Nomadic Roots Research

Tag: Howell Family

  • Daniel Howell: A Virginia Militiaman’s Story of the American Revolution

    Daniel Howell: A Virginia Militiaman’s Story of the American Revolution

    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.

    AI Generated Artwork

  • Nancy Ann Howell Rigney: Research Ongoing on a War Widow

    Nancy Ann Howell Rigney: Research Ongoing on a War Widow

    An investigation into a War of 1812 widow, the loss of family support, a mysterious family Bible, and a pension interrupted during the Civil War.

    A Widow’s Story Hidden in the Records

    In the mountains of southwestern Virginia, a woman named Nancy Ann Howell Rigney spent much of her life living with the consequences of a war that had ended decades earlier.

    Her husband, Isham Rigney, served in the Virginia militia during the War of 1812. He died while in military service, leaving Nancy to face the responsibility of raising their children without him.

    Years later, Nancy would lose one of those children as well.

    As she grew older, her circumstances became increasingly difficult. She moved away from the Floyd County community where she had family connections and into Carroll County, where the support of nearby relatives was no longer as readily available.

    By 1854, official testimony described her as extremely poor.

    Then the Civil War brought another challenge. Nancy’s federal widow’s pension remained unpaid, and after the conflict she had to prove her loyalty to the United States to seek its restoration.

    Yet Nancy’s story is not simply about two wars.

    It is also about a family Bible, her father’s handwriting, conflicting dates, missing census records, and family relationships that remain unresolved.

    What began as research into a distant Howell relative has become an ongoing investigation into the life of a woman who endured extraordinary uncertainty.

    The Howell Family of Virginia

    Nancy Ann Howell was born on October 26, 1791, in Montgomery County, Virginia, according to the family information assembled during this research.

    She was the daughter of David Howell and a granddaughter of Joshua Howell, my fourth great-grandfather.

    Nancy’s father, David, provides the direct connection between her story and my Howell family research.

    Her brother, Isaac Howell, was the father of Dillard Charles Howell and Lorenzo Dow Howell, two Civil War soldiers whose experiences I have previously researched.

    This places Nancy within a family whose members were affected by two generations of American military conflict.

    Isham Rigney served during the War of 1812. Decades later, Nancy’s nephews would experience the Civil War.

    Nancy, however, was neither a soldier nor simply a name attached to a veteran’s pension application.

    She was a daughter, sister, wife, mother, and widow whose life connected these generations.

    Her story also demonstrates how important extended family relationships could be to a widow attempting to survive in nineteenth-century Virginia.

    Marriage, Children, and the War of 1812

    On December 22, 1808, Nancy Howell married Isham Rigney.

    Isham, believed to have been born around 1790, served as a private in Captain James Hoge’s Company of the Virginia Militia during the War of 1812.

    The couple had three children identified in the family research and pension evidence.

    Their eldest was Jincy Rigney, also appearing as Jency or possibly Jane, reportedly born September 11, 1809. She later married Andrew Harris and is associated with four children: Ishmael, Joseph, Hiley, and Asa Harris.

    Their second child, Andrew Rigney, was born October 2 or 3, 1811, and died November 8, 1882.

    Their youngest, David Rigney, was born October 11, 1813.

    David’s life would end in 1854, when he was approximately forty years old.

    That death is an important part of Nancy’s story.

    By the middle of the nineteenth century, she had already lived for decades without her husband. Now she had also outlived her youngest son.

    We do not yet know the circumstances of David’s death or precisely how it affected Nancy’s household. But it is another loss that must be considered when reconstructing the family relationships and support available to her.

    There is also a significant disagreement concerning Isham’s death.

    Some family-tree information gives January 14, 1815, in Norfolk, Virginia.

    An official Treasury Department report dated April 1, 1854, however, states that Isham died in service on January 14, 1813.

    If the Treasury date is correct, Nancy was pregnant with David when Isham died, making David a posthumous child.

    If the 1815 date is correct, David was already more than a year old.

    The difference changes our understanding of Nancy’s earliest years as a widow.

    For now, the conflicting dates remain an active research question rather than a settled conclusion.

    A Family Bible and David Howell’s Handwriting

    One of the most valuable discoveries in Nancy’s pension papers is an affidavit dated March 15, 1854.

    Two witnesses, L.M. Johnson and Delia Johnson, testified about entries in a family Bible belonging to Nancy Rigney.

    The entries concerned Nancy’s marriage and the births of her children.

    The witnesses attributed the handwriting to David Howell, grandfather of the Rigney children.

    David Howell was Nancy’s father.

    This creates a particularly meaningful connection to the earlier Howell generation.

    The affidavit suggests that David personally recorded important events in his daughter’s family.

    For genealogists, family Bible records can be valuable because they may preserve information recorded close to the time an event occurred.

    But the distinction between original evidence and later testimony is essential.

    The surviving affidavit was signed by the Johnsons, not by David Howell. They testified that the entries they examined were in his handwriting.

    The original Bible pages have not yet been located.

    This leaves several questions.

    Where did the Bible go after Nancy’s death? Did it remain with one of her children or grandchildren? Were any original pages ever submitted with the pension application?

    And could the original handwriting resolve a problem with the eldest child’s name?

    The affidavit appears to transcribe that name as James, while other family evidence identifies a daughter, Jincy or Jane, who married Andrew Harris.

    I have not yet resolved that discrepancy.

    A marriage document involving Andrew Harris, reportedly bearing the signature of Beaufort Howell, may provide another connection to the extended Howell family once it is located and examined.

    The Bible affidavit is therefore both a discovery and an invitation to continue searching.

    Family Bible Affidavit, March 15, 1854. L. M. Johnson and Delia Johnson testified in Carroll County, Virginia, concerning marriage and birth entries in Nancy Rigney’s family Bible, which they attributed to the handwriting of David Howell, grandfather of the Rigney children.

    From Floyd County to Carroll County: Losing Family Support

    Justice William Lewis’s statement, April 22, 1854, Carroll County, Virginia. Lewis described Nancy Ann Howell Rigney as extremely poor and nearly destitute, explaining that she could not afford to travel to court without assistance from a neighbor while pursuing her widow’s pension.

    Another important part of Nancy’s story involves her move from Floyd County to Carroll County, Virginia.

    The Howell family had connections in the Floyd County area, where relatives could potentially provide assistance, companionship, and practical support.

    For a widow raising children, such relationships could make an enormous difference.

    Family members might share food, provide temporary shelter, help with farming or household responsibilities, or assist during illness.

    Nancy’s move to Carroll County placed her farther from the familiar family network she had known.

    That change deserves attention because it may have reduced the support available to her during her later years.

    The precise date and circumstances of the move remain to be established, as does the extent of assistance she received from relatives before and afterward.

    We should also be careful not to confuse a change of county name with a physical move. Floyd County was created from Montgomery County in 1831, while Carroll County was established from Grayson County in 1842. County boundaries and record jurisdictions must be considered when tracing Nancy’s residences.

    Nevertheless, the family circumstances raise an important question: How much did Nancy’s move affect her ability to survive financially?

    By 1854, the documentary evidence reveals a woman in severe poverty.

    On April 22 of that year, Justice of the Peace William Lewis provided a statement explaining that Nancy lived on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains and could not afford to travel to court.

    His statement described her as extremely poor.

    Here was a woman who had lost her husband decades earlier, whose youngest son died during that same year, and whose access to her extended Howell family network had changed.

    The surviving documents do not prove that David Rigney’s death or the move caused her poverty.

    They do, however, show why those events deserve investigation alongside her financial circumstances.

    Nancy’s story was shaped not only by military service and pension legislation, but also by the people who were—or were no longer—close enough to help her.

    The Pension That Helped Her Survive

    Nancy’s pension records provide a glimpse into her financial life.

    An April 1, 1854 report from the Treasury Department’s Third Auditor identifies an earlier widow’s half-pay pension of four dollars per month, associated with Isham’s military service.

    A later certificate, dated June 27, 1860, recognized an entitlement of four dollars per month beginning February 3, 1858.

    The various dates and administrative actions suggest that Nancy’s pension history was not straightforward.

    Different pension laws, applications, and reviews appear to have affected her claim over time.

    For a woman described as extremely poor, four dollars per month represented meaningful assistance.

    The pension was not simply recognition of Isham’s service.

    It was a source of financial support that Nancy had reason to pursue and protect.

    But even that support would become uncertain.

    The Civil War Reaches Nancy’s Household

    When the Civil War began in 1861, Nancy was approaching seventy years of age.

    Her husband’s military service belonged to a war fought nearly half a century earlier.

    Yet the new conflict would affect her pension.

    A Treasury Department letter dated July 17, 1867, reported that Nancy’s last pension payment had been made on September 4, 1860.

    That date is important because it predates the beginning of the Civil War.

    We cannot simply assume that her payments stopped on the day hostilities began. The surviving documents require a more careful reconstruction of when payments ceased and why.

    What is clear is that Nancy’s pension remained unpaid during the Civil War period and that she later pursued its restoration.

    On July 30, 1866, she submitted an affidavit in Carroll County declaring that she had remained loyal to the United States and had not aided the Confederacy.

    Supporting witnesses also testified.

    Consider the circumstances.

    Nancy had been widowed by the death of a soldier who served the United States during the War of 1812.

    She had spent decades raising her family and struggling financially.

    Now, after another war, she was required to establish her loyalty to the same federal government from which she sought her widow’s pension.

    The pension file includes correspondence about the effort to restore her benefits.

    A certificate dated July 24, 1867, authorized four dollars per month beginning September 4, 1860.

    That date establishes an administrative entitlement, but it does not necessarily mean Nancy had actually received payments throughout the intervening years.

    The surviving correspondence suggests continuing complications.

    Whether all money owed to Nancy was eventually paid remains an important question.

    Nancy Ann Howell Rigney’s loyalty affidavit, July 30, 1866, Carroll County, Virginia. Nancy declared that she had remained loyal to the United States during the Civil War as part of her effort to restore her federal widow’s pension.

    When Official Records Disagree

    One of the most interesting lessons from Nancy’s research is that even government records can contradict one another.

    The disagreement over Isham’s death date is one example.

    Another appears in later pension correspondence, where Isham is sometimes described as a Revolutionary War soldier.

    That identification is inconsistent with the evidence placing his service in the War of 1812.

    Given his approximate birth around 1790, service during the Revolutionary War would not be chronologically possible.

    The reference may reflect a clerical mistake or confusion involving pension classifications.

    These inconsistencies are not reasons to abandon the documents.

    They are reasons to examine them more closely.

    A genealogist must distinguish between what a record says, what the record actually proves, and what remains uncertain.

    The same principle applies to family trees.

    An unsourced date or relationship repeated across multiple online trees does not become reliable merely through repetition.

    Nancy’s story requires us to return repeatedly to the original evidence.

    The Questions Still Waiting for Answers

    Despite the remarkable information preserved in her pension papers, much of Nancy’s life remains unresolved.

    I still want to establish the correct date and location of Isham Rigney’s death.

    I want to determine when Nancy moved from Floyd County to Carroll County and whether land, tax, court, or census records can reveal more about her living arrangements.

    The death of David Rigney in 1854 also deserves further investigation. Where was he living? Did he leave a wife or children? Was he helping support Nancy? Did his death alter her circumstances?

    We know his death belongs in the family chronology, but we do not yet know the full story behind it.

    I also want to identify the original Bible entries attributed to David Howell and resolve the conflicting reading of Nancy’s eldest child’s name.

    Additional questions concern Nancy’s missing census appearances, allegations of a later marriage, and the identities or parentage of Leander and Jehue H., whose possible relationships remain uncertain.

    These questions cannot be answered responsibly by assigning people to families simply because their names appear together in an online tree.

    Each connection requires evidence.

    The pension papers have already revealed far more than a widow’s name and a soldier’s military service.

    There may still be discoveries waiting in county records, pension correspondence, family collections, and surviving documents that have not yet been connected to Nancy.

    Nancy’s Final Years

    According to the family information gathered during this investigation, Nancy Ann Howell Rigney died on February 15, 1868, in Carroll County, Virginia.

    She was approximately seventy-six years old.

    Her life had spanned the early American republic, the War of 1812, the growth of southwestern Virginia communities, the Civil War, and the beginning of Reconstruction.

    During those decades, she experienced the death of her husband and later the death of her son David.

    She also faced changes in her family support network, financial hardship, and repeated administrative struggles over her widow’s pension.

    The records do not tell us everything about her personality, beliefs, or private feelings.

    They do, however, reveal a woman who continued pursuing the benefits connected to her husband’s service despite age, poverty, and the upheaval of another war.

    The Investigation Continues

    I began researching Nancy Ann Howell Rigney because she was connected to my Howell ancestors.

    I expected to find a marriage, a few children, and perhaps a military pension.

    Instead, I found a much more complicated story.

    Her father’s handwriting appeared indirectly in a family Bible affidavit.

    An official Treasury document challenged the death date repeated in family research.

    A justice of the peace described her inability to afford a trip to court.

    Her youngest son’s death in 1854 raised questions about another loss during an already difficult period.

    Her move from Floyd County to Carroll County opened a new line of inquiry into the extended family support she may have left behind.

    And her postwar pension application revealed an elderly widow required to prove her loyalty to the United States.

    Each discovery has brought Nancy’s life into sharper focus.

    Each has also produced new questions.

    I still do not know everything about the woman who was Nancy Ann Howell Rigney.

    But I know far more about her than I did when this investigation began.

    And perhaps that is the most important lesson her story offers.

    Genealogy is rarely a straight line from one answer to the next.

    Sometimes a document settles a question. Sometimes it challenges what we thought we knew. And sometimes the most revealing discovery is a new mystery that sends us searching again.

    Nancy Ann Howell Rigney’s story is not finished.

    Neither is the research.

    Nomadic Roots Research — Following family stories wherever the records lead.

    Research note: This article draws primarily on Nancy Rigney’s surviving pension papers, including the March 1854 family Bible affidavit, April 1854 Treasury correspondence, Justice William Lewis’s statement concerning her poverty, pension certificates, and the 1866 loyalty affidavit. Family information concerning David Rigney’s death and Nancy’s relocation requires further verification to establish its full chronology and significance.

  • The Long Trail of the 4th Cavalry: How a Century-Old Legacy Met Me in Germany

    The Long Trail of the 4th Cavalry: How a Century-Old Legacy Met Me in Germany

    Every soldier knows that the military is built on a foundation of unspoken connections. We wear the patches of campaigns fought before we were born, and we walk the parade grounds where legends once stood. But sometimes, history doesn’t just echo—it pulls over to the side of the road, looks you right in the eye, and hands you a pair of crossed sabers.

    Last week, I shared how a family road trip through France collided with my grandfather Joseph’s footsteps in the mud of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. That discovery showed how our family’s past and present were riding in the exact same car down a French highway in 2002. But as I kept digging deeper into the archives, the threads of our family tree stretched back even further, revealing a second, jaw-dropping intersection with the past.

    This is the story of Joseph’s brother—my great-granduncle, George Grover Howell—and a century-old cavalry legacy that my own archival research finally brought to light.

    The Heat of the Gas Boom

    Before I cracked open the records, the paper trail made George look like a standard turn-of-the-century Midwest tradesman. Around 1908, Hartford City, Indiana, was booming, driven by the discovery of natural gas. A 21-year-old George was earning his living as a glass worker, a grueling and dangerous trade spent around roaring pot furnaces.

    But George was looking for a different kind of intensity. On June 30, 1908, just shy of his 22nd birthday, he walked away from the factory floor and signed up for the United States Regular Army.

    He was assigned to the prestigious 4th Cavalry Regiment and sent north to Fort Snelling, Minnesota.

    And this is where one of those strange little details in genealogy helps tell the story.

    If you look up George in the 1910 U.S. Census, the government lists his status with the cold, technical term “inmate.” It’s a quirk that confuses modern researchers, but George wasn’t behind bars. He was a young cavalryman living in the barracks at Fort Snelling.

    George Grover Howell in the 1910 U.S. Census at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. The census classified soldiers living in the barracks as “inmates.”

    For me, that census entry transformed George from a name on the family tree into a soldier. He was living the life of a Regular Army cavalryman—years before the United States entered the First World War.

    Patrolling a Wild Frontier

    In the summer of 1911, George completed his first three-year hitch. Loving the soldier’s life, he chose to “re-up” immediately.

    His timing was historic.

    As the Mexican Revolution erupted into violence, the 4th Cavalry was ordered to the southwestern border. George went from Minnesota to the blistering, cactus-lined desert of the Rio Grande.

    This was the era of the “Old Army”—a frontier military still dependent on horses, pack animals, isolated posts, and cavalry patrols. George served along the Mexican border during a period when revolution and instability just across the international line had become a serious concern for the United States.

    By 1914, George was stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso County. General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing arrived there in April 1914, placing two men whose military careers would take very different paths at the same post during the final months of George’s enlistment.

    When George was discharged from Fort Bliss in September 1914, he walked away a corporal and a veteran of six years in the Regular Army.

    George Grover Howell’s military record documenting the end of his six years with the Regular Army at Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1914.

    That document closes the first chapter of George’s military life.

    But only the first.

    The Replacement Mystery

    The mechanical skills George had developed over the years transitioned well into the rapidly changing industrial world. By 1917, he was working as a machinist for the Bowser Manufacturing Company in Fort Wayne, building early automotive gasoline pumps.

    When America entered World War I, local newspapers reported that George had joined his brother Joseph in the volunteer hometown Lafayette Battalion.

    But when I followed George into the military records, I found something different.

    George entered the Army again on March 5, 1918, and was assigned Army Serial Number 1159531.

    That number became one of the keys to following him.

    A surviving record puts George at Kelly Field, Texas, on March 6, 1918—only one day after entering service.

    George G. Howell’s 1918 military record, showing Army Serial Number 1159531 and his arrival at Kelly Field, Texas, in March 1918.

    That one record changed the direction of the story.

    George wasn’t going back to the cavalry.

    He was entering an entirely different Army.

    By July 31, another roster places George G. Howell, 1159531, with the 322nd Aero Squadron, Flying Department, at Kelly Field in South San Antonio, Texas.

    Then I found him again.

    The roster of the 322nd Aero Squadron at midnight on October 31, 1918, contains the same name and the same serial number.

    But this record gives us something else.

    George appears under the heading:

    SERGEANTS.

    There he was.

    Sergeant George G. Howell, 1159531.

    The October 31, 1918 roster of the 322nd Aero Squadron lists George G. Howell, Army Serial Number 1159531, among the unit’s sergeants.

    In only a few years, George had gone from horses to airplanes.

    His first military career belonged to the old horse cavalry. He had served with the 4th Cavalry along the Mexican border and finished that chapter at Fort Bliss.

    Now he was serving with an Aero Squadron at Kelly Field as the United States Army entered the age of military aviation.

    George had entered the Army in 1908 during the age of the cavalry horse.

    A decade later, he was a sergeant in an Army learning to fight in the sky.

    And his paper trail doesn’t end with the Armistice.

    On November 30, 1918—nineteen days after the fighting ended—George appears on another surviving roster. The name is the same. The serial number is the same: 1159531.

    This time he appears with Candidate Company G, 2nd Battalion, C.I.O.T.S.

    For now, that is where the surviving records leave him. They establish that George’s World War I service continued beyond the Armistice, even though we have not yet reconstructed every remaining step of that service.

    While his younger brother Joseph fought with the 150th Field Artillery in France, George served stateside as the United States Army transformed around him.

    Two brothers had answered the same call.

    The Army simply sent them down very different roads.

    The Timeline Folds Again

    And that is where the timeline folds completely in on itself, bridging nearly a century of time.

    In early 2002, fresh out of basic training, I was shipped across the Atlantic to Schweinfurt, Germany, stationed at Conn Barracks.

    My assignment?

    Charlie Troop, 1/4 Cavalry, 1st Infantry Division.

    When I pinned on that unit patch and looked at those crossed sabers, I had absolutely no idea that I was stepping directly into my great-granduncle George’s military lineage.

    Nearly a century after George enlisted in the 4th Cavalry, I was serving in that same historic regiment, carrying the same cavalry lineage into a completely different Army and a completely different century.

    But our mounts looked a little different.

    Unlike George, who knew the cavalry from the back of a flesh-and-blood horse, an M1A1 Abrams tank was my steed. I was riding a beast made of steel, its turbine engine roaring, carrying the cavalry tradition into a high-tech century.

    George had watched the Army change from horses to airplanes.

    Nearly a century later, I was watching the cavalry tradition continue from inside seventy tons of American armor.

    From horses to airplanes in George’s generation. From horses to an M1A1 Abrams in mine.

    And the strangest part is that I didn’t know any of this at the time.

    George had been dead for decades. His cavalry service existed in old records, census entries, military rosters, and pieces of family history waiting to be put back together.

    I wore those crossed sabers without knowing that another Howell had served in the 4th Cavalry before me.

    It took genealogy to bring us together.

    Me with the 1st Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry at Conn Barracks, Schweinfurt, Germany, in 2002. Nearly a century earlier, my great-granduncle George G. Howell had served in the 4th Cavalry.

    The Tradition Continues

    But the legacy doesn’t stop with George and me.

    George and Joseph chose to serve their country when the world was on fire, establishing a tradition of military service that continued through our family.

    Joseph’s son—my father—would eventually answer that call himself.

    Years later, I put on the uniform.

    And today, one of those little boys who held my hand near the concrete pillboxes in Belgium has grown up to make that same choice, putting on the uniform to lead soldiers on the front lines today.

    Just how many generations of our family have answered this call?

    It is a tradition that reaches back through centuries of our family history—a recurring thread of men who, in very different times and circumstances, chose to serve their country.

    George’s surviving records rescued his military story from obscurity. And discovering that nearly a century later I had served in the same historic cavalry regiment revealed something I never knew while wearing those crossed sabers: military service has surfaced again and again throughout our family tree—from the cavalry trails of Fort Bliss, through the battlefields of France, and into the generations serving today.

    But George and Joseph weren’t the beginning of this story.

    Their uncle, Tilghman Andrew Howell, had answered the call decades earlier, marching with Company I, 130th Indiana Infantry, during the Civil War.

    But Uncle Tilghman’s story… well, that’s a masterclass for a different time.

    Historical Note: This story is part of a continuing series exploring the Howell family’s military legacy across generations. It is based on family records, military records, historical sources, and documented family research. Some narrative details are included to place those records within their historical setting. Where surviving records do not establish an exact location, event, or circumstance, the narrative should be understood as historical context rather than a statement of documented fact.

  • The Roadside Ghosts of the A4: The Day My Family’s Past and Future Collided

    The Roadside Ghosts of the A4: The Day My Family’s Past and Future Collided

    Every soldier knows that the military is built on a foundation of unspoken connections. We wear the patches of campaigns fought before we were born, and we walk the parade grounds where legends once stood. But sometimes, history doesn’t just echo—it pulls over to the side of the road and stares you right in the face.

    The only reason I am writing this today is because of a story my wife, Stephanie, recently wrote. She spent countless hours digging through old genealogy records and parsing through World War I military morning reports, meticulously tracing my grandfather’s travels through France. Because of her research, the invisible threads of our family tree suddenly became a map.

    In 2002, I was stationed at Conn Barracks in Schweinfurt, Germany. I was serving in C Troop, 1/4 Cavalry, 1st Infantry Division. Like any young dad with a bit of leave, I loaded up the family car for a European road trip. Stephanie, our 1-year-old daughter, my 6-year-old son, Robert, and my 4-year-old son, Jonathan, all piled in.

    Stephanie with our children during our family trip to Berlin in 2002.

    Our destination was Normandy. As a veteran, I was intent on experiencing the D-Day beaches, wanting to stand where the Greatest Generation cracked Hitler’s Atlantic Wall in 1944. We drove out of Germany, passed through Luxembourg City, and headed up into Belgium. Along the way, I spotted a cluster of old, concrete wartime pillboxes sitting silently near the tree line.

    Captivated by the history, I pulled the car over. Stephanie stayed back with our baby girl while I took both of my young boys, Robert and Jon, by the hand. We walked right out to those cold, moss-covered fortifications, exploring the old firing slits and touching the concrete together. I didn’t know the exact history of those specific bunkers at the time; I just wanted my boys to see a piece of the world their country had fought to free.

    Joseph Howell with his three children during a family visit to Berlin in 2002.

    After a few minutes, we saddled back up and continued our journey to the coast.

    The trip was incredible, but it was the drive back to Schweinfurt that secretly held the real magic.

    Leaving Paris, we took the A4 highway, the Autoroute de l’Est, heading eastbound back toward Germany. It was a peaceful, scenic drive. My family was safe, free, and buckled into the back seat. I was just focused on the road, completely unaware of the geography passing outside my window.

    I didn’t know it then. I wouldn’t find out until Stephanie cracked open the archives this year.

    As our tires rolled down the A4, we were traveling through the Argonne region. We passed Sainte-Menehould and continued toward Verdun, through countryside intimately connected with the battlefields of the First World War. Somewhere north of our route lay the ground over which American soldiers had fought against the heavily fortified German defensive system known as the Kriemhilde Stellung.

    And that is where the timeline folds in on itself.

    Map of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive showing the American advance through northeastern France in 1918. Library of Congress.

    In October 1918, my grandfather—and my exact namesake—Joseph Robert Howell was serving in that campaign. He was an artilleryman with the 150th Field Artillery, part of the 42nd “Rainbow” Division, as American forces fought to break through the German defenses during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

    During that fighting, the 42nd Division moved into the line and relieved a battered division that had suffered heavily while fighting across those ridges.

    That unit was the 1st Infantry Division.

    Guns and horses of the 150th Field Artillery, 42nd “Rainbow” Division, waiting to move toward the front in France during World War I. Library of Congress.

    The Big Red One.

    My unit.

    During the final weeks of the war, my grandfather was severely wounded. He survived those wounds, came home, and passed his name down to me.

    Decades later, the Army sent me across the Atlantic to serve in the exact division his division had relieved, proudly walking in the lineage of the 4th U.S. Cavalry—the very regiment his brother George had served in back in 1911.

    But that is a story for another time, a masterclass in connecting the dots in genealogy.

    Driving down that highway in 2002, I missed the chance to consciously connect with him. I didn’t pull over. I didn’t know to look out the window and whisper a thank you. Realizing now just how close I had unknowingly come to the battlefield where he fought, I’ll admit it brings chills to my arms and tears to my eyes.

    But I didn’t miss the connection.

    Not really.

    Because Joseph Robert Howell was in the mud of France in 1918, enduring the artillery, gas, and misery of one of the final campaigns of the First World War, so that eighty-four years later, his grandson could drive his own children through those same valleys in absolute peace.

    And the ultimate victory? The proof that the warrior gene never left our bloodline?

    Years after that roadside stop, that same legacy of military service would quietly wake up in the next generation. One of those small boys who stood with me at those old concrete bunkers would grow up to put on the uniform himself, stepping forward to lead soldiers on the front lines today. The tradition endures, carrying the family’s quiet dedication to duty forward into a third century.

    We didn’t know it in 2002, but as we drove down the A4, the past, the present, and the future of our family were all riding in the exact same car.

    Historical Note: This story is part of a continuing series exploring the Howell family’s military legacy across generations. It is based on family records, military records, historical sources, and documented family research. Some narrative details are included to place those records within their historical setting. Where surviving records do not establish an exact location, event, or circumstance, the narrative should be understood as historical context rather than a statement of documented fact.