April 25, 2012
With its large collections of newspapers, historical books and documents, and government records, GenealogyBank provides a wealth of genealogical resources to help you research your family history.
One handy genealogy resource in GenealogyBank is the register of Revolutionary War Burials. The Daughters of the American Revolution issued a report every year of the burial sites of military veterans that served in America’s war for independence.
For example here is the military register entry for Solomon Titus, taken from the Forty-eighth report of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, April 1, 1944, to April 1, 1945, page 228.
This DAR report tells us that Solomon Titus was:
- A private in the Revolutionary War
- In the Battle of White Plains (October 28, 1776)
- In the Battle of Monmouth (June 28, 1778)
- Buried in the Pennington, New Jersey, Presbyterian Churchyard
- There is a file on him at the Veteran’s Administration (now at the National Archives)
- W-2491
Casualty list from the Revolutionary War Battle of White Plains, published by the Freeman’s Journal (Portsmouth, New Hampshire), 3 December 1776, page 2
We can then dig into GenealogyBank’s newspaper archives and find articles about each one of the military battles Titus fought in as the Revolutionary War unfolded. Historical newspaper articles such as this one, providing a summary of the soldiers killed at the Battle of White Plains, published in the Freeman’s Journal (Portsmouth, New Hampshire), 3 December 1776, page 2.
Or the many old newspaper articles about the pivotal Battle of Monmouth, such as this one providing George Washington’s own account of the famous military battle, published in the Continental Journal (Boston, Massachusetts), 23 July 1778, page 1.
(Painting, Washington Rallying the Troops at Monmouth, by Emanuel Leutze. Wikimedia Commons.)
GenealogyBank is the only genealogy website complete enough to let us read about our ancestor’s experiences—like those of Solomon Titus in the Revolutionary War—day by day.
The Daughters of the American Revolution report said that the U.S. government had a file on Solomon Titus, and in the last column it gives the reference number W-2491.
W-2491. What does that mean?
It means that the widow of Solomon Titus applied for a military pension based on his service in the Revolutionary War. We learned in this report that he died on 19 December 1833. Looking in GenealogyBank we find that his wife applied for a widow’s pension and that it was approved in 1839.
(Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States: being the first session of the Twenty-sixth Congress, begun and held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, in the sixty-fourth year of the independence of the said states on page 175.)
So, now we know that his wife’s name was Susannah Titus. A quick search of the early New Jersey marriages shows that her name was Susannah Read and that she and Solomon married in April 1779 in Monmouth County, New Jersey.
We can see a copy of Solomon’s military personnel file, available from the National Archives. Use “Standard Form 180” to make your request.
We can also request a copy of Susannah’s pension application by using Form 85. Be sure to include the pension number: W-2491.
We can gather so much information about our ancestors in the Revolutionary War era!
The Daughters of the American Revolution report also told us that Solomon Titus was buried in the Presbyterian Churchyard in Pennington, New Jersey.
A quick search on Google locates a wide-angle photo of that cemetery on flickr.
Searching Google more, we find a photo of his grave on the website Find-A-Grave.
(Photo by Therese Fenner Boucher on Find-A-Grave.)
