Up a Tree

John Amous Womble, Sharon's fifth great-grandfather, joined in the Revolutionary War effort as a soldier in the North Carolina Line of the Continental Army. In this context the word "line" refers to the units that constituted the troops recruited or stationed in a particular area. The soldiers enlisted for a term of not less than six months.  These units included regular soldiers and special units such as artillery companies and "light dragoons," or cavalry troops. These latter seem to have served both as combat troops and reconnaissance  units. John lists his first combat engagement was an attempt to take back the city of Savannah, Georgia, from the British, who had taken the city in 1778. At the outset of hostilities, the British invested much effort in the southern colonies because they believed those areas contained a high proportion of loyalists -- those faithful to the Crown -- and they would face less resistance. They believed this based on the reports of...

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...