#georgewashington — Public Fediverse posts

#GeorgeWashington was a second-rate, two bit huckster, and traitor to his nation (Britain), who betrayed his oaths of office because he didn't get a promotion, and was instrumental in a war because he was going to lose a property speculation scheme.

He's a perfect model to be immortalised by Donald Trump; representing everything Trump, and #USia is.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/12/trump-smithsonian-george-washington-statue-exhibit

@meidastouch.com host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump's late-night posting spree as major geopolitical developments unfold around the world. Meiselas covers Trump's unusual posts about #GeorgeWashington and AI imagery while the Iran war disrupts global energy routes
youtu.be/pkq1tlye6kA?...

Trump JUST CRACKED at 1 A.M.…

La nascita degli Stati Uniti: indipendenza, guerra e vittoria

https://www.psicospace.it/la-nascita-degli-stati-uniti-indipendenza-guerra-e-vittoria/

#Trump #DonaldTrump #America #USA #Song #UnitedStates #Rushmore #Music #MountRushmore #presidents #Washington #Jefferson #AI #Roosevelt #Lincoln #Funny #Harmony #GeorgeWashington #Video #ThomasJefferson #Viral #TheodoreRoosevelt #YouTube #AbrahamLincoln #USPol #Politics Trump’s clearly a basket case, and how can anyone possibly disagree with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arlEWzeZMxg&list=RDq0YtFs9VwBU&index=2&ra=m

Trump 2028? Even Trump has begun hinting it may not happen

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has frequently suggested he wants to seek a third term, posti…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #BillClinton #constitutionallaw #DistrictofColumbia #DonaldTrump #Elections #Florida #FranklinD.Roosevelt #Generalnews #GeorgeWashington #george-w-bush #Governmentandpolitics #JDVance #JoeBiden #NewYork #OliviaWales #PaulBegala #Politics #UnitedStates #Us #USA #Washingtonnews
https://www.newsbeep.com/712618/

US pulls last aircraft carrier in Asia as Trump focuses on Iran and the Western Hemisphere

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s war against Iran is stretching the limits of U.S. aircraft carriers and l…
#NewsBeep #News #BreakingNews #AbrahamLincoln #breakingnews #BryanClark #DarylCaudle #DonaldTrump #EvanSankey #FrankBradley #GeorgeWashington #gerald-ford #GregPoling #Iran #MichaelSwaine #NicolasMaduro #RobertFarley #TheodoreRoosevelt #Washingtonnews #Worldnews
https://www.newsbeep.com/692336/

New White House Rose Garden statue created by Trump sculptor https://www.allforgardening.com/1887515/new-white-house-rose-garden-statue-created-by-trump-sculptor/ #AlexanderHamilton #BenFranklin #BronzeStatue #DonaldTrump #garden #GeorgeLundeen #GeorgeWashington #Jefferson #OvalOffice #RoseGarden #TrumpInternationalGolfClub #WhiteHouse

"I have been thinking of #allyship specifically since recently participating in a Fellowship and Summer Institute on #Antisemitism & #JewishIdentity in Educational Settings at my alma mater, The #GeorgeWashington #University. One of the overarching themes from this program was the ways in which individuals who identify as #Jewish may often feel compelled to hide this aspect of their identity, for fear of being targeted or treated negatively.

Another takeaway is that in the context of discussing marginalized identities, #Jews as a group may not always be recognized. For instance, notions of systemic #racism oftentimes bring to mind Black identity or other people of color (#POC). This becomes sticky when reflecting on how to categorize Jewish people, as racializing this group has been one particularly pernicious way of demonizing and oppressing them historically."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/the-first-impression/202606/what-does-allyship-look-like-right-now

The Men Without Monuments: A Biblical Perspective

https://polymathchristian.wordpress.com/2026/06/24/the-men-without-monuments-a-biblical-perspective/

Celebrate USA’s 250th Birthday With A Garden That Honors The Country’s Founders https://www.allforgardening.com/1836811/celebrate-usas-250th-birthday-with-a-garden-that-honors-the-countrys-founders/ #250thBirthday #burpee #ColonialGardens #garden #gardening #GeorgeWashington #KitchenGarden #MarthaWashington #SeedKit #ThomasJefferson

Robert Leonard (bef. 1730 – 1780): Discharge Document from British 35th Regiment of Foot (1762)

Or, Subtitled: “Lennard Serjt in Capt Allen’s Company has served honestly and faithfully”

And now the military discharge document: As my initial posting in this series about Robert Leonard notes, Thomas D. Leonard states in his “Biography of the Leonards,” “His discharge as a soldier of the English Army is yet in existence. It is in the family of Griffith Leonard in Tenn.; and I have seen it.”

The discharge document is extant. It is now in the Southern Historical Collection at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, to which a Leonard descendant donated it in 1993. In May 2008, Beverly Dean Peoples, a researcher who descends from Gwendolyn James Dean, a sister of Thomas Leonard’s (1752-1832) wife Hannah James,[1] kindly sent me a valuable set of notes about Robert Leonard’s discharge paper after she examined it carefully at Southern Historical Collection.

Beverly’s notes tell me that the document is (or was then) in an oversize folder tagged “Misc. Records” with no contributor or special collection of any kind noted.[2] In the folder were eight documents, none of which seemed related to the other. Robert’s discharge document is pitifully worn and crumbled, according to Beverly — six rectangles of old paper about 4 x 6 inches each sewn together by hand with tiny stitches. It appeared to Beverly that what had been an original discharge document had been folded and had eventually come apart at the folds, so that the pieces were stitched together to reassemble the parts. Even then, most of the edges of the document are gone, Beverly reported, and often big sections of the page were missing.

Beverly noted that the discharge paper has writing on both sides. She offered the following transcript:

Witt: Forbis.

His Majesty’s 35 Regt.

General Charles Otway

These are to certify that ther

Lennard Sergt. In Capt Allen’s Campaign has served honestly and faithfully for the.

And is hereby discharged having been.

During the War.

24th day of July inclusive

at Havana the 5th day.

Robert Leonard Srgt.

In her book Tennessee Phantoms, Audrey Matthews offers both photographic images of the discharge paper (or of a portion of the paper) and the following transcription:[3]

His Majesty’s 35th Regim ⏤          

General Charles Otwayes Co

These are to certify that the ⏤

Lennard Serjt in Capt Allen’s Company

has served honestly and faithfully for ther ⏤

⏤  nd is hereby Discharged Having been

⏤  uns? the War

Within to be just, and to have received

24th Day of July Inclusive

Robert Leneard Serjt

Working with an archivist assisting her at the Southern Historical Collection, Beverly Peoples determined that the discharge papers evidently date from 1760-1764.

So the following important pieces of information may be gleaned from Robert Leonard’s discharge paper:

• He served as a sergeant under Captain Allen in General Charles James Otway’s HM 35th Regiment of Foot.

• He was discharged from this British military unit at Havana on 24 July in a year that appears to fall between 1760-4.

Charles James Otway (1694-1764) was a senior British Army officer who commanded the 35th Regiment of Foot from 1717 until his death in 1764. In April 1756, the 35th Regiment left Ireland, where it was then stationed, for North America for service in the French and Indian War, or as historians often name it, the Seven Years’ War, because the war was a global conflict and not an exclusively North American one.[4] Having landed in New York, the 35th began garrison duties on the northern frontier of the British American colonies, sending detachments to Mobile and up the Mississippi valley. In March 1757, five companies under Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Monro including Captain Richard Allen’s unit marched from Albany toward Fort Edward and Monro assumed command of Fort William Henry.

In August 1757, Fort William Henry fell to French forces under Montcalm and following the surrender of the 35th and other British troops, a massacre occurred in violation of the treaty of surrender, with a number of those in the 35th Regiment among those killed. Soldiers of the 35th then withdrew and re-formed, and in July 1758, took part in the siege and capture of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia. The 35th then played a key role in the battle of Québec in 1759, with the battle of the Plains of Abraham on 13 September 1759 resulting in the capture of Québec by the British.

After Montréal fell following the final and decisive campaign of this North American part of the war between July and September 1760, the 35th, having completed its operations in North America, then took part in a West Indies campaign (1761-2) and was transferred south, taking part in the capture of Martinique in January 1762 and the Spanish stronghold of Havana in the summer of 1762.

Put together the information we can glean from Robert Leonard’s discharge document, the history of HM 35th Regiment of Foot in the period 1756-1762, and Robert Leonard’s documented service on the western Maryland frontier under Dagworthy, and a very interesting picture emerges: as noted previously, we can document that Robert was serving under Dagworthy by 8 February 1755.[5] As I’ll explain in a detail in a subsequent posting focusing on his military service in Maryland, a steady stream of documents then shows Robert continuing to serve Dagworthy’s captain in command at Fort Frederick, Alexander Beall, up to November 1758, when he was discharged from Beall’s military unit. In March 1759, we find Robert witnessing the discharge of another soldier from Beall’s troops, and that may indicate that he was still in Frederick County up to that date before he entered the service of the 35th Regiment and then took part in the Québec campaign in September 1759.

We know from Robert’s discharge paper that he joined Otway’s 35th Regiment and served under Captain Allen in that regiment. We also know from Thomas Dunlap Leonard in his “Biography of the Leonards” that Robert was in the battle of Québec. As we’ve just seen, the pivotal event in that battle took place in the battle of the Plains of Abraham in September 1759, and it can be documented that the 35th, with Allen’s troops included, played an important role in that event. So it appears that by September 1759, Robert Leonard was serving under Otway and Allen.

He was then discharged at Havana — the discharge paper states the place explicitly — on 24 July of an unstated year. Histories of the 35th show it capturing Havana in the summer of 1762. From some point in 1759 through July 1762, then, Robert Leonard served as a sergeant in Captain Richard Allen’s regiment of Otway’s 35th Regiment of Foot. At this point, he evidently returned to his wife Honor and their children in Maryland and then when the American Revolution got underway, it can be documented that he enlisted on 19 August 1779 in Frederick County as a sergeant in Captain John Reynolds’ company of the 7th Maryland Regiment.

Robert Leonard’s discharge document shows a Forbis witnessing the discharge in Havana in July 1762. This was Major William Forbes, who served with the 35th Foot during its campaigns across North America and the Caribbean and was in command of the unit at Pensacola in 1763.

Though one descendant of Robert Leonard has sought to convince me that the man of that name serving as a sergeant at Fort Frederick in the 1750s is a different person than the sergeant who was discharged from the 35th Regiment in July 1762, it’s clear to me that these are the very same man, the Robert Leonard to whose son Thomas and his descendants the military discharge document passed down. Thomas’ grandson Thomas D. Leonard, who would likely have had this information from Thomas and his wife Hannah, explicitly tells us that Robert Leonard was a soldier of the English army in the “War of 1760” who was at the battle of Québec (in 1759), and that he had seen Robert’s discharge paper at the house of Thomas Leonard’s son Griffith James Leonard.

Then in a power of attorney Robert’s widow Honor made with sons Thomas and Robert and son-in-law Colin Campbell in 1800, we’re told that Robert Leonard served as a “Sergeant in the war of 1753” connected to Washington, who was headquartered at Fort Cumberland in 1755 when we have every reason to think Robert Leonard was at that fort serving under Dagworthy. Document after document subsequently places Robert at Fort Frederick after that fort was built in 1756. In these documents as in the discharge document, Robert Leonard has the rank of sergeant, a rank the very same Robert Leonard subsequently held when he joined Maryland troops during the Revolutionary War.

In my next posting, I’ll look closely at the documentation we have for Robert Leonard’s service in the French and Indian War.

[1] See Beverly Dean Peoples and Ralph Terry Dean, Country Cousins: Descendants of Samuel Dean, 2nd ed. (Franklin, North Carolina: Genealogy Publishing Service, 2001),

[2] Working with an archivist, Beverly determined that the discharge paper had been donated to Southern Historical Collection in 1993 by Shirley Leonard of New Mexico.

[3] The Tennessee Phantoms (Prosser, Washington, 1989).

[4] See A.E. Readman, ed., Records of the Royal Sussex Regiment (Chichester: West Sussex County Council, 1985); Richard Trimen, An Historical Memoir of the 35th Royal Sussex Regiment of Foot (Southampton: The Southampton Times Newspaper and Printing and Publishing Co., 1873); Seven Years’ War Journal of the Proceedings of the 35th Regiment of Foot (1757), available digitally at Archive.org; John M. Kitzmiller, In Search of the “Forlorn Hope” (Ogden, Utah: Meridian, 1988); and University of New Brunswick Library, “Muster Books and Pay Lists (WO 12/4949): 35th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot: 1760-61, 1765-1782,” (Great Britain, War Office, PRO WO 12/4949) in The Loyalist Collection.

[5] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. E, pp. 659-660.

@autistics

So, let's talk about 1976. At the time, I was in a "special needs" program at a school way bigger than the 2 room village schoolhouse I had been attending. The teachers at the new school encouraged all the students to write essays about the #AmericanRevolution -- the prize being a trip to Philadelphia to participate in the #Bicentennial. I managed to win the contest with a very graphic essay about #GeorgeWashington's troops in #ValleyForge (mentioning the possibility of #cannibalism -- one of my obsessions at the time, along with Zombies). Anyhow, in order to participate in the parade, we had to dress in period clothes. I *insisted* on having a boy-man's uniform (which I made in a very public interview with the local press), and I got my way! And marched with the boys/men, with the fife and drum squad and flag bearers (I played the flute). Unfortunately, I was there by myself, with no family to take photos of me. But here's a photo of the group I was part of. And bonus... I got to spend the night at Valley Forge, telling my tales of Revolutionary cannibalism!

#AmericanRevolution #Reenactment #GenderFluidity #GenderFluid #BornThisWay #ActuallyAutistic #HistoryGeek #ZombieGeek #July4th #USHistory

Thomas Leonard (1752-1832), Son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard: Maryland Beginnings

Or, Subtitled: “Formerly Sergeant in the war of 1753 Genl. Washinton’s first Ridgiment and in the Late American war with Britain in the Maryland Ridgiment as Sergeant till killd. in Genl. Gatises Defiat”

Date of Birth

The dates of birth and death of Thomas Leonard, son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard, are recorded on his tombstone in the Leonard family cemetery north of Petersburg, Marshall County, Tennessee. The cemetery, which I visited in February 2008, is on the land Thomas Leonard bought in then Lincoln, now Marshall County, in September 1809 when he moved his family from Pendleton District, South Carolina, to Tennessee. The family lived on this land about 2½ miles north of Petersburg, the Marshall County seat, at what’s now called Leonard Bluff on Liberty Valley Road. The cemetery is located behind the site of an old family house known as the Leonard homestead that stood up to the middle of the 20th century but was no longer there by the 1990s.[1] I’ll discuss this house in more detail later.

The Leonard family cemetery in which Thomas Leonard and wife Hannah James Leonard are buried is said by family tradition to date to the generation of Thomas’ mother Honor Pritchard Leonard, who accompanied the family from South Carolina to Tennessee and is thought by descendants to have died after 1810. According to researcher Elizabeth Lucie Leonard Baxter, Honor is buried in the cemetery in an unmarked grave.[2] When I visited the cemetery in 2008, I noted a row of headstones too weathered to read, in a shape and style that suggested to me that these stones might date from the early 19th century. By 2008, the tombstones of Thomas and wife Hannah were also impossible for me to read. Thomas’ Find a Grave memorial page includes a photo of his stone that is fairly clear and allows the inscription to be made out.[3] See the top of this posting for a digital image.

It reads:

Thomas Leonard

Born

Oct. 15 1752

Died

April 8 1832

The tombstones of Thomas and wife Hannah are matching stones that appear to date from not long after Hannah’s death on 3 November 1842. I suspect, but do not know for certain, that they were erected by Thomas and Hannah’s son Griffith James Leonard (1787-1864), who inherited the family homeplace in his father’s will, and who lived there up to his death. Griffith and his wife are buried in the family cemetery along with several generations of their descendants and other family members.

As a previous posting notes, in his 1883 manuscript entitled “Biography of the Leonards,” Thomas Leonard’s grandson Thomas Dunlap Leonard (1810-1888), a son of Thomas and Hannah Leonard’s son Robert (1777-1844), states that Thomas Leonard’s father Robert Leonard (bef. 1730-1780) was “a soldier of the English Army” who came to Maryland — as a British soldier — around 1750.[4] As the linked posting also tells you (and see here), Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s manuscript states as well that he knew his grandparents Thomas and Hannah James personally, and that he grew up in Tennessee close to them before his family moved to nearby Madison County, Alabama, about 1818. His information on the early generations of the Leonard family rests on what his grandparents shared with him and other family members.

Place of Birth

Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s manuscript does not state a place of birth for his grandfather Thomas Leonard, but does indicate that Thomas married wife Hannah James “of Maryland” about 1775, and the family then lived in Maryland before moving to South Carolina in 1786. As the previously linked posting also says, a number of records place Thomas Leonard’s father Robert at Fort Frederick some eighteen miles west of Hagerstown in the period leading up to the Revolution. Historian Henry Peden notes that Robert Leonard was stationed at Fort Frederick by August 1757, and that the account book of Colonel John Dagworthy, field commander at Fort Frederick in 1756, shows Robert Leonard paid for service by Dagworthy on 7 March 1763.[5] A document dated 8 February 1755 shows Robert Leonard indenturing his son William on that date to a local farmer and identifying himself as a soldier serving under Captain “Dagurthey.”[6]

These records suggest that when Robert Leonard’s son Thomas was born on 15 October 1752, he was very likely born in the part of Frederick County, Maryland, that would become Washington County in September 1776. Fort Frederick, where we can definitely place Thomas Leonard’s father Robert by 1757, was constructed in 1756 west of Hagerstown, as noted above, in what’s now Washington County.  Its construction was financed by Joseph Chapline of Sharpsburg in Washington County, who had ties to Griffith James, who lived at Sharpsburg and whose daughter Hannah Thomas Leonard married about 1775.[7] The likelihood that Thomas Leonard was born in Hagerstown in Frederick (later Washington) County, Maryland, seems to me very strong.[8]

Revolutionary Service, Hagerstown, Maryland, Militia

Previously, I’ve also noted that Thomas Leonard appears in a list of members of the first military company organized for the Revolutionary war in Hagerstown on 6 January 1776.[9] Thomas J. Scharf, whose History of Western Maryland including Frederick and Washington Counties I’ve just footnoted, transcribes a declaration the militia members signed on this date in January, noting that the company was being formed to serve the Council of Safety of Maryland. As the linked posting notes, in addition to Thomas Leonard, those signing included Richard Moore, whose father Daniel Moore lived in Sharpsburg next to a Dean family intermarried with the family of Griffith James, as well as brothers Samuel and Thomas Dean.[10] Samuel Dean was Thomas Leonard’s brother-in-law. He married Gwendolyn James, sister of Thomas’ wife Hannah James, in 1773. This militia unit was under the command of Joseph Chapline, the founder of Sharpsburg, who was connected to Thomas Leonard’s father-in-law Griffith James from the time Griffith James first appears in Sharpsburg records in September 1763.[11]

Sharpsburg is bit over thirteen miles south of Hagerstown, which was originally known as Elizabethtown. Scharf is citing minutes of the Elizabethtown District Committee of Observation for 5 June 1776, which say that on that date, a list was presented to the committee compiled on 6 January 1776 of a group of men who signed their names to a resolution to form a militia per a resolution of the Provincial Convention held at Annapolis on 26 July 1775.[12] Thomas Leonard’s sister Mary Ann married Colin Campbell at Hagerstown on 27 July 1780, and Hannah James’s sister Mary James married Harmon Cummings on 7 September 1779 at Hagerstown.[13] Both couples were married by Reverend George Mitchell of Hagerstown.[14]

We can, then, confidently place Thomas Leonard in a militia company organized for Hagerstown in Washington County, Maryland, in January 1776, in the year after it’s thought he married Hannah James of nearby Sharpsburg. In the same militia company was Samuel Dean, who married Hannah’s sister Gwendolyn in 1773. Signing next to Thomas Leonard in the declaration establishing this militia was Richard Moore, who had close ties to the family of Griffith James into which Thomas Leonard and Samuel Dean married. And leading the militia unit was Joseph Chapline, the founder of Sharpsburg with ties to Griffith James. In September 1779, another sister of Hannah and Gwendolyn James, their sister Mary, married Harmon Cummings in Hagerstown, and in July 1780, Thomas Leonard’s sister Mary Ann married Colin Campbell in Hagerstown. Both of these couples were married by Rev. George Mitchell, a Hagerstown pastor.

There are multiple pointers to Hagerstown or nearby Sharpsburg as the place in which Thomas Leonard lived from the time he married Hannah James about 1775, Hagerstown also being his probable place of birth…. Then in or just before 1786, as noted above, Thomas Leonard and wife Hannah moved their family to Pendleton District, South Carolina. This is a move that Thomas and Hannah made along with her sister Gwendolyn and husband Samuel Dean and her sister Mary and husband Harmon Cummings. The tradition of these families is that they moved to South Carolina from Washington County, Maryland.[15]

Dean Family’s Connections to Cumberland (and Bedford) County, Pennsylvania

But researcher Beverly Dean Peoples, a descendant of Samuel Dean and Gwenny James, finds a pattern of back-and-forth movement of some of her Dean ancestors from Washington County, Maryland to Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and its daughter counties of Bedford and Huntingdon in the 1770s.[16] Beverly states, “[P]rior to the move to SC with his wife’s family, Samuel [Dean] had tried to establish a home in the now Huntingdon County, PA area with his brothers Thomas, William and John.” Land records place Samuel in Huntingdon’s parent county of Bedford in 1774, and histories of the area state that he began building a house in Bedford County in 1773. Beverly thinks that Samuel’s brother William first claimed land in Cumberland County in 1766 before Beford was split from Cumberland in 1771, with Huntingdon then being formed from Bedford in 1787.

Since Samuel Dean is in the January 1776 Hagerstown militia list with his brother-in-law Thomas Leonard, he evidently had not moved his family permanently from Maryland to Pennsylvania in these years. Beverly notes that the reported birthplaces of the children of Samuel Dean and Gwendolyn James suggest that the family may have been coming and going in the 1770s between Maryland and Pennsylvania, and that as the Dean brothers were considering new locations for their families in Pennsylvania, they may have left their wives in Washington County for much of the time when they were sojourning in Pennsylvania, where skirmishes between native peoples and settlers of European descent were creating dangers for incoming settlers. Beverly Peoples notes that Samuel returned to Washington County from Pennsylvania for good in 1784, selling his land in Pennsylvania, and at this point, he joined with his brothers-in-law in their plan to move to South Carolina.

I mention Beverly’s well-researched findings about the history of the Dean family during this period because if Thomas Leonard’s brother-in-law Samuel Dean was moving with his brothers between Washington County, Maryland, and Cumberland (or Bedford) County, Pennsylvania, in the 1770s and early 1780s, it seems to me worth asking if Thomas Leonard might have been making similar moves. We know that he was definitely in the Hagerstown militia in 1776, and he begins appearing in Pendleton District, South Carolina, records in 1786. So the time frame in which I’m suggesting that Thomas might have spent some time in Cumberland or Bedford Counties, Pennsylvania, would be in that decade, 1776-1786.

In fact, I have not found any clear records showing this Thomas Leonard in Cumberland or Bedford County, Pennsylvania, in that decade. However, I want to point to a record I shared in a previous posting. In the posting I’ve just linked, I shared a digital image of a 12 September 1800 power of attorney given by signed by Thomas, his brother Robert, their mother Honor, and their brother-in-law Colin Campbell to James Irwin of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. I’ve reposted that image here. As the linked posting explains, this document passed down among descendants of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James and in 1972 was in the possession of descendant Leonard Wilson of Petersburg, Tennessee. I have not found this power of attorney recorded in court records of Pendleton District, South Carolina, or Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

September 1800 Power of Attorney of Leonard Heirs to James Irwin of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania

As you’ll see as you look at the image of this power of attorney, what it says is not easy to make out. Part of the document is torn away, and some words defeat me as I try to read them. The following transcript is my best attempt at reading this document:

The Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, location of James Irwin leaps out at me, of course, as I read this document in conjunction with Beverly People’s research about her Dean family members of Washington County, Maryland, before Samuel Dean and wife Gwendolyn James moved in 1786 with Thomas Leonard and Hannah James to Pendleton District, South Carolina. Who was James Irwin, and how were the Leonard family members giving him this power of attorney in 1800 connected to him?

In particular, why were they asking him to recover pay due to Robert Leonard for Robert’s service in the French and Indian War and then in the Revolution? This document states that Robert served as a sergeant in George Washington’s first regiment in the “war of 1753.” I think that “war of 1753” is a reference to what is now conventionally called the French and Indian War: Robert’s heirs are not stating that he served under Washington in the year 1753 specifically but in the war that began with hostilities building in 1753 and open warfare commencing in 1754.

As noted previously, we have documentary evidence that Robert Leonard was serving as a British soldier under John Dagworthy in western Maryland by February 1755. In 1756, construction began on Fort Frederick near Hagerstown, with construction completed the following year.[17] As stated above, we know from documentary evidence that Robert Leonard was serving under Dagworthy at Fort Frederick in 1757.[18] Dagworthy’s troops were at Fort Cumberland on the Potomac west of Fort Frederick prior to their move to Fort Frederick. Virginia took possession of Fort Cumberland in the fall of 1755 and this placed Dagworthy on what historian Eric Sterner calls a “collision course” with Washington.[19] Washington was considered to be in charge of the fort, but Dagworthy saw him as a young upstart and refused to submit to his command.

As construction began on Fort Frederick in July 1756, Washington visited the fort, and in June 1758, he returned to the fort during his campaign to capture Fort Duquesne. All during these years, with documentary evidence that Dagworthy paid Robert Leonard for service in March 1763,[20] there was interaction, usually hostile on the side of Dagworthy, between Robert Leonard’s commander John Dagworthy and George Washington. And there were questions about who was in command of whom, so that confusion about whether Robert Leonard was serving under Dagworthy or Washington for part of this period of time is understandable.

The 1780 power of attorney goes on to state that Robert Leonard then served during the Revolution as a sergeant and was killed in the defeat of General Gates. Horatio Gates was defeated by the British at the battle of Camden in South Carolina in August 1780.

And to return to the question of who James Irwin was and why the heirs of Robert Leonard gave him power of attorney in 1800 to recover pay due to Robert for his service in these two wars: there were multiple James Irwins living in Cumberland County in the period 1780-1800. I’ve entertained the idea that a man of this name who was a captain in the 5th company of Cumberland County’s 2nd militia battalion in 1780 is the James Irwin to whom the Leonard heirs gave power of attorney in 1800.[21] I suggest this possibility  because I suspect that the James Irwin of the power of attorney had some military background and ties, if the Leonard heirs were asking him to retrieve back pay for Robert Leonard’s military service.

But I honestly don’t know enough about the Irwin families in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, in this period to be certain that this James is the man named in the Leonard power of attorney. I have also entertained the possibility that a Thomas Leonard who was serving as a lieutenant in a Cumberland County militia unit under Captain William Black is Thomas, son of Robert and Honor, but I suspect this was an entirely different Thomas Leonard.[22] A Thomas Leonard born in New Jersey in 1753 married Esther Cookson in Cumberland County in 1781, with his affidavit given as he claimed a Revolutionary pension stating that he moved to Cumberland County in 1780 after having given Revolutionary service in New Jersey.[23] I think it’s highly likely he was the man who was a lieutenant in a Cumberland County militia unit in 1780.

I do, however, think it’s well worth noting that the heirs of Robert Leonard gave power of attorney to a James Irwin of Cumberland County in 1800, asking him to recover pay due to Robert for Revolutionary service. I think this is well worth noting when we know from Beverly Dean’s exhaustive research on the family of Thomas Leonard’s brother-in-law Samuel Dean that Samuel and his brothers were trekking back and forth between Washington County, Maryland, and Cumberland/Bedford Counties, Pennsylvania, in the 1770s and first part of the 1780s.

By 9 February 1786, Thomas Leonard with wife Hannah James had moved, along with Samuel Dean and wife Gwendolyn James, Harmon Cummings and wife Mary James, and Colin Campbell and wife Mary Ann Leonard, from Washington County, Maryland, to Pendleton District, South Carolina. In my next posting, I’ll pick up the story of Thomas Leonard’s life from the start of his years in South Carolina.

[1] In a telephone conversation with me on 16 December 1996, Jackie Leonard of Athens, Alabama, told me that Leonard homestead land was owned in 1996 by Tommy Wilson, owner of a horse farm, Ridge Vale Farms, whose address was Rt. 1, Petersburg, TN 37144.

[2] See Elizabeth Lucie Leonard Baxter, “Leonard Family,” Marshall County, Tennessee, Historical Quarterly 6,2 (summer 1975), and “Thomas Leonard Family Graveyard,” Marshall County, Tennessee, Historical Quarterly 10,1 (spring 1979), both reporting a transcription of the cemetery headstones made by Baxter on 28 January 1968.

[3] See Find a Grave memorial page for Thomas Leonard, Leonard cemetery, Marshall County, Tennessee, created by Donna B., maintained by LookingForFamily, with a tombstone photo by Jimmy Trout.

[4] Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards” (1883 manuscript now circulated as typescript; present whereabouts are not known).

[5] Henry C. Peden Jr., Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763 (Lewes, Delaware: Colonial Roots, 2004).

[6] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. E, pp. 659-660.

[7] See Frederick County, Maryland, Deed Bk. J, pp. 798-802, stating that Chapline had sold 215 acres to Daniel Moore and Griffith James. On Joseph Chapline and the founding of Sharpsburg, see Edward C. Papenfuse, A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); Lee and Barbara Barron, The History of Sharpsburg, Maryland, Founded by Joseph Chapline 1763 (1972), pp. 8f; Maria J. Liggett Dare, Chaplines from Maryland and Virginia (priv. publ., 1902); and Thomas J.C. Williams, A History of Washington County, Maryland, etc., vol. 1 (Hagerstown, 1906; repr. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1968), pp. 23-4.

[8] The one child of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James who was still living when the 1880 federal census was taken was their youngest child Hannah (1795-1886), widow of William Depriest Moore. Hannah was living in 1880 in Marshall County, Tennessee, with her daughter Angelina and Angelina’s husband Joseph John Skidmore Gill. On the 1880 census, Hannah reported the birthplace of both of her parents as Maryland: see 1880 federal census, Marshall County, Tennessee, 4th civil district p. 347 C (ED 135, dwelling 88/family 101; 7 June).

[9] See J. Thomas Scharf, History of Western Maryland: Being a History of Frederick, Montgomery, Carroll, Washington, Allegany, and Garrett Counties, etc., vol. 2 (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1882), pp. 1189-1190.

[10] The Dean home tract, Hunting the Hare, and Griffith James’ home tract, Pough, were across from each other on present-day Burnside Bridge Road close to its intersection with present-day Mills Road just outside Sharpsburg to the southeast. I visited this area in August 2007 and took photos of both pieces of land.

[11] See Frederick County, Maryland, Deed Bk. J, pp. 798-802, stating that Chapline had sold 215 acres to Daniel Moore and Griffith James. On Joseph Chapline and the founding of Sharpsburg, see Edward C. Papenfuse, A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); Lee and Barbara Barron, The History of Sharpsburg, Maryland, Founded by Joseph Chapline 1763 (1972), pp. 8f; Maria J. Liggett Dare, Chaplines from Maryland and Virginia (priv. publ., 1902); and Thomas J.C. Williams, A History of Washington County, Maryland, etc., vol. 1 (Hagerstown, 1906; repr. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1968), pp. 23-4.

[12] See Henry C. Peden Jr., Revolutionary Patriots of Washington County, Maryland 1776-1783 (Westminster, Maryland: Family Line, 1998), p. 210, citing “Proceedings of the Committee of Observation for Elizabeth Town District [Washington County],” Maryland Historical Magazine 12 (1917), p. 270; and Williams, A History of Washington County, p. 1189.

[13] See Maryland Historical Society, Maryland Marriages 1777-1804 (1949), p. 226; and Gaius Marcus Brumbaugh, Maryland Records, vol. 2 (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1928; repr. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1967), p. 522.

[14] In a 3 March 2006 email to me, researcher Barbara Horne told me that she lived in Washington County and believed that Mitchell was a Reformed minister.

[15] See Beverly Dean Peoples and Ralph Terry Dean, Country Cousins: Descendants of Samuel Dean (Franklin, North Carolina: Genealogy Publishing Service, 2001).

[16] See “Richard Deane (1701-1788) and His Children” at Rootsweb.

[17] See Debra R. Boender, “Fort Frederick (Maryland,” in Colonial Wars of North America, 1512-1763: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan Gallay (Oxford: Routledge, 1996), pp. 236-7;“Frederick, Fort,” in Encyclopedia of the French and Indian War in North America, 1754-1763, ed. Donald I. Stoelzel (Westminster, Maryland: Heritage Books, 2008), p. 160; Maryland Park Service, “Fort Frederick State Park History,” at website of  Maryland Department of Natural Resources; and “Fort Frederick,” in Forts of the United States: An  Historical Dictionary, 16th Through 19th Centuries, ed. Bud Hannings (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2006), p. 193.

[18] See supra, n. 5.

[19] Eric Sterner, “General John Dagworthy: George Washington’s Forgotten American Rival,” Journal of the American Revolution (online; 11 October 2017). See also George W. Marshall, Memoir of Brigadier-General John Dagworthy of the Revolutionary War (Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, 1895), pp. 13-15; “General John Dagworthy,” in Biographical and Genealogical History of the State of Delaware, vol. 1 (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: J.M. Runk, 1899), pp. 105-6; “Dagworthy Controversy,” at The Ladies of Mount Vernon’s George Washington’s Mount Vernon website; and “John Dagworthy” at Wikipedia.

[20] See supra, n. 5.

[21] Pennsylvania State Archives, “Cumberland County Revolutionary War Militia,” online at the website of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. On 18 October 1835 in Butler County, Ohio, a James Irwin deposed as he applied for a Revolutionary pension, stating that he was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, on 16 October 1758. This is not the James Irwin who signed the 1800 Leonard power of attorney. The signature of this James Irwin on his pension affidavit does not match the signature of James Irwin of the power of attorney: see NARA, Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, compiled ca. 1800 – ca. 1912, documenting the period ca. 1775 – ca. 1900, RG 15, file of James Irwin, Pennsylvania, S9743, available digitally at Fold3. In February 1833, James Irwin deposed in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, which was formed from Cumberland County, as he applied for a Revolutionary pension. The signature of this James on his affidavit does not match that of the James of the 1800 power of attorney: see ibid., file of James Irwin, Pennsylvania, W3689, available digitally at Fold3.

[22] Pennsylvania Archives, fifth series, vol. 6, ed. Thomas Lynch Montgomery (Harrisburg: Harrisburg Publishing Company, 1906), p. 340.

[23] NARA, Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, compiled ca. 1800 – ca. 1912, documenting the period ca. 1775 – ca. 1900, RG 15, file of Thomas and Esther Leonard, available digitally at Fold3. See also S. Falsey, “Sgt. Thomas Leonard,” at Brad Leonard’s Leonard Genealogy – Solomons Leonard of Duxbury and Bridgewater.

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