Tuesday, September 2, 2014

I THOUGHT I WAS IN LUCK

 

I am convinced or at least I theorize, that James Coleman is the father of Thomas “father”  Coleman, they would be the ancestors of my husbands 2x great grandfather Michael Coleman.

He is now listed on FIND A GRAVE.   In the Civil War Pension, of his son William Thomas, the  deposition lists him as “father 1780-1847.”    He meets all the criteria, no other Thomas Coleman was found with the age in those years.   Another thing about him in the census is he was about eleven years older than his wife “mother 1789-1831.”  The second Thomas Coleman I found had a wife closer in age to him.

Georgie Kratzer Allen had written a book: The  Coleman Brothers Revolutionary War Militiamen of Pennsylvania and (West) Virginia.  He lists in great detail the lines of the brothers Thomas Coleman and Michael Coleman, and also James who is just an after thought with his name and blank spots where his descendants are listed.

I wondered about that for a long time since none of my Coleman Family fit into either lines.  James is looking good as the grandfather, the reason there was no information, as I found out, is there is virtually no documentation  about him.

James has a Revolutionary War Pension file, but it is empty.  My theory is he died young, but why did his wife not file for one?  I have not found land records, he rented, nor have I found a will.

In the same deposition mentioned above it states that the older children of Michael were Baptized by a circuit rider preacher, Reverend Lee.   So on to see if those Methodist records could be found, what I gleaned was that  records of the early church could be stored at Lycoming College, Williamsport PA.  

I heard from the Archivist and found that the circuit riders did not have a home nor kept records of the marriages and baptisms.  He said that they just rode around the territory and stayed where they could including sleeping in the cold outdoors and weathering the seasons and predators. So, I am still back at the beginning on finding James Coleman.

2 comments:

  1. Oh, it's so frustrating, isn't it -- not finding anything specific and definite? I wonder if the papers in his Revolutionary War Pension file were accidentally placed in another file. Isn't there an indexing effort for the RW pension files? (Or is the the War of 1812?)

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  2. That is a possibility, there wasn't any information in the file bearing his name on Fold 3. My cousin stopped in DC and requested the actual file and it was also empty. If I lived there and had a lot of time I could peruse that idea. Thank you for the idea, I did not think of that situation.

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