Revolutionary War Records
- Leslie Ryan
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Previously unavailable US Revolutionary War record files are now searchable by full-text search at Ancestry partner Fold3!
You can log in there (it does take a membership) and search through records that have not been indexed for your ancestors. "Indexed" means a human being has seen the record, and entered the name and other related info, into a computer database. So in this case, the computer looks for the text you entered "John Smith" brings them all up.
You can enter specific dates or places or battles in the "Filters" section on the top left to narrow the results down if you know them. The interesting thing is you will get more results than just the name of the soldier. It will bring up the "John Smith" witnesses, heirs, Justices, etc. If you are like me, you have lots of ancestors born during the war or just after and no birth records. I know that there was almost always a "Junior" in my families, so check to see if John hs a brother named "William" who appears as an heir too, this is a great clue to look at.
Here is a link to the Fold3 Blog with a lot more information about the files. This is a FREE link for you to check out what is available
Sadly, there is no direct link here to the login page to begin your search, which seems pretty short-sighted to me. You will have to go to Fold3.com to actually access the files.
As their promotional email says, "We’ve expanded our Revolutionary War records on Fold3! Our new Revolutionary War Burial Index features over 67,000 records for veterans who died between 1775 and 1875. This index provides important context for researching your patriot ancestors and serves as a jumping-off point for locating additional records, such as military rolls, service records, pension files, and vital records."
I'll be poking around in here next week to see what I can learn. If you try, let me know how you did, please!
If you need help with your family tree, I'll be glad to give it a FREE review to see if I can give you some pointers. Just pop me an email and let's get together!
Wishing you all a renewing holiday week,
Leslie Ryan
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No copyright infringement is intended.
