You say you want a revolution?
For instance, in the attempt to find out whether the Reagan side of Sharon's family is somehow related to John Henninger Reagan, for whom Reagan County, Texas, is named, I used a feature of the program that finds if and how you're related to a specific person, though the search only goes back 15 generations.
I did find a relationship but through her mother's side of the family, the Lackeys. Because so many of the names seemed to have good connections with historical events I could research and mention here, I bookmarked John H. Reagan's entry. The program does not allow a bookmark to the results of the search, probably because it appears in a popup window, but I could easily click a button to find the relationship and have that section of the tree re-appear.
I did a bad thing and assumed that the relationship only existed through the Lackey clan. You know why that's bad. Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the relationship button and an entirely different chart popped up. It showed that John H. has a more direct relationship, this time to the Reagan part of the family. In that chart, John H. is an 8th cousin, 4 times removed. I found the chart for Thomas Keaton Lackey Sr. to make sure that line still existed, which it did.
All of which means that John H., a rather distant cousin from one side of the family, managed to marry a rather distant cousin from a different side of the family. Hmmph. You might think this sort of thing rare, but an article I read while trying to understand the whole cousin-numbering system, indicated that mathematically we all have a good chance of being related to someone important or famous, and having distant relations who are married to other distant relations, whether in the same family or not, is also a good bet.
I had previously mentioned Thomas Keaton Lackey Sr., the first of the clan to arrive in America, though we've no idea of exactly when. Given his birth in Ireland in 1744 and his appearance in a 1790 census, you can figure out what portion of the 18th century his arrival belongs in. According to the chapter, "Lackey Comes to America," which appears in a tract Lackey in Southern Illinois, Thomas filed an affidavit detailing his military service. He served multiple tours of three months each under multiple commanders. He was drafted for his first tour but subsequently volunteered for his other tours, serving 18 months total.
Under a Captain Morrow, likely Captain William Morrow, he was part of a force that marched to Cross Creek, North Carolina. in 1776, North Carolina's royal governor had called for British troops in that area to rendezvous with other forces in Brunswick, NC. By the time those troops arrived at Moore's Creek Bridge to the southeast of Cross Creek the Continentals had stationed a thousand men in an ambush formation and defeated the larger British contingent. Two months later, North Carolina became the first colony to declare for independence.
I can't directly tie Thomas Lackey to this engagement because the records I've found don't give enough detail. Did he march to Cross Creek and join forces with the group that encountered the Brits? His affidavit also lists an engagement in which British forces were defeated, but I could find no information about the battle with the information provided.
He claims to have participated in the Battle at Ramsour's Mill in Lincoln County, NC, in 1780. North Carolina had been pretty peaceful since Moore's Crick Bridge, but Charles Lord Cornwallis, leader of the British forces, had taken control of South Carolina and Georgia and seemed set on taking North Carolina. Two of his officers, Americans loyal to the crown, recruited a bunch of like-minded loyalists, also known as Tories, to join them at Ramsour's Mill.
The area commander of the patriot forces received word of this and appointed a couple of his officers to recruit a patriot militia and engage the Tories. They scraped together about 400 men, far less than the 1,300 Tory troops. Poorly equipped and poorly trained, they engaged the Tories for two hours, sometimes fighting hand-to-hand, often finding themselves opposing neighbors and relatives, and forced the Tories to retreat. The victory deflated the loyalist cause and effectively ended British hopes for holding the area.
Thomas's affidavit also states that he served under Captain Sharpe. Only problem is that a list of military captains who served in North Carolina during the War for Independence shows three Captain Sharpes. Two of them, William and Joseph, participated in the Battle at Ramsour's Mill.
Thomas received a military pension and somebounty land for his service and died in Iredell County, NC in 1841.
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