A couple of days ago I went through my Brown-Montran family line and turned up five confirmed Revolutionary War patriots — two branches that, conveniently, had already married into each other before I ever drew the connection on paper. Since that Find a Grave anniversary email got me looking, I kept going, and this time I crossed over to my paternal Roberts-Barnes line, where two more patriots were waiting: Silas Taft and Reuben C. Sutherland.
As it turns out, they’re connected to each other too — and in much the same way as last time.
Silas Taft (1744–1813)
Silas Taft was born July 10, 1744, in Uxbridge, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, the first of nine children of Stephen Taft and Mary Lewis. He married Elizabeth Cruff on December 4, 1768, at Uxbridge.
His Revolutionary War service came later than most — in the summer of 1780, when Rhode Island’s coastline came under renewed threat from British forces. Taft, by then in his mid-thirties, was called up as a Private in Capt. Bezaleel Taft’s 9th Company, under Col. Nathan Tyler’s 3rd Worcester County Regiment. He marched to Tiverton, Newport County, Rhode Island, and was discharged after fourteen days, including three days’ travel home.
He later moved to Oneida County, New York, where he died on August 7, 1813. He’s buried at Lee Valley Cemetery in Lee, New York, and is a recognized DAR patriot ancestor (A112392). Find a Grave memorial
Several of Silas’s children, including his son Asa Taft, eventually settled in Triangle, Broome County, New York — which is exactly where this next connection picks up.
Reuben C. Sutherland (before 1755–1799)
Reuben C. Sutherland was born before 1755 in Horseneck, New York — territory that’s now Greenwich, in Fairfield County, Connecticut, a reminder of just how unsettled the New York–Connecticut border was in the colonial period. He was the eldest of eleven children of William J. Sutherland and Hannah Avery.
Sutherland served as a militiaman in the 6th Regiment of the Dutchess County, New York militia between April 1776 and January 1777, and again in Dover, Dutchess County, between August 1781 and January 1782. He later drew a federal pension for his service (pension numbers 13,693 and 42,531). In 1788 he married Mary Lewis at the First Stanford Baptist Church in Bangall, Dutchess County. He died September 10, 1799, in Broome County, New York, and is a recognized DAR patriot ancestor (A111154). Find a Grave memorial
The Connection: Triangle, Broome County, New York
Just like Wolcott and Parsons, and Buel, Rowley, and Maben before them, the Taft and Sutherland families ended up joined by marriage. Reuben Sutherland’s daughter, Tamise “Fanny” Sutherland, married Joel Cruff Taft — a son of Silas Taft — around 1819 in Triangle, Broome County, New York, the same town where Silas’s son Asa had already settled. Joel Cruff Taft later became a member of the Sons of the American Revolution on the strength of his father’s service.
Fanny outlived Joel and remarried in 1856 in Sullivan County, Indiana, where she died in 1864 — one more small reminder of how far these families spread west in the decades after the war.
Seven Patriots and Counting
That brings my running total to seven confirmed Revolutionary War ancestors across two family lines — and, so far, a perfect record of patriot families finding each other through marriage within a generation or two of the war itself. I don’t know yet whether that’s coincidence or just how small these rural communities really were, but it’s becoming a pattern worth watching for as I keep working through the tree.
This article was researched by me and drafted with the assistance of Claude.ai, with editing support from Grammarly.