Continuing the project that the Find a Grave 1776 Badge email set off, I’m crossing into my wife’s Howell-Hobbs line for this installment, where two more confirmed Revolutionary War patriots turn up: William Rose Sr. and his son, William Rose Jr., of Halifax County, North Carolina. They’re #148 and #74 on my Howell-Hobbs Ahnentafel chart, respectively — and unlike the patriot pairs in my last two posts, this one isn’t two families joined by marriage. It’s the same family, two generations deep, both of whom answered the call.
This actually isn’t new territory for the blog. Back in November 2019, I wrote about the Rose family of Halifax County while trying to sort out the parentage of Elizabeth (Rose) Vincent, one of my wife’s third great-grandmothers. At the time, I narrowed seven or more Revolutionary-War-era Halifax Roses down to two who actually held confirmed DAR Patriot status — this same father and son. The new documentation I’ve since pulled together fills in their service records more fully, so it felt like the right time to give them their own dedicated profile.
William Rose Sr. (1733–1785)
William Rose Sr. was born around 1733. On January 27, 1758, he married Mary, whose maiden name hasn’t been identified. The couple had two known sons: William Jr. and Elisha, who died in Halifax County in 1795.
Rose’s Revolutionary War service is recorded as that of a Wagon Master, for which he received a pay voucher in 1781 — a role that mattered as much to keeping an army moving as any combat assignment. The 1784 Halifax County tax list shows him with 230 acres and, like a number of his propertied neighbors, one enslaved person recorded on the rolls as a taxable “poll.” He died in 1785 and is recognized by the DAR as Patriot Ancestor #A206765.
William Rose Jr. (1759–1801)
William Rose Jr. was Sr.’s eldest son, born in 1759. By 1784, in his mid-twenties, he was already a property owner in his own right — the same Halifax tax list that shows his father’s 230 acres lists “Wm. Rose Junr.” with 248 acres. He served in 1781, paid for his services per a North Carolina Revolutionary War pay voucher, and is recognized separately from his father as DAR Patriot Ancestor #A206187.
He married Sarah Crawley, and the couple’s children included Edmund, Wormley, Littleberry Rowan, Jesse — and, per most family trees, a daughter named Elizabeth, born in June 1785. William Rose Jr. died February 14, 1801, in Warren County, Georgia, having moved south sometime after his Halifax County years.
A Father and Son, and a Lingering Question
What makes the Roses different from the patriot pairs in my last two posts is that there’s no marriage connecting them — they’re directly father and son, both serving in the same county in the same war, and both managing to clear the DAR’s bar for proof of service when several other Halifax Roses (Amos, Ann, Samuel, Thomas — none with confirmed DAR status) didn’t.
Where things get less certain is one step further down the tree. That daughter, Elizabeth Rose, is the presumed mother-line connection to my wife — she went on to marry Burkett Vincent, and from there the line runs down through the Vinson/Vincent family into the Howells. But as I noted back in 2019, the parentage of Elizabeth herself isn’t nailed down by a primary source. Most researchers’ trees point to William Rose Jr. and Sarah Crawley as her parents, with smaller minorities favoring an Elisha Rose instead. I still haven’t found the document that closes that question, so for now William Rose Sr. and Jr. stand as the leading — but not yet proven — candidates for two more rungs on my wife’s ancestral ladder.
Nine Patriots and Counting
That brings the running tally to nine confirmed Revolutionary War patriots found across three family lines so far — Brown-Montran, Roberts-Barnes, and now Howell-Hobbs. Resolving Elizabeth Rose’s parentage is still on my research list; if I ever crack that brick wall, this post will be the first to get an update.
This article was researched by me and drafted with the assistance of Claude.ai, with editing support from Grammarly.