John Winn
Lt. Colonel
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2014
- Location
- State of Jefferson
I just ran into an accepted Sons of the American Revolution application for the service of Zechariah Landrum, son of Samuel Landrum, son of Thomas Landrum and Nancy Bell. Samuel, the supposed father of the Revolutionary war soldier, was born in 1887. Additionally no son Samuel is in Thomas's will - although several trees have him as Thomas's son, I can find no evidence that he was and considerable circumstantial evidence to the contrary.
Zechariah's find a grave is very big on his proven service. Okay, possibly his service happened - but only if literally nothing else on his application did and he was a completely different person. Did anyone even read this thing? And now the application is in the database as a "source" being used by other people to prove things.
These days the DAR is pretty demanding of proof but that wasn't always the case. Many of the old applications are deficient of any real documentation - they are often just claims or statements that so-and-so served in some unit. Sometimes there will actually be a John Smith listed as having been in the proclaimed unit but no proof that the applicant's John Smith is the same guy. Same name, must be our guy. And as you point out, those applications are just copied ad nauseum as "proof" by others. If you go to the DAR database site and look at those old applications many now say they are no longer accepted as proof but it doesn't say that on Ancestry.