AMERICAN REVOLUTION DESERTER?

Source: Bing clip art

If you have been doing family research for more than a few days, you have found interesting, funny, or ironic things. I recently ran across the "Graff" name in a book titled: He Loves a Good Deal of Rum...Military Desertions during the American revolution 1775-1783...Volume One 1775 - June 30, 1777 by Joseph Lee Boyle. 

 The title alone caught my attention. Um...I had ancestors in the American Revolution. Would this book have anything about any of them? I flipped to the index and started looking for any familiar name: Bowman/Bauman, Groff/Graff, Boehm/Beam, Stover, Wolf, Metzler, Musselman, Ressler. Some of the names I had to look for alternate spellings. 

Um....Graff, Jacob. Maybe a possibility?

The below had been published in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on May 13, 1777:

This is to certify that Frederick Shinkle and Jacob Graff, two militia men of this city, brought me a man named John M'Cartney, the 21st ult. 1777, as s substitute for them, agreeable to a resolve of the Hon. Continental Congress, but the said John M'Cartney proves to be a deserter from another regiment, and of course no recruit, there the said Frederick Shinkle and Jacob Graff can derive no advantage from the resolve of Congress - Joseph Wood, Col. Third P. R.

Could this be an ancestor? Maybe. There were Jacob Graffs in Lancaster County. But it will require more research and digging far deeper than I have time for right now.

Source: Bing clip art

However, it made me chuckle because I (actually all of us) have characters in our families that for one reason or another prove that people will try to get out of doing things they don't want to do.

As I dig around in family history, I find that a necessary tool is a sense of humor. While most of them are names and dates to us, they lived as real people with lives. Depending on the documents or memories available, I will never know how my ancestors thought or why they acted as they did. 

Our people were far from perfect. Neither am I. 

What happened to these two men after their "substitute" did not pan out? Would they fight in many battles? Would they just walk off and leave the militia behind? Would they get drafted again at some later date? Would they live thru the war and return home, or die forgotten in some field?

As for the book, it is a fascinating look at how people acted and descriptions of their clothing or personal items when they deserted. Many had rewards of a few dollars on their heads if found or arrested. Note: I found the book at a genealogy library, however, I found several books by this author, including this one, on Amazon.

Family history is not dry and dusty. It is full of people who have stories to tell us. 

All the content writing of this post is my own unless I state otherwise.

Update 03-04-2023 I checked the DAR website to see if Jacob Graff was there. There is a Jacob Groff listed as an ancestor from Philadelphia. Three of the five in the ancestor search are from Lancaster County, PA. This man is ancestor #A048820 with dates of 1751-1824. Probably not my direct ancestor, but he has been used by someone to get membership in the DAR.