Here's my 4th of July story having to do with the Revolutionary War...

My mother was Canadian and she told me how two of her ancestors were American. One was Charles Roux, who turned out to be French, then moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana as a boy, and the other was Pennyslvania Dutch, George Washington Cramer. But I couldn't find any George Washington Cramer in records in America. So I switched back to Canadian records in Kingston, Ontario where he married his wife. And discovered he had been born in Canada and never set foot in America. So why in the world did he have the name George Washington???

My mother was sure that if I dug far enough, I'd find her American roots and could claim we were Daughters of the American Revolution.

Here is the story of the American Revolution as it pertains to my mother's ancestor.  Lorenz Kraemer was born in Essenheim, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, and had family in New York, who had come over earlier to the States. As a young man, he had no funds to travel from Germany to America. When a Hessen prince was recruiting men to fight in the war against the Americans as mercernaries hired by the British, Lorenz joined up, and they were shipped to Quebec in 1776. But he wasn't interested in fighting the Americans. He thought their cause noble, and deserted as a member of 3rd Company, under the command of Col. Joh. Christoph Lenz. Johannes Ranau, his companion, and he disappeared on a march between Nobelton and Barrington in western Mass in 1777.

He then made his way to NY where he married a German woman and attended the Reformed Dutch Church Called Christs Church, Ghent, Columbia, New York. So that's where the "Pennsylvania Dutch" notion came into play. His son, Abraham, was born in NY. So there's my mother's American connection. :) 

Lorenz moved with his children to Quebec after his wife died, married a French woman, and was part of the Militia there, so he wasn't afraid of fighting, just didn't want to fight as a mercenary against the Americans. He thought so much of George Washington, he praised his efforts to his sons and told of the war and how he would not fight the Americans and when Abraham Cramer's second son was born, he named him George Washington Cramer. George also named one of his sons George Washington.

But I'm afraid we can't be included in the Daughters of the American Revolution. And so that's my American Revolution story on my mother's side. Her father was Welsh, married into an Irish family and they came over from Ireland and ended up in Quebec, so no American roots there either. And most of the rest of her family were Highland Scots who settled in Prince Edward Island.

But, as I was digging through my dad's history, I discovered Henry Temple Sr on his mother's side gave supplies to the Revolutionary Troops on June 1780 and 20 Apr 1781, proving his patrotism--"For sundreies furnished and cash paid the milita of NC, VA and SC"  Re bo luntionery Army Accounts of SC, Book C, page 52 and 119.

:) So I guess we do have some patriotic bones, not just the fighting sort, in the early family tree. :) My dad made up for it though. His grandfather broke horses for the cavalry in WWI, and Dad went in as a 16 year old to fight during WWII, wanting to ride in the cavalry with a saber raised. Only when he arrived, the horses had been moved out to the Burma Campaign and he was stuck mucking out stalls. Sooo, he put in for a transfer and became a tail gunner, was shot down on his 13th mission and after surviving 16 months in a German prisoner of war camp, was freed by Patton's troops and continued to serve a life of adventure in the Air Force.

Happy 4th, Everyone!!!

Terry

www.terryspear.com