Tips for finding your patriot forefathers

I don't know about you, but I honor and cherish my patriot ancestors who laid down their lives for America's Independence during the American Revolutionary War. I'm thankful every day, but especially this year, as we cross the 250th year milestone.

Having never known that even one of my "grandfathers" participated in the battles, I was thrilled to find that several of them did. I've created a Wall of Honor on my website to keep track of them all because I believe it's important to remember our roots, our heritage, and our inheritance - freedom! I also printed Patriot Certificates for each. You can order printed, personalized "Proud Descendant of a Patriot" certificates on Amazon.

Get your personalized Patriot certificate on Amazo

If you have a printer, you can create and download your certificates instantly from Etsy and print as many as you'd like to hand out to family.

To find out if you have any patriot ancestors, take a looks at your family tree. I like to use Wikitree because it's so vast and collaborative. From any profile, click the Ancestors tab to view a tree. I'd recommend viewing the ancestor tree of each of your 16 great-great grandparents' profiles, or possible from each of your 32 3rd-great grandparents, depending on your age.

In the example below, I'm viewing the paternal ancestors of Betsy Stowell, my 3rd great-grandmother. As you can see, her 2nd great-grandparents, grandparents, and even one of her grandfathers could have participated, and if they were of age, they probably did. Notice her 2nd great-grandfather, Samuel Wood. From his profile we learn that although he was about 60 years old in 1776, he enlisted and was taken prisoner at The Battle of Fort Washington. He was one of the few who lived to tell the story.

Do a little research on each of your grandfathers born in the early to mid-1700s and you might be surprised how many patriot grandfathers you'll realize you have!

If you can't find information from your ancestor's wikitree profile, try these:

1. Search the DAR Patriot Index for the names of your grandfathers living during the Revolution.

2. Try Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors if they lived in Massachusetts.

3. Try the Rolls and lists of Connecticut men in the revolution. 1775-1783 if they lived in Connecticut.

4. Pension files are another great place to find loads of information about your soldiers. You can try FamilySearch for those.

Do you know of any other great places to find records from the American Revolution? Please tell us in the comments below!