By Don Taylor
This is the fourth and last stop in the project that the Find a Grave 1776 Badge email started a few weeks ago — and since it lands on the Fourth of July, it felt like the right moment to close the loop on the whole series with one more patriot, plus a full accounting of everyone the search turned up.
This last one comes from my wife’s maternal Darling-Huber line, where there’s only a single confirmed Revolutionary War patriot: James Walter.
James Walter (1752–1838)
James Walter was born in Maryland in mid-February 1752 — the 16th or 17th, by most reckonings, though that date is calculated from his age at death rather than a contemporary record. He was the eldest of six children of John Walter and Ann Parker.
His military record is one of the more varied of the ten patriots in this series. Around 1777, in Virginia, he served as a Sergeant, for which he later received land. By the winter of 1782 he’d been reassigned south: muster records place him in an artillery detachment under Capt. Lt. Booker, 1st Regiment, at a camp near Bacon Bridge, South Carolina, with service recorded for January, February, and March of that year. At some point during his service he was also commissioned a Captain. For his various roles he was known, distinctively, as “Forage Master” — the officer responsible for keeping an army’s horses and draft animals fed, a job that mattered just as much as anything done on a battlefield.
In November 1783, he received a warrant for 400 acres of bounty land in Virginia for his service. He married Margaret Ann Swan after April 19, 1783 — “after the war,” as one family account puts it — and the couple settled in Frederick County, Virginia, where they raised at least seven children.
One detail stands out from later in his life: sometime before 1838, while still in Frederick County, James Walter freed the people he had enslaved. He eventually moved to Fairfield County, Ohio, and died on May 10, 1838, at the Lancaster-area home of his oldest daughter. He was originally buried at the old Lancaster City Graveyard, which is now defunct, and was later reinterred in Lancaster’s city burial plot — his Find a Grave memorial notes that the original marker no longer exists. He’s a recognized DAR patriot ancestor (A120153).
One of his daughters, Catherine Ann Dent Walter, married David Swayze and is herself #51 on the Darling-Huber ahnentafel — the link that carries James Walter’s line down through the Swayzes and into the Darling family, and eventually to my wife.
James Walter has actually had his own dedicated posts on this blog before — James Walter buried in Ohio and James Walter & Ohio’s Revolutionary War Roster both go into more depth on his burial and military record. This post just folds him into the four-line roundup.
Ten Patriots, Four Lines, One Fourth of July
That Find a Grave email about the 1776 Badge sent me through all four of my and my wife’s family lines, and the running total came out to an even ten confirmed Revolutionary War patriots:
Brown-Montran (my maternal line)
- Maj. Samuel Wolcott (1736–1802) — Massachusetts militia
- Lieut. John Parsons Sr. (c. 1736–1821) — Massachusetts militia; served under Wolcott, whose daughter later married his son
- Grover Buel (1732–1818) — New York militia
- Wicks Weeks Rowley (1760–1826) — New York militia; married Buel’s daughter
- John B Maben (1753–1813) — New York militia; Irish immigrant patriot
Roberts-Barnes (my paternal line)
- Silas Taft (1744–1813) — Massachusetts militia, marched to Tiverton, RI
- Reuben C. Sutherland (before 1755–1799) — New York militia; his daughter married Taft’s son
Howell-Hobbs (my wife’s paternal line)
- William Rose Sr. (1733–1785) — North Carolina militia, Wagon Master
- William Rose Jr. (1759–1801) — North Carolina militia; Sr.’s son
Darling-Huber (my wife’s maternal line)
- James Walter (1752–1838) — Virginia and South Carolina; Sergeant, Forage Master, and eventually Captain
Looking back at all ten together, a few things stand out. Half of them served in some kind of support or logistics role — wagon master, forage master, militia pay — rather than in a famous battle, which is a good reminder of how much of the Revolution ran on unglamorous, essential work. And in three of the four family lines, the patriots turned out to be connected to each other by marriage within a generation or two, often without my having noticed the connection before pulling them together for this series.
Ten patriots is a good number to sit with on the Fourth of July. There are certainly more out there in collateral lines I haven’t chased down yet — but for now, these are the ten Find a Grave’s anniversary email sent me looking for.