American Revolution and Heritage

Valley Forge Encampment (Replica Structures)

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In my yearlong recognition of the 250th Anniversary of the founding of the United States - I am now

looking at the ancestors of my wife's family and their contributions to the Revolution.

There has been some political talk about Heritage Americans recently. The linked article by Ben Crenshaw in 2024 appears to be the first or one of the first to try to define the moniker.  It is a bit better articulated than J.D. Vance's statement in July 2025 at the Claremont Institute that described them as having ancestors that fought in the Civil War.

Mr. Vance may have been thinking about his 3rd Great Grandfather, Robert Sturgis Bowman who fought for the Union in Kentucky's 14th Regiment.

In any case, it is clear from Crenshaw's description of Heritage Americans as being united by language, religion, government, liberty, land, and law and the genealogical research I have been doing our families (my wife and mine) can easily be placed into that cultural box. Among our ancestors I have identified over forty participants in the American Revolution and ancestors that were on the Mayflower and part of the early Jamestown settlement.

One of Tammy's revolutionary ancestors was William Lancaster. William was from Henrico, VA and joined the 1st Virginia. William enlisted in April 1776. The unit fought in the earliest battles of the American Revolution and William was available for duty during engagements at New York, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, and Germantown. Following Germantown William wintered with his unit at Valley Forge. William died in May of 1778 before the unit engaged at Monmouth in June. 

The army at Valley Forge was ravaged by Smallpox, Typhoid, Dysentery, and Pneumonia during the late winter and early spring.  The circumstances of his death are not precisely known, but disease is very likely the cause.  It is unlikely that William was sent home to Virginia where he later died, but rather he is probably buried in a cemetery at Valley Forge.

William wasn't a young man in this war.  He died at the age of forty-six.  He left a wife, Judith, and four children under the age of ten. His wife died only five years later. At least three of his children accompanied an aunt and uncle to an area in North Carolina that became Smith County, TN. My wife has many memories (some of which we shared) of time on a 100 plus acre property along the Cumberland River that was a small part of the acreages that William's brother and children came to own there, starting as early as 1790.

I don't know what real value there is in being a "Heritage American". Sure, the idea could give me roots.  It gives me a story.  It gives me a cultural foundation. It even explains they way I think about some things. It also has been used and can be used to divide instead of uniting the nation. We are a nation that set a beacon in its harbor to welcome the "tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free." Since we have we have become a nation of many peoples - in many ways unique in the world.  

William, like many ancestors I have looked at, fought for freedom to decide his own destiny.  That destiny, for him was death, but for his children it was property and opportunity in Tennessee for generations. Those who have come to call America their home in the intervening years, for the most part, had the same dream, "freedom to decide their destiny." Maybe that is really what a "Heritage American" is. Sure, it is an elusive bluebird - but we have believed it from our founding when we stated it this way in our Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."