Captain John's Service

The Pennsylvania militia has a confusing history and organization.  What we know about Captain John Rippey is that he was elected Captain of the 6th Company of the 6th Battalion of the militia in 1777.  The company was one of three raised from Chanceford township, the 7th Company was headed by  Captain Joseph Reed, Esq.  and the 8th by Captain Thomas McNarry. The Battalion was led by Colonel Ross.

There's an extensive discussion of the historical background here but I'll try to summarize.
Between 1775 and March 1777 the PA militia were only semi-official, due to the pacifist ideals of the Quaker founders.  In March 1777 the militia became official, so the table of organization  I relied upon for the first paragraph reflects the initial establishment.  This lasted for 3 years, with a new establishment in 1780, when Rippey, Reed, and McNarry were not re-elected as Captains.

Each member of  militia could be called up for 2 months of active duty at a time, therefore they were divided into "classes" with all members of the class being called,. A call-up would find  neighbors still serving together, but their colonel would be different and their battalion designation would be different.  (Read the historical background for an explanation.)

When and where was Captain John on active duty?  Can't tell at the moment,  Here's what the historical background says:

Most of the service rendered by members of the Pennsylvania Militia fell into one of three categories. They were either used to augment the operations of the Continental Line such as when some of the Associators accompanied General Washington in crossing the Delaware in January 1777. Other examples of this type of service include the large numbers of Pennsylvania militia employed in the summer and autumn of 1777 to oppose the British invasion at Brandywine and on the flanks at the battle of Germantown, though in neither case did they actually see action. The militia did provide a significant defensive force patrolling the south side of the Schuylkill River and engaged in occasional clashes with British outposts and scouting parties including heavy skirmishes at Whitemarsh on December 7. Due to the sixty-day turnover, however, none of the men who were at Brandywine in September would have been present at Whitemarsh in December. It is known that no Pennsylvania militia served at Valley Forge, Monmouth, or Yorktown. The second type of service was duty on the frontier in Northumberland, Northampton, Bedford and Westmoreland counties. Occasionally, militia reinforcements from Cumberland, Lancaster, and York counties would be brought in to reinforce these frontiers as occurred in the summer of 1778. A third type of militia duty was in providing guards for supply depots located in Lancaster, Lebanon and Reading and at various prisoner of war camps.

A House Captain John Saw

We don't know what the house of Captain Rippey and Mary Orson looked like, but here's the York Town Square blog post on the Willis house, which dates to that time.

Did Captain John and Mary Go to the Fair?

No, not the Ontario county fair, whenever it was founded, but to the York fair, chartered by the Penns in 1767.  See this blog post from 2006.  Apparently York County likes to claim the title of oldest continual fair, but that's a bit iffy. But the 1767 charter is real.

Did Captain John Rippey Hear This?

Jim McClure has a post at York Town Square on the reading of the Declaration of Independence:

"Four militia companies and 300 to 400 old men, women and boys joined Smith for a public reading..."

In our dream world, Captain John would have been there at the head of his company and James Smith, the York signer of the Declaration, would have been related to the William Smith who became connected to the family in Ontario county, NY.  But in reality there's nothing to indicate the two Smiths are related and there were several companies from the York area, and Captain John's was one of the later ones.  But the post is an interesting sidelight on how politics worked in 1776

Detention of Enemy Combatants--an Earlier War

Captain John Rippey's service in the Pennsylvania militia is a little fuzzy to me.  I've seen claims he served with Washington at Valley Forge, claims which I don't think are true. I've run across, and promptly lost track of, references to his involvement in logistics and possibly to his involvement with guarding prisoners.  What prisoners you ask? First the Battle of Saratoga, where General Burgoyne surrendered (the "Convention Army") and later from the Battle of Yorktown where General Cornwallis was commander.

Anyhow in 1781 the Convention Army was marched from Albemarle, VA to the York area.  The local militia  would have been involved in guard duty and management of the prisoners.

June Lloyd at Universal York has posted in the past on Camp Security and now has another post on it. She's done work in the Archives and found an interesting record from one of the guards. (Not Capt. Rippey.)  Here's a site devoted to it.

Trip, Day 9, to B'Ville [Revised]

Our Geneva stay was in a Ramada on the lake. Then off to the Geneva Historical society, where the archivist very kindly allowed us in, even thought the archives were officially closed. Marjorie found the microfilm of the No. 9 Session minutes fascinating and I had to bribe her away. (Capt John Rippey was the clerk of the session initially.) They had the record of William Smith's daughter marrying in 1825 from the Geneva Gazette. She recommended we go to the Ontario County Archives for further material. Unfortunately it meant going west and our stamina was flagging. So we headed east to the Seneca Falls National Women's Rights museum, which I had visited with my wife, but which Marjorie had never seen. Then on through Auburn (Seward mansion--who bought Alaska and gave us Sarah Palin, and Harriet Tubman's home, both closed on Oct. Mondays) and Skaneatles (the prettiest town on the Finger Lakes) and up to Baldwinsville where my sister Jean lives. Met her for supper. (See Day 10 report.)

Trip, Day 8

Have about 2400 miles on the trip and both travelers are beat. But we end with a bang, traveling from Jamestown northeast (planning a surprise for one of Marjorie's sons but I'll let her tell him) and on to the grand finale of our genealogy--Seneca Presbyterian, or the Number 9 Church near Stanley, NY. Scads of John Rippeys (my father was John Rippey Harshaw) and other connections buried in the cemeteries, including the mother of us all, Mary Orson. Had a pleasant meeting with Bob Robson, a distant cousin descended from Isabella Rippey, and saw the church.

All in all, very good, though fatigue took the edge off for me.

Now we're in Geneva, NY for an early bedtime.

Captain John and the Continental Congress

Granted, Chanceford is not York. And admittedly, I've been too lazy to compose a timeline for the Rippeys. But it's a fact the Continental Congress was in York for 8 months.

Rippey Genealogy--Future Attracttion

Courtesy of Bobbie Ernst, I have a copy of what I call the "Rippey Generalogy", though technically it's "Genealogy Tables of Some Rippey Families in the United States". W.H. Rippey built it based on foundations done by John Newton Rippey. I'm trying to retranscribe it, so it can be shared on the Internet.

As a note, the genealogy essentially ends with Captain John Rippey's birth in 1749. As a result of Jean's researches, it's reasonable to believe we have two more generations, Mathew and Hugh, identified. See the ancestry.com tree and here.

History and Genealogy

I've invested a lot of time researching and recording my genealogy. With my background as a failed historian, it prompts some reflections on history, as reflected in the genealogical record.

The most striking lesson is from the Rippey genealogy, Captain John and Mary had 13 children, all of whom reached adulthood and had children of their own. This could be chance. Many family trees probably have an especially prolific family somewhere.

It could reflect the prosperous conditions in the York PA region for farmers. There's research here and here on the comparative health of disparate populations in time and space which shows colonial PA was a healthy area--the "Best Poor Man's Country" as one letter put it and a historian used for his book title.

But it contrasts with the record of their descendants. The average family size declines. That's to be expected, as it becomes harder for parents to establish their children on farms, and as prosperity decreases the need for multiple children to have one or more living in the parent's old age.

And children start dying, dying early and often. Some families seem jinxed, with 2, 3 or 4 children dying before their teen years.

What'd He Do in the War?

We know Captain John Rippey was in the Pennsylvania militia in the Revolution. But what did he do? I've never seen evidence of his participating in any battles. I think, though I'm relying on an increasingly unreliable memory, I saw some mention in the Pennsylvania archives of his possibly acting as a supply officer. (An unglamorous job, but someone has to do it. )

There's another possibility, maybe even more unglamorous but equally essential.

Prison guard.

See this post at Universal York for very good background on the prison camp in the York. The York militia definitely were guards for the camp, but no specific mention of one John Rippey.

Google Maps and USGS Topographic Maps

Having fun trying to work between Google Maps and USGS Topographic maps. It had been a while since I visited the USGS site and I was pleased to find that you can now do a free download of the detailed topographic maps and see them in PDF format (with an added plugin.) Start here.

Google maps has also been improved, with a "terrain" tab, as well as the old road map and satellite tabs.

I set up a York area map, trying to nail down the sites of interest to descendants of Mary Orson and John Rippey. (See below.) The basic map is Google, with the placemarks. But I identified the lower Chanceford church location from the Topo map, as well as the "Orson run" id. Ideally I"d have links from the placemarks to the documents Jean extracted for the various tracts of land. Maybe next year.



View Larger Map

James Smith--A Near Miss?

One of the mysteries in my genealogy is William Smith. We aren't sure where he came from--was it from New England which was the source of most of the settlers of upstate New York, or from Pennsylvania, where most of my ancestors came from.

I bought a history of the First Presbyterian Church of York, PA off E-bay (please use the site, I own stock in the company ;-) ). Not from any real likelihood of finding something, but York's just north of the area Capt John Rippey and Mary Orson lived (about 20 miles according to Google Maps) and there's not likely to be a history of the Lower Chanceford Presbyterian Church available. The history is really short (the history of No. 9 church is longer and more detailed). [tongue in cheek on] But it did mention a "James Smith", both as being prominent in the church and, by the way, a Signer!!

Signer of what, you ask?? Of the Declaration of Independence, of course, you ignoramus! So today I did some googling. Alas and alack, I'm not an heir. [tongue in cheek off] Smith was from Ireland, emigrating with his father, being trained as a lawyer and practicing first in Shippensburg, PA and then in York. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and an early organizer of the militia in York. Rather interesting guy, if rather different from the usual stereotype of the dour Presbyterian. This was the most complete bio I found (which is downloadable if you have broadband).

So I can say that Capt. John Rippey would have met James Smith, but that's it. But, given the concept of 6 degrees of separation, there's now 6 degrees of historical separation between me and George Washington. (me to grandfather William to Rev. John to Joseph to Capt John to James Smith to George Washington).