My mother died today

Marlene L. Plambeck, sixty-eight years old, born 27 September 1935.

One of her memories from the 1940s:

After school on Wednesdays I was to check in with Grandma in the Presbyterian Church basement in Valentine, Nebraska [map]. My job when I arrived was to cut quilting thread in pieces 18 to 20 inches long and keep four or five needles threaded for these ladies. Only now, nearly 40 years later, do I fully realize the value of this small service I provided.

(Read more about Nebraska quilts and quilting).

She was a retired university English teacher and dedicated amateur genealogist. In the 1970s she established, by an unlikely sequence of last-born children to large families, that one of her great- great- grandfathers, a man named William Nicholas, was once a soldier—on the winning side—in the American Revolutionary War. This gained her admission to the Daughters of the American Revolution (or "DAR"), an organization which she described to me as "a bunch of little old ladies."

That's only two "greats" to reach a Revolutionary War ancestor, a fact that I've always found amazing. So my five year old son Henry, a kindergartner in Palo Alto in the year 2003, is just four greats from a Revolutionary War ancestor.

On 7 June 1832, the United States Congress passed an act which outlined benefits that were available to men who had served in the militia in during the American Revolution. On 17 October 1832, at age seventy-three, William Nicholas appeared before a court of law in Columbiana County, Ohio, to make a (successful) claim for benefits. Here is one complete pleading my mother uncovered:

STATE OF OHIO

Columbiana County
Common Pleas
October 17, 1832

On this seventeenth day of October A.D. 1832 personally appeared in open Court, before the judges of the Court of Common Pleas now sitting, William Nicholas, a resident of Hanover Township in the county and state aforesaid, aged seventy-three years, who first being made duly sworn according to law doth on his oath make the following declaration in order to obtain the benefits of the act of Congress passed June 7, 1832.

That he entered the service of the United States some time in the 1776 about the time New York was taken. That he was living, at the time he entered the service in Bucks County, Pa. [and] from thence he marched to Trenton from thence Princeton, to New Brunswick and from thence to Amboy, where he joined the main army which was commanded by Gen. Robert Doe—from thence he marched to Bergen near New York, at which place [they] turned and marched back through New Jersey and were then discharged—that in this tour, which lasted about six weeks or two months he was a volunteer [and] that Col. Anderson, Major Mucalvane, and Capt. Jarvis were [his] commanding officers.

That he entered service of the U. States the second time in the year 1777 shortly after Philadelphia was taken, which tour lasted about six weeks or two months—that he was drafted, and joined the troops at White Marsh and was stationed on a hill between that and the river Schuylkill and was engaged with some other troops in patrolling the neighboring country under Gen. Potter and Major Kennedy who was afterwards killed by the refugees and that he was discharged at Dilworth's Tavern on the York Road.

That the third time he entered the service of the U. States he enlisted for six months to drive a continental team—that [they] got [their] wagons from Col. Larick and loaded at Easton, Pa, from thence he drove across the Jersies to the White Plains where Washington lay with the army and were engaged in hauling provisions from Tarrytown on the North River to the army at the White plains—and that, when Gen Washington moved his camp and encamped on Quaker Hill [he] lay the remainder of the time at Morris's Store, he thinks in the State of Connecticut.

He also joined a volunteer company and assisted in guarding a magazine and the market people on the roads to prevent them from conveying produce into Philadelphia at the time the British had possession of that city. And thinks he was about one month engaged in that kind of service. That he has no documentary evidence and does hereby relinquish every claim whatever to a pension or annuity except the present and declares his name is not on the pension roll of any state.

Sworn and subscribed the day and year aforesaid.

/s/ C. D. Coffin, Clerk

/s/ William Nicholas

We, Edward Jones, a clergyman, Joseph Grissell, Esq. are residing in Hannover Township county and State aforesaid, do hereby certify that we are well acquainted with William Nicholas who has sworn and subscribed to above declaration, that we believe him to be about seventy-three or four years of age, and that he is respected and believed in the neighborhood which he lives to have been a revolutionary soldier and the concur in that opinion.

Sworn to subscribed the day and year aforesaid.

Edward Jones

Charles D. Coffin, Clk.

Joseph Grisell

* * * * * * *

William Nicholas would live ten more years after this pleading. He died 6 November 1842, at age eighty-four. Almost one hundred and sixty-one years later, his great- great- granddaughter, dying of cancer, said to me suddenly, "I'm not going to be a little old lady."

It wasn't that she didn't want to be—it was just her way of making an observation.