Gone for Soldiers: Abraham Heath (About 1740 - 1807), Soldier (Part VI)

After their defeat by the British at Germantown, Private Abraham Heath, along with the rest of Washington's Continental Army, marched off to spend the winter at Valley Forge. While he was there the Virginia troops were under the command of General George Weedon. Abraham's term of service was due to expire in February 1778 and I'm sure he was looking forward to his release.

[Valley Forge, 1777. Gen. Washington and Lafayette visiting the suffering part of the army / painted and drawn by A. Gibert 

lith and publ. by P. Haas, Wash. City. Haas, Philip, active 1837-1863, lithographer, about 1843.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

["Encampment at Valley Forge 1778" by George W. Boynton (engraving) - Sparkes, Jered "The Life of George Washington" Boston: Tappen & Dennet 1843"The Cooper Collections of American History" (uploader's private collection)Scanned by the uploader, Centpacrr..

Licensed under PD-US via Wikipedia htps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Encampment_at_Valley_Forge_1778.jpg#/media/File:Encampment_at_Valley_Forge_1778.jpg]

We first learned about Abraham Heath's service through The Valley Forge Muster Roll* which led us to take a closer look at his records in the National Archive.

[The Muster Roll record for Abraham Heath]

Below is the Muster Roll of Captain Nathaniel Fox's Company for the month of December 1777 with Abraham listed fourth from the bottom of the right column.

[Regiment : 06th Regiment, 1776-1778 (Folders 165-177); 6th Regiment, 1778-1779 (Folders 178-180). Ancestry.com. U.S., Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2007. Original data: Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M246, 138 rolls); War Department Collection of Revolutionary War Records, Record Group 93; National Archives, Washington. D.C.]

You can read my earlier posts about Abraham Heath's military service here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V.

*Although we knew that he had been an active participant in the Revolution, we thought that he had served in the Virginia militia.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Gone for Soldiers: Abraham Heath (About 1740 - 1807), Soldier (Part I)

We've known since at least 2011 that my paternal fifth great grandfather Abraham Heath served as a private in the 6th Virginia Regiment during the American Revolution but until a few days ago we didn't realize what his service entailed.

However the research Christine and I did about his great great grandfather William Heath caused us to take a closer look at the intervening generations and she discovered that our ancestor served not in a local militia as we'd thought but in the Continental Army and spent several months at Valley Forge.

This amazing project is a volunteer effort by the Friends of Valley Forge Park and is offered to the public free of charge.

"The Valley Forge Muster Roll Project is dedicated to the memory of those who encamped at Valley Forge from December 19, 1777 to June 19, 1778. The original purpose of keeping muster rolls was to allow the Continental Army to track the army’s strength. The idea of putting information gathered from these 18th century muster rolls and making it available electronically was spearheaded in 1992 by Tom McNichol and the late Frank Resavy. They desired to create a list of the Continental soldiers who were at Valley Forge for at least one day. This core criterion remains applicable today."

Now that I know this about Abraham Heath, I'll be posting more about what we can learn about his service soon.



© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.