The power of landmark events

 

Faneuil Hall, a Boston landmark

It is said that the further back you go, the harder it is to find records for past ancestors. Unfortunately, that is true most of the time but when it comes to US records there seems to be an exception in some particular cases. We've all heard the stories of people who can trace their ancestors back to the Mayflower. Well, I can't do that, at least not yet. As far as I know, my first ancestor to the eastern shores of North America didn't come to the original American colonies until 1630 but John Tripp did leave a written account, so there is that.

There has been a lot of research done on the Tripp line as evidenced by the information to be found on the Tripp Family Genealogical website http://www.trippgenealogy.org My own offshoot of that line branches off to Charles Tripp who was born in 1761 in Duchess County, New York. Luckily, he fought in the American Revolution. That is another event that US researchers like to trace their lines back to. It also meant that Charles was entitled to a pension and, after he died, his wife, Jane, was entitled to a widow's pension because of his service. Only there was no marriage certificate so she had to prove they had been married. You know what that means, records. Lots of lovely documents which I found on Ancestry in the US Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800-1900. There were even some affidavits sworn to by some of her male Woodworth cousins. I'm hoping to figure out where they fit in my family tree as I increase its width to make it more usable for DNA purposes. 

In the meantime, there was also information written about Jane's father, Solomon Woodworth, who fought and died in the conflict. That led me to information about his father, Caleb. And when I searched for Caleb Woodworth I turned up records for Solomon's brother, Saleh, in an Ancestry database for the U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970. It was filed in 1959 and included a detailed lineage from the earliest known male ancestor down to the applicant. I wonder if any of the other Woodworth kin went this promising route.