Down the rabbit hole


I moved up the tree this week to Sharon's fifth great grandfather and proceed to fall into a historical rabbit hole that did not lead to any sort of Wonderland. But let's begin at the beginning.

John Amous Womble was born sometime in 1755 or 1756 in Edgecombe, North Carolina. For the geographically challenged like me, that's about 70 miles east of Raleigh, about halfway to the coast. I can't find a town called Edgecombe, just Edgecombe County, and Google tells me it is part of the Rocky Mount Metropolitan Statistical Area. I don't generally think of a town with a population of 55,000 as metropolitan, but I'm sure it's just a governmental designation.

John was a carpenter by trade, and at the age of 23, he joined the North Carolina Continental Line to fight in the Revolutionary War. This is where I fell off the branch into the rabbit hole.

Information provided in his Family Search entry indicates that he joined the 10th North Carolina Regiment on June 1, 1779. As I usually do, I looked the unit up on the Internet to see what contribution it had made to the war effort. And I ran full tilt into a problem. 

According to the site carolana.com, which appears to be run by one man with an interest in genealogy and history, and which covers the history of both the Carolinas, the 10th was organized in 1777 and participated in battles at Brandywine Creek and Germantown, both in Pennsylvania. In 1778, the Continental Congress ordered the reorganization of all North Carolina units. Few soldiers in the unit survived, mostly because of desertion and illness, and the few remaining troops were attached to the 1st and 2nd North Carolina regiments.

After the ordered reorganization, "The already defunct 10th Regiment was officially disbanded effective June 1, 1778, never to be resurrected." [loc. cit.] See the problem?

I figured someone made a mistake. While poking around, I found a document on a site maintained by the University of North Carolina called "Roster of the North Carolina troops in the Continental Army" by Abishai Thomas, Lynde Caitlin and Benjamin Mifflin, dated 1791. It lists the names of and some details of every soldier who served, "taken from the original muster and pay rolls of the North Carolina Line of the late Army of the United States." Seems authoritative, right?

Sure enough, a search produced a Pvt. John Womble of the 10th Regiment who enlisted on the date mentioned above. It also lists several other soldiers -- enlistees and officers -- who belonged to that regiment. 

Someone had dug up John's application for a pension, typed it up, and attached it to his information on Family Search. I hoped this would clear up the confusion. Silly me. 

The request for a pension takes the form of an affidavit presented and sworn to in a North Carolina court in accordance with a pair of acts passed by Congress in 1818 and 1820 providing pensions for indigent soldiers. In it, John says he enlisted in the 10th Regiment and goes on to provide details about his time in the service, including names of officers he served under.

Checking their names against the Roster by Thomas, et al., I found them listed in the 5th, 7th and  10th regiments. In addition, the affidavit includes statements from two men who say they heard a couple of different officers than the ones John mentions who had spoken approvingly of John's service during the war. I found one officer on the Roster but not the other. 

Unlike Alice, I'm afraid I'm not dreaming about this confusion, so I can't wake up from it, but I am going to make one more attempt to solve the problem before I quit.

In the meantime I'll press on and about the major engagement John was involved in and delve a bit into that pension application in the next post. 

Image: Painting purported to show soldiers of the North Carolina Line, from Wikitree.com




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