July 4, 1776 · July 4, 2026
Two hundred fifty years after the Declaration of Independence — the nine documented patriot ancestors of John Ronald Reed Sr., and where the family stood when the country began.
When the Declaration of Independence was read aloud in July 1776, our family was already here — and had been for over a century and a half. That summer, direct ancestors of John Ronald Reed Sr. (1934–1995) were living in seven towns across five of the thirteen colonies: farmers in Connecticut and Massachusetts, millers and neighbors on Brandywine Creek in Delaware, Baptist families in the New Jersey countryside that Washington's army would cross that December, and settlers on the far Pennsylvania frontier.
Nine of them served the Revolution in ways we can still prove — on muster rolls, pension files, sworn oaths, and pay receipts that survive in the national and state archives. Every person named on this page is a direct ancestor of John R. Reed Sr., and therefore of all of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. This is not family legend. Every claim below carries its documentation.
Seven households, five colonies, one summer.
Connecticut
Phineas Allen, 45, had just remarried in May. His son Asher, 20, was courting Elizabeth Palmer. By Christmas the war's epidemics would tear this household apart — and send three Allen brothers into the Continental Army.
Connecticut
Samuel Barnard, 27, spent that very summer in uniform — his militia regiment marched to New York in August 1776, into the retreat from the city. He was one of seven sons of Deacon Francis Barnard who fought, all from one house on Duncaster Road.
Massachusetts
Thomas Thurlow, 23, newly married to Deliverance Owen with an infant son. He had already answered the Lexington Alarm in April 1775, riding out with a troop of horse the morning after the shooting started.
New Jersey
The Reed and Bonham farms sat ten miles from the Delaware crossing. Benjamin Reed, 42, was of the township militia's generation; his son Stephen turned 16 — enrollment age — that year. In December 1776 the war arrived on their doorstep: Trenton and Princeton were fought across their county.
Delaware
William Talley Sr., 62, and William Talley Jr., 29, farmed along Brandywine Creek. Fourteen months later the Battle of Brandywine would be fought across their own hundred — and both men's names would appear on the militia rolls raised in its wake.
Delaware
Absalom Willey, 37, farmed in Nanticoke Hundred with his wife Margaret Polk — of the same Delmarva Polk family that later produced President James K. Polk. Absalom rode as a cavalry trooper alongside his wife's kinsmen.
The Western Frontier
Beyond the mountains, John Dickerson, 55, his son Richard, 28, and young Benjamin Dye, 21, held farms on the raided frontier — where the Revolution was fought against British-allied war parties, and losing your homestead was recognized service.
Nine direct ancestors, with the records that survive. ★ marks documented patriot service.
1st Connecticut Regiment, Continental Line — fought at the Battle of Monmouth
Enlisted April 1777, ten weeks after his wedding and seven weeks after burying his father. Served three years as corporal in Col. Jedediah Huntington's regiment beside two of his brothers; stood at Monmouth in June 1778; discharged January 1780. Drew a federal soldier's pension from 1818 until his death in Ohio; his widow Elizabeth drew hers after him. An SAR memorial marker stands at Mound Cemetery, Marietta, Ohio.
Massachusetts militia — Lexington Alarm, the Saratoga campaign season, Rhode Island
Marched from Newbury on April 20, 1775 — the morning after Lexington and Concord. Corporal in the Northern department, August–November 1777, the season Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga; served again in the 1778 Rhode Island campaign and the 1779 reinforcement of Washington's army at Claverack, New York. Pensioned in 1832 from Ohio, where his family's name became "Thorla."
Capt. James Pollock's Troop of Horse, Sussex County, Delaware
Cavalry trooper in a nine-man troop that included two of his wife's Polk kinsmen. His pay receipt survives in the Delaware Archives, in his own hand:
"Received November 13th 1787 of James Pollock the sum of fourteen shillings & seven pence in full of my pay for serving as a Trooper under said Pollock — Absalom Willey."
Family accounts place the troop with the Delaware companies in the Trenton–Princeton campaign of December 1776.
Brandywine Hundred militia, Delaware — enrolled at age 64
On the March 1778 return of Capt. Joseph Marshall's company — six months after the Battle of Brandywine was fought across his own neighborhood — listed among the men "fifty years of age and upwards." He was sixty-four. Thirty-three approved DAR lineages descend from him.
Same company as his father — and a sworn oath renouncing the King
Stood on the same 1778 militia return as his father; the DAR record itself notes "father and son of same name both served under Capt Marshall." On November 24, 1778 he swore the Oath of Allegiance to the Delaware State — formally abjuring George III — then stood as legal voucher for two of his neighbors' oaths.
18th Regiment Connecticut Militia — the New York campaign, 1776
Probably at the Lexington Alarm in April 1775; marched with Capt. Lemuel Roberts' company to New York in August 1776, arriving in the desperate weeks after the Battle of Long Island. One of the seven soldier sons of Deacon Francis Barnard — the family homestead in Simsbury bore a sign: "From this house went forth seven sons to fight in the American Revolution."
Washington County militia, Pennsylvania frontier
A Jersey-born young man who went west early. Soldier in Capt. Joseph Beckett's frontier company, defending the settlements against British-allied raids, and holder of a compensated depredation claim for what the raids cost him. Husband of Elizabeth Lemley; eleven approved DAR lineages descend from them.
Capt. William Leet's company, Washington County militia, 1782
Soldier on the same embattled frontier, and — like his neighbors — a documented sufferer of the raids (Strabane Township, 1783). He lived on to Guernsey County, Ohio, where his granddaughter Sarah Dickerson became, in the family's words, the "matriarch of the Reed line in Ohio."
Patriotic service — the frontier raids of 1781
Richard's father, Maryland-born, who carried his family over the mountains. Recognized by the DAR for suffering depredation in the 1781 raids on the Washington County frontier — the Revolution as it was fought in the west, where holding your ground was itself an act of allegiance.
Capt. Henry Phillips' company, First Regiment, Hunterdon militia, New Jersey
The only Benjamin Reed in New Jersey's entire Revolutionary register — enrolled in the regiment raised precisely from his own Hopewell Township, the regiment that turned out when Washington crossed the Delaware. The name, the place, and the age (42 in 1776) all fit our Benjamin; the final identity proof waits in the New Jersey State Archives. He has never been claimed by any DAR or SAR member — he may be ours to establish.
The war reached the family off the battlefield too. In Mansfield, Connecticut, Phineas Allen married the widow Elizabeth Sargent in May 1776. That autumn, sick soldiers streaming home from the collapsed New York campaign carried camp fever into the Connecticut towns — Mansfield buried four times its usual dead that year. Phineas died on December 21, 1776; his bride of seven months followed on December 28. Seven weeks later his son Asher married Elizabeth Palmer, and ten weeks after that, three Allen brothers walked into the Continental Army together.
And in New Jersey, Aaron Mershon — nephew of our ancestor Elizabeth Ann Mershon of Maidenhead — was killed at the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, eight weeks after the Declaration was signed. He is buried in the churchyard at Lawrenceville. The family reached Monmouth as well: Zedekiah Bonham, cousin of our Alice Bonham, fought there at sixteen.
One more thread runs deeper still: the Bonhams of Hunterdon descend from Edward Fuller, a Mayflower passenger and signer of the Mayflower Compact — one unbroken family line from Plymouth, 1620, to the Revolution, to everyone reading this page.
How every line comes down to John Ronald Reed Sr. — scroll sideways to see the full tree.