Looking for Patriots

 

As the month comes to a close and I realize I have far more research to do than days to do it in, I thought of one possible project to undertake. In the books I found this month which included my Taliaferro ancestors, I had noted that many mentioned a Taliaferro man who served in the American Revolution. However, when I go to the source to check such assertions, I sometimes cannot find any supporting documentation. Why not reverse the process and take a quick glance through all the brothers named in the family of my fifth great-grandfather Zachariah Taliaferro, to see if any of them are Patriots?

I already know that my fifth great-grandfather was among the Patriots. After all, that's how I gained membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. But what about his brothers? There could be five possibilities: John, Charles, Peter, Francis, and Richard.

Richard, the youngest of those siblings I've been able to find, had already been mentioned in at least one genealogy book as having served in the war. However, when I checked the D.A.R. Ancestors records, I could not find anyone with the right year of birth. He might still be one of the Richards mentioned; I just can't tell at this point.

That realization reminded me to be much more wary about claims published in genealogy books. Hence, my project to research the rest of those brothers, as they were all of an age to be involved in making history.

Starting from John, the eldest of the Taliaferro brothers still alive during the 1770s, I was rewarded for my efforts by finding his entry in the D.A.R. website. His service description was listed as "Minute Men." He served from Caroline County, Virginia.

Next of the brothers was Charles, born in 1735, who was also in the D.A.R. Patriot file. His service was identified as "provided supplies." He, too, was resident in Caroline County at the time.

When I stepped down to the next Taliaferro brother, Peter, I couldn't find any entry. While I had a year of birth for him in 1740, I haven't yet located a date of death for him. It could be possible that he had already died before the beginning of the war. However, I had a note in my genealogical database that Peter was father of a son whom he named, predictably, Richard, born in 1762. When I had looked for D.A.R. entries on the youngest brother of Zachariah—also named Richard—I had spotted that 1762 date of birth for one of the other Patriots with that same name. As it turns out, that Patriot would be Peter's son Richard.

As for the two youngest brothers of my Zachariah Taliaferro, Francis and Richard, I did not have success in finding either of them listed among the D.A.R. Patriots. There are two entries for a Francis Taliaferro, but neither aligns with my Francis' date of birth in 1745. I had the same difficulty with entries for Richard Taliaferro, as I had already mentioned. That isn't to say they didn't serve or at least support the war effort. I just haven't yet gotten enough information to adequately identify them.

Now that I've located those siblings' war records, I used Ancestry.com's labeling system to create a custom tree tag labeled D.A.R. Patriot for each of their profile pages. Even though those Taliaferro brothers aren't in my direct line, I like to visually note their participation, no matter how small, in a key event in our nation's history.