My Patriot Ancestor A series of brief biographies of revolutionary patriots who were ancestors of the members of the Raleigh Chapter, NCSSAR and were published in the chapter newsletter starting in 1997. Articles submitted by the members were edited to 1-2 pages.

    INDEX

   Governor Abner Nash of North Carolina

   Jedediah Hill of Simsbury, CT

   George Roush of Shanandoah County, Virginia and the nine Roush Brothers

   Colonel James Mellen (1739-1812, Mass)

   General Francis Nash (1742 - 7 Oct 1777) of North Carolina

 The first response to my call for biographies of patriot ancestors of the Raleigh Chapter members was from Sam Dees, who contributed the following article on his 3rd great-grandfather, Governor Abner Nash.

 Abner Nash, revolutionary governor of North Carolina, was the son of John Nash, Prominent Virginia Statesman.  Born in 1740 in Prince Edward County, Virginia, young Nash moved to North Carolina in 1763 and a year later was elected to the General Assembly from Halifax.

 He rose quickly to prominence in local politics and in the practice of law in Halifax, and later at New Bern, to which he removed in the early 1770s.  He was married advantageously twice; first to Justina Davis Dobbs, and second to Mary Whiting Jones.

 In the regulator disturbance he supported the conservative eastern interests and the established government under Gov. William Tryon, who appointed him a major of brigade in 1768.  From the beginning of the contest with the mother country he was a zealous and active patriot.  He was a leader in the local events that induced Gov. Josiah Martin to flee from New Bern in May 1775, was the choice of the Borough of New Bern as delegate to each of the five Revolutionary provincial congresses from 1774 to 1776, was a member of several prominent committees in the congresses, notably those that drafted the Halifax resolution of 1776 and the constitution of 1776, and was a member of the Provincial Council in 1775 and 1776.

 Under the new government he was speaker of the first House of Commons and was the second governor.  He represented New Bern for 1777 and Craven County for 1778 in the House of Commons, and Jones County in the Senate for 1779, when he was also chosen as speaker.  His greatest responsibility, however, was as governor during the military crisis of 1780 and 1781.  He displayed energy in preparing for British invasion from the south; but, embarrassed by the constitutional weakness of his office, he requested the General Assembly to create a board of war to share responsibility while the Assembly was not in session.  When the legislature provided a three-man board, he was again displeased.  He disliked the membership of the board as it deprived him of his control of the militia.  Accordingly, the board was abolished and a Council Extraordinary was appointed in its place,  which likewise was given unconstitutional powers.

 On June 24, 1781, learning that he had been nominated for reelection, he requested withdrawal of his name on account of  "excessive Fatiques of late and want of Health."

 However, he soon reentered public life as representative from Jones County in 1782, 1784, and 1785, and was an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1784.  In the House he was  a leader in opposition to the restoration to the Loyalists of such of their confiscated property as had not been sold, and to the repeal of all laws inconsistent with the treaty of 1783.  He declined election to the Continental Congress in 1778, but accepted election in 1782, 1783, and 1785.   In Congress he soon recognized the necessity of a stronger federal government.  He was appointed delegate to the Annapolis Convention in 1786, but did not attend.

 In his personal life he was genial, suave, luxurious in habit and taste, improvident, convivial, and gracious in hospitality. He died December 2, 1786 while in New York to attend Congress, and was buried with elaborate ceremony in St. Paul’s Churchyard.  Later his remains were removed to "Pembroke", his home near New Bern.

My Patriot Ancestor
Jedediah Hill (1761-1843) of Simsbury, CT
by James D. Hill
Published Nov, 1997

Most of the following information was extracted from the microfilm records of Jedediah’s service and pension jacket.  For genealogical purposes it was fortunate that he lost his discharge papers because he (and his widow Abigail) were forced to provide sworn testaments from four of his fellow soldiers as to the dates and nature of his service for their pension application.  These provided some interesting anecdotes and much more information than is usually found in the service records.

 My 3rd great-grandfather, Jedediah Hill was a descendant of Luke Hill, who settled in Simsbury/Windsor area of Connecticut before 1651.  Luke and the next three Hill generations farmed in the Simsbury area north and west of Hartford until after the Revolutionary War.

 Jedediah was born in 1761, the fifth of six children of John Hill (3rd) and Isabel Eggleston.  In October, 1779 Jed enlisted as a private in the Connecticut State Troops under the regiment of Col. Enos in the company of Capt. Amasa Miles.  He reported for his first enlistment to the regiment at Farmington, CT.  The regiment then moved through New Haven, Stratford Ferry, Milford, Norwalk, and Greenwich - finally arriving at Horse Neck, near Long Island Sound, where it remained from November until the following March.  At Horse Neck, Jedediah assisted in the capture of Capt. Mead of  "the Refugees" who was later hanged.  There were six to seven hundred troops at Horse Neck and General Washington visited the camp several times.  In November of 1781 the troop had returned to Stratford, CT where Jed received a written discharge from Col. Enos (which he lost soon after).

 When his first enlistment was up Jed stated his intention to go back to Connecticut to get married.  Capt. Miles wanted him to re-enlist and offered him a furlough to get married if he would return.  Jed re-enlisted in the fall of 1781 and took his furlough to return to Simsbury where he proposed to Abigail Kilby.  Abigail refused to marry him while he was still a soldier so he returned to Capt. Miles’s company and served his second enlistment from March, 1782 until he was discharged in March of 1783.

 John Pettingell, a fellow soldier recalled the action at Frog Point (also called Frog Neck) where he and Jed fought:  "The Connecticut Troop captured a British cannon mounted on a wire swivel so it could be fired in any direction.  They killed several of the British and drove the rest off.  Fearing that the cannon might be recaptured, the patriots smashed the cannon to pieces on the rocks below."

 After being discharged, Jedediah returned to Simsbury where he again proposed to Abigail and she accepted.  They were married by Reverend Rufus Hawley in the Congregational Church of Avon, CT in March, 1783.  About 1807 Jedediah and his family moved from Connecticut to western New York and settled in Ellisburg, which is about 20 miles south of Sacket’s Harbor and only four miles from Lake Ontario.

  Jed applied for a soldiers pension in 1832 which was never processed properly and the papers were lost after the magistrate died and his papers were burned.  Jedediah died in 1841 and his widow, Abigail, applied in 1848 for a widow’s pension.  No action on it was taken so she enlisted the services of a lawyer and later a congressman to assist her in obtaining benefits.  The lawyer filed suit against the State of New York and the congressman wrote an impassioned plea to the War Pensions Bureau.  With the application of additional pressure, the claims were quickly granted and in November 1849 Abigail was finally granted pension benefits under four different acts of congress.  These allowed her to draw a pension of $80/yr retroactively from Jedediah’s death until her own death, at age 99, in November 1859.

 A newspaper clipping attached to one of the query letters in his son John’s pension file from the War of 1812 indicated that Jedediah enlisted again, with his four sons, in the War of 1812.  John served two enlistments in that war, initially reporting at Sacketts Harbor to Capt. Solomon McCumber in the 55th Volunteer Regiment of New York.  The volunteers furnished their own clothes and served without pay.  It is not know whether Jed served in the same regiment as son John.  The grave of  another son, Eben, in Kossuth Iowa is marked with a military stone that reads "Hill, Eben, Pvt. N.Y. Militia, War of 1812  d. 7 Mar, 1876".  John’s daughter, Esther Ann Hill-Morgan was the last living pensioner of the War of 1812.  She received a pension of $20/mo. from 1927 until her death  at age 89 in 1946.

My Patriot Ancestor
George Roush of Shanandoah County, Virginia
Published Jan 1988

The following was extracted from Military Service Of Nine Brothers In The Cause Of American Independence , an article contributed by Compatriot D.A. (Chip) Deems.

 George Roush, the patriot ancestor of Compatriot Deems, was one of seven brothers and two brothers-in-law that served in the American Revolution.  The account of this family is unusual in that so many members of the same family had documented records, and that they are buried in such close proximity to each other, remotely located from the places of their military service.  The seven brothers are buried within a radius of a little more than ten miles, near the Virginia border separating Mason Co., VA and Meigs  Co., OH.

 George Roush (1761-1845) while a resident of the Shenandoah County, Virginia where he was born, enlisted in the fall of 1779 and served two months as a private in his brother’s (Capt. John Roush) Virginia Company.  In the summer of 1780 he enlisted and served two months in Capt. Pugh’s Virginia Company and again in the summer of 1781 served three months in Captain Ali’s Virginia Company.  Family tradition indicates that George and brother Jonas were in the battle of Yorktown and saw Cornwallis hand over his sword to Washington.  George’s first wife was Catherine Zerkel (1763-1813).  In 1815 he remarried to Catherine Wolfe with whom he had one daughter, Hannah.  He was granted a pension in 1832 and is buried near Racine, OH.

 Jonas Roush (1763-1850) enlisted in 1781 as a substitute for his brother Henry and served three months in Capt. Awi’s Virginia Regiment.  He was taken sick near Fredericksburg while on his way to Winchester with prisoners and was discharged.  He moved to Meigs Co., OH in 1837 to live with a daughter after his wife died and many of the descendants of his eight children still live in Meigs Co. and elsewhere in Ohio.

 John Roush (1742-1816) attained the rank of captain in the Shenandoah County Company.  After the war he was the purchasing agent for a 6,000 acre tract of land along the Ohio river above Point Pleasant, VA where all the brothers came shortly after their mother’s death in 1796.  He was the first sheriff of Mason County and a lay evangelist of the Lutheran  Church, assisting his wife Dorothy’s brother, Rev. Paul Hinkle.  He had no children.

 Phillip Roush (1741-1820), the eldest brother, is listed on the muster roll of Jacob Holman’s Militia Company and on the "List of Arms Lost in the Battle of Nescopeck" as a private who lost a "rifle and appertanances" there.  He and his wife Katherine (Kelchner) had 13 children.

 Jacob Roush (1746-1830) was with General Andrew Lewis in the batle of Point Pleasant in 1774.  He married Catherine Fox and had eight children that they raised near Cheshire, OH.

 A brother-in-law, Alexander Waddell (1732-1834), was born in Glascow, Scotland.  He came to America in 1755.  Tradition says he came as a soldier with Gen. Braddock, served in the French and Indian War, and later settled in the Shenandoah Valley where he married Eleanor Roush in 1771.  He fought in the battle of Point Pleasant in 1774.  He lived to the age of 102 and, with Eleanor, had ten children, nine of which attained adulthood.  Many hundreds of their descendants were born in Gallia Co., OH and surrounds and live there to this day.

 Another brother-in-law, John Nease, husband of Elizabeth Roush was also a soldier in the Revolutionary War.  He and Elizabeth settled on Meadow Creek south of the Nolachucky River, where they had  "hundreds of acres" and raised their twelve children.  John and Elizabeth are buried in the St. James Lutheran Cemetary a few miles south of Greenville, TN.

 Daniel Roush (1754-1832) married Elizabeth Henkel? but had no children.  His service is listed in National Archives #515 General Index to Compiled Military Service Records of Revolutionary War Soldiers.

 Henry Roush (1752-1831) is listed as a private in John Tipton’s Company who was paid for 88 days of service on 25 Oct 1775.  He and his wife Dorothy had ten children.

 Of the eighth brother, Balser Roush (1745-1845) little is known.  It is believed he served in New York or Pennsylvania and tradition says that after the war he moved to the same Tennessee community as John and Elizabeth Nease.

My Patriot Ancestor
Colonel James Mellen (1739-1812, Mass)
Published April, 1998

"Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor ..."

 James Mellen’s military career began as company drummer of the provincial regiment that was raised in Massachusetts in 1756 to reinforce Sir William Johnson in repelling the French invasion from the North.  Mellen, then 16, may have then acquired his first impressions of the capabilities of the British Regular troops and the character and ability of their officers.

 In 1759, when the war had become increasingly violent and widespread, both James and his father, Thomas, held King’s Commissions - James as an Ensign.  After the Treaty of Paris in 1763 forced the French from North America, the British began to seek more revenue from the American colonists.  In the growing opposition to the heavy hand of the crown, the Mellen’s became Whigs and actively supported the party opposed  to the crown in Massachusetts contest with the royal governor.  Both Thomas and James served as delegates from Hopkinton to the first Massachusetts Provincial Congress in 1774

 Further, James Mellen enrolled as a private in James Eames’ Militia Company of Framingham, Mass. and his father organized a company of minutemen in Hopkinton, of which Thomas was placed at the head, as captain.  When the storm broke at Lexington and Concord, all that bore the name of Mellen, and their relatives and friends, took up arms as rebels.  After his enlisted service in the Massachusetts militia, James was, in April 1775, commissioned a captain in Colonel Artemis Ward’s Regiment of the Provincial Army of Massachusetts Bay at Bunker Hill.  This regiment was transferred to the Army of the United Colonies in July, 1775 and disbanded at the end of that year, during the siege of Boston.

 Colonel Ward was authorized to raise the 21st Continental Line (infantry) Regiment on January 1, 1776 and many of the officers and men from his old regiment went with him, including James, who was promoted to Major on 15 August, 1776.  After the evacuation of Boston they marched to New York for the battles of Long Island, Kip’s Bay, Harlem Heights, and White Plains.  The participation of specific Massachusetts units in the various battles is unclear and the assignment of Ward’s 21st Continentals after Harlem Heights is unknown.  It most likely remained along the Hudson, perhaps at Peekskill, and thence to New Jersey, greatly reduced in strength, and was probably broken up by November.

 The continental regiments lasted only one year and Washington returned to the system of state regiments in 1777.  James Mellen was transferred to Wesson’s 9th Massachusetts, one of the newly formed regiments, in November, 1776  and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in January, 1777, in Boston.  In March the regiment then deployed to Van Schaick’s Island at the mouth of the Mohawk River in New York.

 After arrival in the Mohawk Valley, Mellen was detached to the relief of Fort Stanwix (near Rome, NY) where he appears in all the standard histories.  After fighting at Fort Stanwix in August, 1777 he and his brigade were hurried back to guard the fords of the Mohawk River against St. Leger, just to the west of the Hudson River.  Then on to Stillwater, Hemis Heights, and Saratoga to defeat Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, and to a forced march to Albany in preparation for General Howe’s (Clinton) expected northward advance, which never came, and then the long march to Valley Forge, PA and the terrible Valley Forge encampment.  James’s son, William, was to join him at Valley Forge, or shortly thereafter, and William’s regiment, the 9th Massachusetts, part of Ebenezer Learned’s Brigade, was camped at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-1778.

 After the battle of Monmouth, NJ, where Colonel Wesson was wounded, the army returned to White Plains and concentrated at Continental Village for the ill planned counterattack on the British at Verplank.  Mellen’s unit later acted in the suppression of the mutiny of the New Jersey Line, the gold convoy, and was in continuous movement up and down the Hudson Valley and over the Hudson Highlands, the crossroads of the revolution.  James Mellen’s elder son, David, also joined him and was present at the hanging of Major Andre at Tappan.  James served as Lieutenant Colonel of the 9th until transferred, in grade, to Shepard’s 4th Massachusetts, effective 1 January, 1781.

 His name also appears at Dobbs Ferry, Tappan, Croton Point, Phillipsburg, King’s Ferry, Verplank, Peekskill, Crompond, Garrison, Cold Springs, West Point, New Windsor, Newburgh, and elsewhere.  Mellen served with the 4th for two years until 7 January, 1783, when he was promoted to full colonel and given command of the 3rd Massachusetts.  The regiment was then in the New Windsor Cantonment, near Newburg, NY, and when the army was furloughed from there in June, 1783, Mellen offered his resignation and quit the service.

 With the war ended, and the army disbanded under the thin legalism of furloughing, James Mellen, age 44, his health impaired, with years of unrewarded military and public service behind him, returned to a ruined economy.  He purchased a farm site and inn on the road to Boston, not many miles from Hopkinton, for the older families were now impoverished.  Recipient of only empty honors, he died in September, 1812, troubled in mind, and is buried at Mendon, Mass. in the grave yard that once adjoined the now long-demolished Meeting House.  His wife is beside him.






My Patriot Ancestor
Francis Nash (1742 - 7 Oct 1777)
Published June, 1998

                        The following was submitted by Sam Dees on his 3rd great uncle and brother
                          of his patriot ancestor, Abner Nash, whose biography was published in the
                          June, 1997 edition of this newsletter.

      Francis Nash, lawyer and revolutionary general, was born in Amelia (now Prince Edward) County in Virginia, the son of John and Ann Owen Nash.  Between 1725 and 1730 his parents, both natives of Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales, had immigrated to Virginia where John Nash purchased five thousand acres at the confluence of the Appomattox and Bush rivers near present-day Farmville.  An older brother, Thomas, was born in Wales. Another older brother, Abner, was a North Carolina statesman and congressman.

      Nothing is known of Francis Nash’s education, but sometime before 1763 he moved to North Carolina and settled in Childsburgh (renamed Hillsborough in 1766), where he invested in a store and set up a law practice.  In 1763 he was appointed clerk of the superior court of Orange County and soon afterwards became clerk of the inferior court of the county, both very lucrative positions.

      Francis represented Orange County in the colonial assembly in the sessions of 1764-65 and 1771 and in the First Provincial Congress in 1774, as well as the borough of Hillsborough in the assembly in 1773, 74, and 75.  He was also the Halifax borough representative in the Third Provincial Congress in 1775.  In 1768, as a part of the early complaints of the Orange County Regulators, he was wrongly accused of receiving illegal fees but was exonerated.  In 1771, as a captain of militia, Nash participated in the Battle of Alamance against the Regulators.

 In 1770 (presumably) he married Sarah (Sally) Moore, the daughter of Judge and Mrs. Maurice Moore.  They became the parents of two daughters: Anna (called Nancy) born probably in 1771, who died at age thirteen; and Sarah (Sally) born in 1773, who married rice planter John W. Waddell of the Cape Fear area.

      In the summer of 1775 the Provincial Congress directed that two regiments be raised, and Francis Nash was appointed lieutenant colonel of the first.  Following the promotion of the regimental commander, James Moore, Nash became commander and was promoted to colonel in April 1776.  Under his command the regiment was present at the unsuccessful British attack on Charles Town, S.C. on 25 June.

      Returning to North Carolina, Nash’s regiment was ordered in November 1776 to join the Continental army operating under General George Washington in the northern states, but these orders were rescinded because of threatened British and Indian attacks on Georgia.  Nash, who had been commissioned brigadier general by Congress on 5 Feb 1777, was again ordered north in March.  With the illness and death of General James Moore, Nash assumed command of the entire North Carolina brigade of nine regiments.  In June the brigade arrived at Philadelphia, remaining there until Washington and the Continental army marched from the vicinity of New York to Delaware to oppose a British invasion of Pennsylvania via Chesapeake Bay.  The British objective was Philadelphia, the American capitol.  On 11 Sept 1777 the two armies collided at the Battle of Brandywine, Pa., in which the Americans were defeated.  Nevertheless, Nash and his North Carolinians rendered signal service helping stem the British advance.

      With the capture of Philadelphia by the British on 26 September, Washington, regrouping his army, attacked the British-Hessian forces at Germantown, near Philadelphia, on 4 October, and was again defeated.  In this action General Nash received a hip wound from a cannonball that proved fatal.  He died three days later at the home of Adam Gotwals, on the Forty Foot Road, near Kulpsville, Pa., and was buried on 9 October at the Towamencin Mennonite Meeting graveyard beside three other officers who had also perished from wounds received at Germantown.  Washington and his generals attended the funeral.  Two monuments, one erected in 1844 and the other in 1936, mark the spot.  His dying words were reported to have been: "From the first dawn of the Revolution I have ever been on the side of liberty and my country."  General Nash quickly came to be known as a North Carolina hero, and his death inspired renewed support in the state for the Revolution.