How much do you remember about the Revolutionary War?
Do you tend to think, as I did, “stuff in general but not
very much specifically?” But when you
learn that someone in your family fought in it, you want to know more. So when I discovered a paper that said my great-great-great-great
grandpa Leonard Keeling Bradley became a prisoner of the British in that war, I
wanted to know more.
The document above is a bit hard to read here. If you double-click on it, it will enlarge. It says this:
I do hereby
acknowledge myself to be a Prisoner of War, upon my Parole, to his Excellency
Sir Henry Clinton and that I am thereby engaged until I shall be exchanged, or
otherwise released therefrom, to remain at my plantation in the Parish of St.
Jude in the county of Surry in the province of North Carolina and that I shall
not in the mean Time do, or cause any Thing to be done, prejudicial to the
Success of His Majesty’s Arms, or have Intercourse or hold Correspondence with
his Enemies; and that upon a Summons from his Excellency, or other Person
having Authority thereto, that I will surrender myself to him or them at such
Time and Place as I shall hereafter be required. Witness my hand this 20th Day of
May 1780.
Signed: Leo’d Bradley Lt.
I’d had this document a long time and I thought I had read
it carefully, but I never paid any attention to the dates to see what was going
on when he was taken prisoner. Come to
find out, it was dated May 20, 1780, right after the famous Siege of
Charleston. The loss of the city and its
5,000 troops was a serious blow to the American cause.
Later I found a copy of a court document in Missouri, written
for the federal government when Leonard Keeling Bradley was 77 years old as a prerequisite
for getting a military pension. I read
it with renewed interest.
A portion of it
says: “March 1780 - at this period an attack upon Charleston was daily
expected. In order to prepare for its
defense, Gov. Rutledge applied to Col. Litle to raise a regiment out of Eaton’s
Brigade, N. C. Militia. The battalion
was raised and this applicant [Bradley] again entered the service as
Lieutenant…under Col. Archy Litle and Major Benjamin Harbishan, continental
officers. There we remained and stood
the siege of Charleston, under Gen. Lincoln, until the 12th day of May, when we
were surrendered prisoners of War, and the regiment under Col. Litle were
parolled on the 20th day of May 1780… until the General Exchange of
Prisoners in the summer of 1781…”
It goes on to
note that my 4 times great-grandpa Leonard Keeling Bradley served
during the long years of the Revolutionary War seven different times for a
total time of 44 months, not counting the year he was a prisoner. And as an aside, I learaned from other court
documents that it wasn’t until after the war, in 1785, that Bradley married and
began his family.
Our 4th
of July festivities happen because July 4, 1775 is when the Declaration of
Independence was signed. There were
plenty of skirmishes and fighting going before that date on that caused our
forefathers to decide to declare our independence from Great Britain, and much
more fighting for many years afterwards to secure it. My heritage includes people in it that helped
make it happen.
I suspect that
many of you have those same kinds of people, Patriots all; you just don’t know
about them. 
1 comment:
I know that my family history in this country only goes back to the early 1900's, but not much else. I don't even know where to begin to try to find out more.
Post a Comment