More than fifty years after the American Revolution, an elderly man appeared before the Floyd County, Virginia, court to recount his military service. He was seventy-three years old, and the events he was describing had taken place when he was a young man.
He remembered serving on the Virginia frontier, participating in military expeditions, and fighting in North Carolina. But remembering precisely when those events occurred, how long each tour lasted, and the order in which they happened was another matter.
His name was Daniel Howell, and his surviving Revolutionary War pension application provides a remarkable glimpse into the life of an ordinary soldier who helped secure American independence.
Daniel was also a member of the Howell family I have been researching for years. My fourth great-grandfather, Joshua Howell, was Daniel’s uncle, making Daniel my first cousin five times removed.
But before examining the family connections, I want to tell Daniel’s story as a soldier.
A Young Man on the Virginia Frontier
According to his sworn pension declaration, Daniel Howell was born in 1759 in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.
He remembered that his mother had recorded his birth in her Psalm book, although the book had been lost by the time he applied for his pension.
By the beginning of the American Revolution, Daniel was living in the Virginia backcountry, in an area that was then part of Botetourt County.
When the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, Daniel was approximately seventeen years old.
Unlike soldiers who enlisted for extended periods in the Continental Army, many Virginia militiamen served in shorter tours. They could be called into service for a particular campaign, return home, and later serve again.
Daniel’s pension testimony describes this pattern of military service.
In an amended declaration dated July 15, 1833, he explained that he had been drafted for service against the Cherokee and had volunteered for his other tours.
He stated that he served at least nine months altogether, always holding the rank of private.
That distinction is important. Daniel was not claiming a continuous nine-month enlistment. He was describing several periods of military duty that, together, amounted to at least nine months.
Military Service Against the Cherokee
One of the most interesting portions of Daniel’s pension application concerns his service against Cherokee forces.
The American Revolution was not fought exclusively along the Atlantic coast or between the Continental and British armies.
For settlers living in western Virginia, the conflict also involved frontier warfare, military expeditions, and fighting involving Native American nations whose political and military interests were shaped by their own circumstances.
In 1776, Colonel William Christian commanded a major Virginia expedition against Cherokee towns. This campaign became one of the better-known frontier operations of the Revolutionary War.
However, the conclusion of that particular expedition did not mean that frontier warfare involving Cherokee forces ended in 1776.
Military activity and conflict continued in subsequent years.
This distinction matters when examining Daniel’s pension testimony.
Daniel described service against the Cherokee, but his surviving account does not provide sufficient evidence to place him specifically in Colonel Christian’s 1776 expedition.
His recollections include dates associated with the later 1770s, and his pension file preserves a military discharge dated June 25, 1778.
We should not automatically assume that Daniel confused the dates of two separate events.
He may have been describing a different period of frontier service involving Cherokee forces.
Another consideration is how pension declarations were created.
When Daniel appeared in court in 1832, his testimony was entered into a formal legal record. The surviving declaration does not establish that Daniel personally wrote the wording we read today.
A clerk or another person may have recorded his spoken account, potentially using terminology that did not precisely distinguish a particular expedition from broader military activity.
That possibility cannot be proven from the document alone, but it is worth considering.
What Daniel’s testimony does establish is that he remembered serving against Cherokee forces and regarded that service as part of his Revolutionary War military experience.
We do not need to assign him to a famous campaign to recognize the importance of that service.
A Military Discharge Dated June 25, 1778
One of the most valuable documents preserved in Daniel’s pension file is an original militia discharge dated June 25, 1778.
This is especially significant because most of Daniel’s pension application was created more than fifty years after the Revolution.
The discharge, by contrast, dates from the war itself.
It provides contemporary documentary evidence associated with his military service.
Unfortunately, the document does not provide enough clearly identifiable information to reconstruct his entire military assignment.
We cannot confidently determine from it alone which particular expedition he had completed, where he had been stationed, or whether it related to his service against Cherokee forces.
Nevertheless, the discharge is an important surviving piece of evidence.
It confirms that Daniel’s military history is not based solely on an elderly veteran’s recollections.
The Skirmish Before Guilford Courthouse
Daniel also recalled military service in North Carolina, including a skirmish at Reedy Fork of the Haw River.
This portion of his testimony places him in the wider setting of the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution.
During the early months of 1781, American and British forces maneuvered across the Carolinas as Major General Nathanael Greene attempted to counter the British army commanded by Lord Cornwallis.
These operations eventually led to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse on March 15, 1781, near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina.
Although the British held the battlefield, the engagement resulted in heavy British casualties and became an important episode in the Southern Campaign.
Daniel’s account describes a skirmish preceding this battle.
However, an important distinction must be made.
Daniel did not specifically state that he fought in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse itself.
His testimony concerned an earlier skirmish in the region.
It would be inaccurate to turn that statement into a claim that he participated in the famous battle.
The military movements and smaller engagements preceding major battles were also part of the Revolution. Daniel’s recollection deserves to be presented on its own terms.
Fifty Years Later, Daniel Tells His Story
On September 21, 1832, Daniel appeared before the Floyd County court seeking a pension under the federal pension legislation enacted on June 7 of that year.
He was approximately seventy-three years old.
The law provided an opportunity for qualifying Revolutionary War veterans, including militia soldiers, to receive pensions based on their military service.
But applying required Daniel to reconstruct events that had occurred more than half a century earlier.
His original declaration described several tours, including frontier service and military operations in North Carolina.
The Pension Office subsequently required additional clarification.
In March and July 1833, Daniel submitted amended declarations attempting to explain the sequence and duration of his service.
He clarified that his first tour had lasted four months and that his second had lasted three months.
He also acknowledged that his memory had become unreliable concerning some dates.
In one amendment, Daniel explained that old age and the loss of memory prevented him from stating the precise times of his service as accurately as he wished.
He could not produce witnesses for every tour, although supporting testimony and his surviving discharge formed part of his application.
By July 15, 1833, he stated that he could confidently claim at least nine months of service as a private.
There is something particularly human about these records.
Daniel was not a young soldier writing a diary immediately after returning from a campaign. He was an elderly man attempting to remember where he had been, who had commanded him, and how long he had served.
His amendments show that he was willing to revise earlier statements when he could not confidently support them.
For genealogists, those corrections are not necessarily reasons to dismiss his testimony.
They are reminders that historical documents must be read in the circumstances in which they were created.
Separating the Howell Families
Researching Daniel’s military service is only one part of the challenge.
Establishing exactly where he belonged within the Howell family has required years of sorting through men with identical names.
Daniel was a son of Benjamin Howell, whom my family research identifies as a brother of my fourth great-grandfather, Joshua Howell.
Unfortunately, the names Benjamin, Daniel, David, and Joshua appear repeatedly in the early Virginia records.
There was also another Howell family in the broader Botetourt County area, creating additional opportunities for confusion.
One of the ways I began separating these individuals was by studying the Montgomery County, Virginia, personal property tax lists for 1790, 1791, and 1792.
Rather than examining each Howell entry in isolation, I compared the names appearing near one another, the dates on which they were recorded, and the patterns that repeated across successive years.
In the 1790 records, Daniel Howell, Benjamin Howell Jr., and Benjamin Howell Sr. appear in one cluster.
Other entries place Joshua Howell near members of the Hilton family.
The 1791 records are especially interesting because they include identifying descriptions distinguishing a David Howell described as a son of Benjamin from another David Howell described as a son of Joshua.
These details are valuable because they show that men with the same name were not necessarily the same individual.
The tax records also contain recurring associations between the Howells and the Hiltons.
My ancestral David Howell, son of Joshua, married Susunnah Hilton, daughter of Elijah Hilton. That family connection provides additional context for examining the households appearing together.
The 1792 tax records continue to provide useful comparisons.
Of course, tax-list proximity does not automatically establish that two households were related or lived on adjoining properties.
But when names appear in recurring groups and some entries explicitly identify fathers and sons, those records become valuable tools for reconstructing a family.
This research has also made me cautious about accepting family trees that assign marriages or children to Daniel without identifying which Daniel Howell the records actually concern.
The military story deserves to be connected to the correct man.
A Familiar Home Under Changing County Names
Daniel’s pension testimony provides another useful insight into the family’s history.
He explained that the area where he lived had been known under different county jurisdictions.
The same general locality had been part of Botetourt County, later Montgomery County, and eventually Floyd County.
That does not mean Daniel or his relatives moved every time the county name changed.
The boundaries changed around the people living there.
Daniel did describe one actual move. Following the Revolution, he spent approximately five years in Patrick County before returning to the neighborhood where he had previously lived.
Recognizing the difference between changing county boundaries and an actual family relocation is essential when tracing these early Virginia families.
The Final Years of a Revolutionary War Veteran
Daniel Howell died on March 5, 1836, in Floyd County, Virginia.
A court certificate dated June 20, 1836, identifies his surviving widow as Frances Howell and states that Daniel died without a will.
His pension file also contains correspondence written years after his death.
In a letter dated February 23, 1855, Bernhart Henn informed John Howell of Henry County, Iowa, that he had located the Revolutionary War pension papers belonging to John’s father, Daniel Howell.
The letter discussed Frances Howell’s potential entitlement to pension benefits.
This is an important family document because it directly identifies John as Daniel’s son.
Other questions remain unresolved.
Although various family trees identify possible wives and children, I have not yet located sufficient original evidence to establish Frances’s maiden name, the date of Daniel’s marriage, or a complete list of his children.
Those questions will remain part of my continuing research.
Remembering Daniel Howell
Daniel Howell was not a famous general or a commander whose name regularly appears in Revolutionary War histories.
He was a private in the Virginia militia.
His military service included frontier operations against Cherokee forces and service in North Carolina during the Southern Campaign.
He served in several tours, returned home between periods of duty, and eventually lived long enough to seek a pension for the service he had performed as a young man.
More than fifty years after the Revolution, Daniel attempted to reconstruct those experiences for the court.
Some dates were uncertain. His memory had faded. His declarations required amendments.
But his pension application survived, along with a discharge dated June 25, 1778.
Together, those records preserve an account that might otherwise have disappeared.
For me, Daniel’s story is also part of a larger family history.
His uncle Joshua Howell was my fourth great-grandfather, and researching these men has revealed how deeply the family’s history was connected to the early Virginia frontier and the American Revolution.
There are still questions to answer about Daniel’s military assignments, marriages, and descendants.
But the absence of every answer should not prevent us from remembering what the surviving documents tell us.
Daniel Howell served during the American Revolution, and more than two centuries later, his own testimony allows us to remember his part in that history.
Research Sources
Primary documentation
- Daniel Howell, Revolutionary War pension application, S13413, Virginia; Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, National Archives Microfilm Publication M804, Record Group 15; digital images, Fold3.
- Daniel Howell, sworn pension declaration, September 21, 1832, Floyd County, Virginia.
- Daniel Howell, amended pension declarations, March and July 1833, Floyd County, Virginia.
- Daniel Howell, militia discharge, June 25, 1778, preserved in pension application S13413.
- Floyd County, Virginia, court certification concerning Frances Howell, June 20, 1836.
- Bernhart Henn to John Howell, February 23, 1855, correspondence preserved in pension application S13413.
- Montgomery County, Virginia, personal property tax lists, 1790, 1791, and 1792.
Historical background
- National Park Service, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, historical interpretation of the Southern Campaign and Battle of Guilford Courthouse.
- Historical accounts of Colonel William Christian’s 1776 Cherokee expedition, used for context rather than as proof of Daniel Howell’s participation.
Research note: This article distinguishes Daniel Howell’s sworn recollections from independently documented events. The surviving records do not establish his participation in Colonel William Christian’s 1776 expedition or the Battle of Guilford Courthouse itself. Some military details and family relationships remain subjects of continuing research.
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