The three Morrison brothers in the Revolutionary War

 Many of us in our Morrison h2 group descend from one of the three Morrison brothers (William, John and James) who went off to war together  and were fortunate enough  to all return together.  The three served in the Virginia 6th Regiment from late 1775 until their honorable discharge March 16 1778.  I have not looked at every single one of the documents available for all three brothers on Fold3, but every pay roll that I viewed showed all three of the brothers being paid for that time period.  

I will show some of the slides I had prepared for our Morrison h2 zoom Meeting in March 2023. We became so engrossed in our discussion of yDNA and all things Morrison that we did not end up talking about the Revolution.  It was a good evening.

The first slide just gives a place to start with the Boston Tea party:

English Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party in 1774 with the Intolerable Acts, or Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, ended local self-government in Massachusetts and closed Boston's commerce. Colonists up and down the Thirteen Colonies in turn responded to the Intolerable Acts with additional acts of protest,

And most importantly what we would now call patriots, responded as a group by Convening the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia which petitioned the British Monarch for repeal of the acts. 

The First Continental Congress also coordinated British resistance in the fall of 1774.  

By spring 1775 the British monarch had failed to respond to the petition and 

the Second Continental Congress met in the Pennsylvania State House (now 
Independence Hall) in early May 1775.  By June 14, 1775 the Second Continental Congress had agreed

to raise troops from 12 of the colonies and to provide help to Boston.  The troops 

would be under the command of General George Washington.  The convention

also agreed to encourage counties to form militias.

The two counties of Berkeley and Frederick in Virginia were tasked with raising the troops allotted to

Virginia to send to Boston for the aid of Boston.  It is clear by looking at the map that these troops were the closest to Philadelphia and thence to Boston of any troops in Virginia.

Since this next information does not affect our Morrison brothers you probably wonder why I am adding this to the blog post.  I bought a book about Virginia's Continentals.  Virginia's Continentals are not the men who served in the militia nor were they minutemen.  These are the men who volunteered to fight with Washington and were paid $6.25 per month.  They were not volunteers.  They were members of the Continental Army.  This is indeed the status of our Morrison brothers.

Among the very first pages in the book, the author explains this about the men from Berkeley and Frederick Counties:  The arrival of the continental rifle companies (these men from Berkeley and Frederick Counties) in late July and early August sparked a wave of excitement among the New England troops outside Boston.  Riflemen were largely unknown in New England and their appearance and reputation made quite an impression.  Surgeon's Mate James Thatcher of Massachusetts described these men as

Remarkably Stout and hardy men; many of them exceeding six feet in height.  They are dressed in white frocks or rifle-shirts and round hats,  These men are remarkable for the accuracy of their aim; striking a mark with great certainty at two hundred yards distance.  At a review, a company of them, while on a quick advance, fired their balls in objects of seven inches diameter at distance of two hundred and fifty yards.  They are now stationed on our lines, and their shot have frequently proved fatal to British officers and soldiers who expose themselves to view, even at more than double the distance of common Musket shot.....scores of troops armed with muskets join in, firing smoothbore weapons which were far less accurate than the rifles.  When some of the New England troops marched to Quebec, there were three rifle companies and ten musket companies.

Mid October, in Virginia Colonel Henry assigned the fifteen companies of Regulars who had gathered or were on there way to Williamsburgh to their respective Regiments. The author names the captains of each company and the counties from which their men came,  This is on pages  16-17-18.  Our Morrison brothers would have been in Captain William Campbell's company from Pittsylvania District made up of Pittsylvania, Botetourt, Bedford, Fincastle Counties. The authors says that Green's, Campbell's, and Gibson's companies were the rifle light infantry.  Although it is likely that a number of men in the remaining five companies also carried rifles, most carried smoothbore muskets and the companies were designated as line companies.

So the information given in the two separate places in the beginning of the book would tell us that indeed William, James, and John were in an elite group within the Virginia Continentals.  It is not surprising that these men from the frontier area of Virginia brought their rifles and knew how to use them.  And that the rifles were an important part of the fight against the British.

Washington DC

 I am in DC tonight on my way to Boston,  I am staying at the Lombardy Hotel.  I ate dinner in the dining room all by myself.  I ate late and the room had cleared out.  So the waiter felt he might entertain me a bit.  And he did.  My favorite two stories were the following.  After the fires in this area during the war of 1812.  President James Monroe moved out to this area which is foggy bottom,  He lived in the house that is next door to the hotel,  The hotel was not even a distant plan at the time.  So I went outside after dinner to take a photo of the house.

The photos above are taken from website and show my hotel....you can just barely see the house that James Monroe lived in just above the word:  outside.

Very fun!  The house that James Monroe lived in while president!

Virginia 6th regiment of the Continental Line Orderly Book

 In preparation for out Morrison zoom meeting in March, I am listening to the presentation made by Craig Scott last year for the DAR Genealogy Lecture Series--Revolutionary War era Genealogy.  Craig mentioned checking to see if there are any unit histories about the unit that your ancestor was a part of.

Wow....how crazy is it that I have not done any of that kind of reading.  So I googled The Virginia 6th Regiment of the Continental Line Books.  And guess what popped up first!  the Orderly Book has been digitalized by the Huntington Library in California:

https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/29066

and on Hathi Trust is a transcribed copy with an excellent introduction

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=emu.000011333590&view=1up&seq=1  

but Ronald explained this is not the same book that I copied last year at the DAR library.  The book that I copied there was maybe a day book?  I can not remember.  But neither Ronald nor I found anything about the Morrison men in the book.

and I bought the book:

When the Revolutionary War erupted in Massachusetts in April 1775, no American army existed. Each colony had its own militia that required inhabitants, typically free men between the ages of sixteen to fifty years old, to defend the colony when needed. Few colonists imagined prior to 1775 that such colonial militia would be pitted against the professional regulars of the British army, but that is precisely what occurred as a result of the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord.

Within two months of the start of the war, the Continental Congress moved to strengthen the colonies by creating a Continental Army under General George Washington of Virginia. Aside from providing a commander-in-chief for this new, regular army of American troops (who were to serve until the end of the year), Virginia initially supplied just two companies of riflemen to the continental army.

This soon changed, however, as both Congress and Virginia realized the need for vastly more continental soldiers. By the end of 1775, Congress called upon Virginia to supply six continental regiments of over 700 officers and men each to the Continental Army. Within another year, that number more than doubled to sixteen regiments and also included two regiments of light dragoons (cavalry) and one regiment of artillery.

This book explores the formation and service of Virginia's continental troops during the first several years of the Revolutionary War. 

 

How does John Hensley fit into the Hensley tree?

 Don't ask me how I happened to look at my Hensley family this morning.  Sometimes my ancestors seem to speak to me?  I have totally convinced myself that John Hensley who married Milly and lived in Pittsylvania County, Virginia during the Revolutionary War had Foster paternity.  And when that happened, I quit looking at him and turned to other lines.  But this morning when I sat down at my computer, I pulled up the Ancestry tree of Suzanne Baird.  I know without a doubt that Suzanne is a fastidious researcher and has spent MANY hours on the Hensley family that I have always believed to be my family.  And there it was:  a new theory about my 5-gr-grandfather, John Hensley!

This is only a theory.  After I run it by Suzanne and Marty Grant I will either incorporate the new theory into my data base or I will totally erase this post from my blog when they shoot holes in it....such as Benjamin and Elizabeth Hensley had no female offspring.  Here is a screen shot from Suzanne's Ancestry tree:

What do you see?  That Benjamin Hensley and wife, Elizabeth Hickman have the last son, John almost 25 years after the birth of their first son, William.  It is not impossible.  But is it not a possibility that there were some daughters in the gaps between the men's births?  And that one of those daughters might have been born in the gap between 1727 and 1735?  And that it is daughter of John and Elizabeth who gave birth to John Hensley in 1751 after a relationship with a Foster male?  I have always known that the Hensley family and the Foster family were intertwined in Albemarle County.  Oh my, this would be the best of all scenarios as I would not have to give up my connection to the Hensley family.  

Ok, first I will run this by Marty and Suzanne to see if they can shoot holes in it before I spend more time on this thought.  

Where did John and Milly Hensley live in Pittsylvania County, Virginia?

I was explaining to Ronald where John and Milly Hensley lived in Pittsylvania County and decided to put it on the blog because I think I never added it to the other blog post.  From my data base:

10 Dec 1785 between John Henslee of Pittsylvania and Harmon Cook of Pittsylvania 50 pounds, a parcel of land containing by estimation 110 acres on both sides of Potter’s Creek.  Signed John Henslee….no witnesses.

We know from our trip to Pittsylvania County with the Morrison h2 group that Patrick Morrison's land is located on the below map at the spot where Frying Pan Creek crosses route 40.  Potter Creek also crosses Route 40 a very short distance west from where Patrick Morrison lived.,  You will see the red marker below showing Potter Creek.  It begins a short distance south of Route 40 and flows northwest until it flows into the Pigg River. .....The land that John Hensley is selling could be any where along the Creek...but no matter where he is a close neighbor of Patrick.

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2017/09/h2-morrison.html

 

William Morrison's location when he died

I was trying to tell George where William Morrison was living when he died.  I could drive to the spot, but I couldn't remember the proofs.

First we have the words of Patrick Henry late in his life that both of us had seen at the Lambert Collection:

This would have been Patrick Henry Morrison who was born in Cabell county and was the son of the Patrick Henry Morrison who moved with his Family from Pittsylvania County to Cabell.  

So William Morrison was still alive in 1816.  If we go with a birth of 1750 for Willam Morrison, which our group has guessed to be close,  he would have been 66 in 1816.  In February 2022, Ronald sent me a copy of this deed.  And indeed I believe the above to be accurate after looking at the deed.  It would seem that William was squatting on the land.  However, Thomas Ward was Patrick Henry's father-in-law and he had married Anna when she was a young widow with last name Scales.   Perhaps the two men had just allowed Willam to live on the land.

Haplogroup I

 I have been chatting with a small group of researchers who are Family Group #5 in the Hawkins yDNA project.  There group has done major upgrading of their yDNA results to the Big Y.  And they have shared their block tree with me.  I wanted to write back that I have found myself assuming that I Haplogroup (which their participants do have) is Viking related.  However, before I made such a statement, I thought I might look at the information on the internet to see if my assumption has any basis.

I have a Witcher participant for whom the Witcher research group threw in money to buy the Big Y when I approached them to find a YDNA participant for me.  And he is a part of the

It turns out that there Haplogroup is I2 instead and that is not considered Viking.