52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 21 -- Military

This week in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Amy Johnson Crow asks us to post about the military members in our family history.

Here's a roster of military service in my family:

8x-great-grandfather Samuel Packard served in King Philip's War (1675–1678).

My 4x-great grandfather Richards Packard served in the American Revolution (1775-1783). 

My great-great grandfathers Mathew Hale Packard and Charles Reed served in the Civil War, for the Union (1861-65).

My great-great granduncles Thadeus Bullock Packard and William B. Packard served in the Civil War, too, also for the Union.

My husband's great-grandfather, Daniel McLeod Marshall, served in the Civil War, for the Confederacy.

My father, Arden Packard, served in the U.S. Navy in World War II (1939-1945).

My father-in-law, Leonard Marshall Rhodes, served in the temporary U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.

My husband's grandfather, Andrew Lewis Rhodes, served in the temporary U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.

My brother, Arden "Ned" Packard II, served in the U.S. Marines in the VietNam War (1955-1975).

My husband, Keys Rhodes, and I both served in the U.S. Coast Guard in the Cold War (1945-1991).

 We were surprised to find that my husband's father and grandfather had been in the Coast Guard before he was.  We had thought he was the first in his family to serve in the USCG, but he was actually the third.

I was the first woman in the Packard-Reed family to enter military service. 

We're proud of our service and of our families' military tradition.

 

Carnival of Genealogy 75: Justice and Independence -- Richards Packard, Revolutionary Soldier

My fourth great-grandfather Richards Packard enlisted for the American Revolution when he was only 17. He was born, son of Eleazer Packard and Mercy Richards, 7 April 1763 in Bridgewater, Massachusetts (the part that is now Brockton). In his Revolutionary War pension file, he is described as standing 5' 2" in height. He was short, even in those days. I picture him as a feisty bantam rooster of a young man.

Richards mustered in at Springfield, then in Hampshire County, in Captain Wade's Company, Colonel Jackson's Regiment. According to his pension file, the company went to West Pont, New York, and to King's Ferry. As he himself says in his pension application papers, he was at Haverstraw "when Andre was hung," referring to the execution of British spy Major John Andre on 2 October 1780.

He re-enlisted in February of 1782, at Leverett, Massachusetts, and again ended up in New York, at West Point, this time in Captain Smith's Company in Colonel Rufus Putnam's Regiment. During this time, he suffered from smallpox, but apparently recovered. Richards Packard was discharged in February o f1783.

His pension application was filed from Vermont, and by the time he applied for the pension, he was raising his family in Canada. No, he didn't decide to become a Tory, and it is a myth that those American colonists who ended up in Canada after the Revolution were all Tories. Richards Packard engaged in an ever-northward migration searching for land. He went first to Winchester, New Hampshire, where he worked in a foundry, and where he met and married his wife, Sarah (Sally) Coats/Coates. They removed to Vermont, where Richards tried a couple different plots of land but apparently was not happy with them. Canada was practically giving land away, and he settled near Georgeville. Packard cousins still live on the same plot of land Richards Packard settled in around 1798.

Richards Packard died 25 February 1840.

Sources:

Richards Packard and Sarah Coats/Coates Packard, widow, Revolutionary War, Application for Pension, W21886, Records of the Veterans Administration, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

"The Globe May Be Sold on the 'L' Word, but Earlier Bostonians Knew Better," The Georgeville Enterprise: An Occasional Publication. Georgeville, Quebec: The Georgeville Historical Society, Vol. 12, Number 1, Summer 2003, pages 1-3. [The 'L' word in question is 'Loyalist.']