Talk about a Revolution

The veteran's put flags on the graves of soldiers buried in Easton. In elder days they actually printed a book with the names of the decorated graves. Today, I suppose they have a list somewhere. That's where the Revolutionary War project begins. The list given to me by Al Smart contains 65 names of Revolutionary War soldiers whose graves are decorated plus 10 mystery names.

You can begin to see my problem if you turn to Chaffin's History of Easton and write down the names of men who served in 1775. The list quickly jumps to 261 names. Now many of these names are duplicates. One of my favorite Rev War soldiers is Hopestill Randall-he owned part of the Sheep Pasture property, and Hopestill is a great name. He is buried in the cemetery at the corner of Elm and Washington Streets so he made the original list. He also marched to Boston on April 19, 1775 with the East Militia Company so he is listed twice in my spreadsheet. Now the math wizards have already figured out that if all the cemetery guys went asoldiering once in 1775 there would still be 120 new names added to the list. Remember also that the war lasted until 1783, and you realize this could be a long list.

Furthermore, Chaffin notes that just about every able bodied man served outside Easton at least once. This makes sense since every male between 16 and 60 except Quakers, the town minister, and the disabled were supposed to be in the town militia. Throw in child musicians and the fact that 10 year olds in 1775 would be old enough to serve when the last troops went out in 1781 and the situation begins to get complicated. Even with everyone serving Easton couldn't meet state quotas so some out-of-towners served "for" Easton. Who were they and do we include them on our memorial?

Then there are the three Joseph Drakes, the three Thomas Drakes, the two Samuel Guilds, and, well you get the idea. Does every name on the memorial have to be associated with a real person? Thankfully, one of the Joe Drakes is listed as "ye third" in 1775, but are the ones who are not specified  "ye first" or "ye second" or both. Clearly access to primary sources is going to be needed. Armchair research is only going to take you so far (although further than when I made my original card stack in the 1970s).

The complexities of this historical project probably explain why we don't have a memorial listing all who served in our founding war. The complexities and the fact that no one wants to be haunted by the ghost of Joseph Drake "ye left off the list."