Seeking Susie

I have decided to accept the challenge of Amy Johnson Crow over at No Story Too Small blog. Amy challenges us: 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks. I think this is an excellent challenge as I tend to focus on my brick walls, and this will force me to fan out in my tree and focus on other ancestors.

This is week eleven and my eleventh post in this challenge.  Thomas Bullard is my 5th great-grandfather, and an American Revolution Patriot.  I became a member of the Daughter’s of the American Revolution under Thomas Bullard.  This is Thomas’ signature taken from his pension application.

I made the video you will see below with information from his pension application and lots of research by myself, cousin Tony Davis, and documentation supplied from Billy Boykin.  If not for them, I wouldn’t have been able to do this.  Tony supplied the voice of Thomas and I narrated. Yes, I’m from Arkansas, and I apologize for sounding like such a hick!  🙂

There is no better way for you to get to know my ancestor than this video so without further ado, please met my 5th great-grandfather, Thomas Bullard.

I’ve been reluctant to share this video before now because there are still a couple of pictures I used in this video that I have had trouble finding the original owner of. The photos were just used on so many websites, it was impossible to find the owner. So if I have used your photo without your permission, it wasn’t from a lack of trying to find you I promise. Please contact me and I will make it right immediately.

I hope you enjoyed the story of Thomas Bullard and if you would like to put something similar together for your patriot ancestor, here are a few websites I used to find information about my patriot and/or information about battles, geography and the way of life from the time period.

• Maps from 1779 available at Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
• Transcripts of Pension Applications: http://revwarapps.org/index.htm
• North Carolina Digital Archives for family records: http://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/digital/ncfamilyrecords/
• Original Pension Applications, pay ledger and service ledger: www.fold3.com
• DAR Headquarters for further documentation regarding the Patriot and descendants, in the Patriot’s file available for 25 cents a page, or you can order a copy from their website at www.DAR.org
• Colonial Williamsburg has a wonderful website, and that is where I downloaded the song for the video – Touch Me Lightly. They also have other sound clips such as people from the time period telling their thoughts on the war, slave songs, Patrick Henry’s speech “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”, and a reading of the Declaration of Independence. I also bought some of the pictures for the video from their website. www.history.org
• http://swampfoxbrigade.blogspot.com/ has quite a bit of information on the Revolutionary War for the states of South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia.
• http://flintlockandtomahawk.blogspot.com/ has quite a bit of information on culture, art, movie clips and general information from the time period.
• http://www.google.com/earth/index.html Awesome application for charting the path of an ancestor, you can add place marks, photos, videos and they have really cool map overlays from many different time periods.
• Tons of information here for Duplin Co., North Carolina: http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/duplin.htm
• Pictures in chronological order of the American Revolutionary War: http://www.archives.gov/research/military/american-revolution/pictures/index.html#central

This is how I descend from Thomas: