ROOTS & BRANCHES

Over the years my interests in lineage societies have waxed and waned as I’ve gotten involved with various other genealogical activities.

But I did successfully apply to a number of them over the years; if nothing else, they were good opportunities to “get my ducks in a row” and make sure I had adequate documentation for the dates and generational relationships in my pedigree chart.

While some of what appear to be lineage societies are more what I would call “affinity societies”—that is, they don’t require descent from ancestors with a particular characteristic—it’s more usual that such organizations do have such a requirement.

In most cases, a potential applicant needs to do two things: Prove descent by showing linkages for each generation between that applicant and the qualifying ancestor, and also determine that the ancestor in question does meet the qualifications of the lineage society.

In the case of lineage societies involving the Revolutionary War, “qualifying service” varies somewhat from one to another, but usually includes both actual military service as well as support such as proof of paying supply taxes during the conflict.

I would argue that most of the time the best strategy would be to make sure there’s proof of such qualifying service before intensively going on a document hunt for the generation-by-generation proofs.

Recently a cousin noted she was interested in becoming a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution from a line we have in common, the surname being Hiester, a family of local prominence in colonial times and in the early republic (including a governor of Pennsylvania in the 1820s).

When I applied for Sons of the American Revolution a couple of years ago, I’m not sure if I even considered the Hiester line; instead, I used one of the lines that married into the Hiesters, which traced to a Revolutionary War lieutenant named Peter Kirschner,

In the Hiester line, this cousin and I have a mutual ancestor of Revolutionary War age—Johannes or John born 1754—but I’ve never investigated whether he had qualifying service.

Thankfully some great online resources from the Pennsylvania Archives—both the physical place as well as the published Pennsylvania Archives series of books—will make my cousin’s research an armchair experience.

There’s a Revolutionary War Card File on the site ARIAS (short for Archives Records Information Access System): http://www.digitalarchives.state.pa.us

The electronic card file requires the user to check under all sorts of spellings – Hiester, Heister, Heester, Huester – and it will show unit information but not ordinarily residence.

But using that unit information, the archives has another set of finding aids online that shows the townships from which militia units were drawn. For John’s home county of Berks, this is found at this URL: https://www.phmc.pa.gov/Archives/Research-Online/Pages/Revolutionary-War-Militia-Berks.aspx

If John doesn’t appear to have documented military service, then finding if he paid a supply tax would be the next thing to research. Tax lists from the era are in the published Pennsylvania Archives, which are free item on Ancestry.com subsidiary Fold3.com at the URL: https://www.fold3.com/title/450/pennsylvania-archives