fold3

(Also see this card at FamilySearch)

Compiled Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served the United States Colored Troops: 56th-138th USCT Infantry, 1864-1866

Content Source: NARA

Co. C 63rd USC Inf

Vicksburg, MS, Where Mr. Clovese's Unit Was Stationed

Joseph Clovese's military record indicated that he was born in New Orleans, [St. Bernard Parish] Louisiana, and that he was 18 years old, 5'2".  

From the Farmington [Michigan] Library's Regimental Roundtable organization:

"At 9:40 A.M., July 13, 1951, Joseph Clovese, age 107, died in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Dearborn, Michigan."  "Clovese continued to live in the South for many years after the war, working as a laborer along the Mississippi and as a deck hand on steamers running between New Orleans and Biloxi.  In 1948 he moved north to make his home with his niece, Mrs.Valerie Daniel, in Pontiac."

A civic observance was held in Pontiac in honor of Clovese’s 107th  birthday on January 28, 1951. Tributes were paid him by his fellow townsmen, and he received a warm letter from President Truman...". Serenity was one of Joseph Clovese’s notable attributes.  “Ever since I can remember,” Clovese told an interviewer a few days before his death, “every time I sit down to eat I say, ‘Thank God and bless the cook.’ ”


Mr. Clovese became Michigan's "Last Man (Civil War Veteran) Standing."

United States Census, 1940

name: Joseph Clovis

Ward 3, New Orleans, New Orleans City, Orleans, Louisiana

gender: Male

age: 96

marital status: Widowed

relationship to head of household (standardized): Lodger

estimated birth year: 1844

residence in 1935: Slidell, St Tammany, Louisiana

Household Gender Age Birthplace

head Peter Daniel M 40 Louisiana

wife Valerie Daniel F 40 Louisiana

son Monroe Daniel M 17 Alabama

daughter Gloria Daniel F 14 Pennsylvania

brother-in-law Charles Giles M 38 Louisiana

lodger Joseph Clovis M 96 Louisiana

United States Census, 1930

name: Joseph Cloviest

St Tammany, Louisiana

age: 87

estimated birth year: 1843

relationship to head of household: Head

father's birthplace: Louisiana

mother's birthplace: Louisiana

Household Gender Age Birthplace

head Joseph Cloviest M 87 Louisiana

wife Mary S Cloviest F 42 Mississippi

Louisiana, Deaths Index, 1850-1875, 1894-1956"

name: Mary Smith Cloavice

death date:  21 Mar 1922

death place:  Slidell, , St. Tammany, Louisiana

gender:  Female

race (original):  Colored

race (standardized):  Colored

age:  56

estimated birth year:  1866

birth place:  New Orleans, Louisiana

marital status:  Married

spouse's name:  Joseph Clovese

General Garland's Order To Longstreet

Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General Main Series 1822-1860, #M-567

Content Source: NARA

Special Order #38

*Headquarters, Department of New Mexico
Sante Fe
9 April 1858

...Brevet Major James Longstreet Captain, 8th Infantry, has permission for a leave of absence for 6 months.
Authority is granted to him to apply for further extension of six months.

By Order Of Brevet Brigadier General Garland

W. A. Nichols
Assistant Adjutant General

*A New Mexico Fort was named after General Garland (Fort Garland)

Chew And Relf In The National Archives

The National Archives at Fort Worth's Facebook page invited people to "take a gander" at files that were scanned and indexed "During one of our Citizen Archivist programs last year... ".  Below is one of the documents I viewed:

Bond of [Unknown] Cheu, [Unknown] Relf, and Lewis Murice, 04/27/1805  Records of the U.S. Customs Service, 1745 - 1997

Source

I recognized the firm Chew & Relf from the famous Myra Clark saga. Myra was the daughter of the wealthy Daniel Clark, a native of Ireland who lived in Louisiana.


From "A full report of the great Gaines case : in the suit of Myra Gaines vs. Chew, Relf & Others, for the recovery of the property of the late Daniel Clark ...":

...the claim filed by Chew and Relf, administrators, of the debts duo and other property, of Daniel Clark, of the value of $323,188.  "...appointing Richard Relf and Beverly Chew as his executors."

Social Media At The National Archives

Social Media at the National Archives (lots of links) and a specific blog post, Saddle Up, Scout!.  See About Scout here.

NARA - Chicago - Research

The National Archives at Chicago's holdings include Records of the U.S. Circuit and District Courts, 
Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division (Detroit).

Habeas Corpus Records, 1837-1911

Habeas Corpus Docket Books, 1837-1911 (2 vols.)

Would these records (and/or others) assist in finding out more about Sgt York's grandfather?