Ancestry’s 4th of July Free Access Weekend Continues

There is one more day left in Ancesty.com’s free access week­end for the 4th of July. Ances­try is mak­ing appli­ca­tions to the Sons of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion appli­ca­tions, 1889 — 1970. These appli­ca­tions pro­vide detail about the ser­vice the ances­tor is report­ed to have per­formed to advance the cause of the Rev­o­lu­tion. (For SAR mem­ber­ship, as is true for the Daugh­ters of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, the ances­tor did not have to serve in the mil­i­tary, but could have pro­vid­ed oth­er forms of assis­tance to the cause.)

The appli­ca­tions also include doc­u­men­ta­tion for the descent from the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War-era ances­tor to the appli­cant. While most of the appli­ca­tions are not doc­u­ment­ed in ways that com­ply with mod­ern genealog­i­cal stan­dards, they can still pro­vide a wealth of infor­ma­tion that a patient and thor­ough researcher can use as a start­ing point for ver­i­fi­ca­tion, debunk­ing, and exten­sion.

In my case, my 5th great grand­fa­ther, James Gra­ham (1741 — 1813), seems to have no few­er than 28 appli­ca­tions opened by descen­dants. There will be a fair amount to go through.… I am look­ing for­ward to it.