Revolutionary War Patriot John Lincoln of Connecticut
He may not have been a soldier after all
My maternal grandmother’s family has been documented as descendants of Private John Lincoln of Connecticut for almost 100 years.
As I’ve been working on my lineage books in the past decade, I’ve found that he isn’t the only direct ancestor in my tree to have fought in the war. The list grows when I move away from direct ancestors (as you’ve seen in some of my previous posts). But I want to tell you about John Lincoln because he’s been a touchstone of the family’s Americanism for a very long time.
And he might not have even been a soldier.
From the Windham Vital Records, we know that John Lincoln was born July 28, 1726, in Windham, Connecticut, to Samuel Lincoln and Ruth (Huntington) Lincoln. He married (1st) Rebecca Fenton (1731–1758) in 1753 in Windham. They had at least one surviving child. John married (2nd) Anna (Martin) Stowell May 30, 1758, in Windham and had at least four more children. I’m a descendant of his son Jonah, as are hundreds of other people alive today.
John is National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR) Patriot #A070431. It was always said by the family, and in my grandmother’s DAR documents, that he was a Private in Capt. Nathaniel Hale’s company in Col. Jeremiah Mason’s regiment from Connecticut. Which appears to have been a misunderstanding of what our cousin wrote in 1954.
But DAR now recognizes his service as: “Collector of town rates, surveyor of highways, and member of committee to provide clothing for soldiers.”
Their source is the Mullen, CT Town Meeting Records (Vol 2, pp. 579, 581). Mullen was a farm on the outskirts of Windham.
The Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) has their previous applications on Ancestry and they offer a different service source: Record of Service of Connecticut Men, pg. 617. Linked here
“John Linkun” is listed among the men in Captain Nathaniel Wales’s Company under Colonel Jeremiah Mason out of New London, Connecticut (about 26 miles south of Windham). But no age is given - our John would have been in his early 50s. Among the soldiers are Durkees, Huntingtons, and Webbs, families from Windham who married into the Lincolns.
His son John Lincoln, Jr.’s (1754-1835) second wife applied for a Revolutionary War widow’s pension in the 1830s-1840s in Burlington, Vermont. But he’s not a DAR Patriot. Could we have gotten the two men confused this whole time and attributed the soldier work of his son to John Sr.?
The civil work was still essential to the Revolution. The soldiers needed people caring for them as they fought against the British - the benefits of being on home territory.
But this could be another instance of grandchildren misunderstanding what their parents told them about their grandfather.
John Lincoln died June 7, 1810, in Pomfret, Connecticut, and is buried in Windham Center Cemetery, Windham, Connecticut.
His inscription reads:
In memory of Mr. John Lincoln who died June ye 7th 1810 in the 86th year of his age
Regardless of whether he was a soldier, we was apparently a patriot. And that’s what matters.
For more of the Lincoln lineage - Descendants of Thomas “the Miller” Lincoln: Through Jonah Lincoln to the modern era is available now as an ebook or digital download and paperback.
This is interesting. I’ve run across something similar. But the misinformation was actually set in motion by a historian who got it wrong. My husband’s ancestor, Alexander McConnell and his oldest son Matthew, settled a piece of land in Western Pennsylvania that was part land grant and part purchased. Alexander’s youngest son was also named Alexander. When old Alexander passed, he left his portion of the property owned with Matthew to young Alexander. (His will tells us this) However, historian Boyd Crumrine believed the two Alexanders were the same person. So in his History of Washington County, he writes the story as two brothers who settled a piece of land. The father is never mentioned, with the son getting credit for his life as well as his own. Crumrine also gives the younger Alexander a first wife I can find no other documentation for. I can’t decide yet if she was killed by natives, or never existed at all!
Also, they civil experiences of Mr. Lincoln might not mean he wasn’t also a soldier. In a biography I read on Mad Anthony Wayne, it notes that when his troops weren’t fighting, he was often in Philadelphia looking for clothing donations, etc for his men. Perhaps this was a common practice among the Army?