How an Unproven Family Story Started My Genealogy Path and Brought Me to Benedict Arnold

Do you have an unproven story in your family?   “Family lore” that is passed down from generation to generation?   It was an unproven family story that got me started on my genealogy path back in 2001. 

Growing up in New York as an only child, a frequent vacation trip would be to New England and we would usually stop at Rutland, Vermont, where my mother had a long line of ancestors.  But since there were no living relatives in Rutland, as a child I paid little attention to the ancestor information offered to me.

As a teenager and a history enthusiast, I started to pay more attention when my mother said her ancestors included men who fought in the Revolutionary War.  When asked for their names, mom said she didn’t know but expressed granite-like confidence they were in her background and recounted bits of stories she had heard as a young child, the most prominent of which was that they came originally from New Hampshire.

Life intervenes of course and makes us busy.  Decades pass.   And later I had two daughters of my own and lived in California where my parents also moved to be near their grandchildren.   My mother passed away in 2001.   It was following her passing, and the trip back to Rutland for the burial, that I started to feel deep regret that this alleged Revolutionary War ancestor would evade me forever.  The answers were all locked up in Mom’s memory and now that was lost, or so it seemed in the midst of grief.

Born of a relentless feeling of regret came a determination to start researching it myself.  My goal was modest at first:  did I have a Revolutionary War ancestor and, if so, who was it?   I started with a hand-written family tree, which went back to the Civil War generation in Rutland.  My task was to go back two more generations and to find the proof for the family tree, which turned out to be entirely accurate. 

My favorite map of towns in Rutland County, Vermont, which helps me in my research.

The next part of my story is not uncommon.   I turned to Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) who enthusiastically and patiently helped me find the needed connections.  In addition to the DAR Registrar in California, a DAR member on the East Coast supplied the last bit of proof.  And it turns out that I have not one, but two, Revolutionary War ancestors.  Deliverance Woodward (1713-1783) of Hanover, New Hampshire, and his son Jonathan Woodward (1762-1843) also of Hanover are my fifth and fourth great grandfathers.

Ensign Deliverance Woodward’s grave in Hanover, New Hampshire.  

The tombstone has fallen victim to time. 

Deliverance was an Ensign with the New Hampshire troops and little else is known of his service.  However, Jonathan filed pension papers in 1832 with the Court of Probate in Grafton County New Hampshire, due to some pension discrepancy, so I have a fairly complete list of his service.  Jonathan enlisted no fewer than six times, the most exciting of which was in 1780 with Adjutant Colonel Nichols’ Regiment.  Jonathan’s declaration reads in part, “…were marched to and stationed at West Point.  Was one of (Benedict) Arnold’s guards.  Was there at the time Arnold left West Point and went to the Brittish.”