Despite
the obvious reasons for wanting to be home (your own bed, familiarity with your
own stuff, grandchildren, friends, etc.) one of the primary reasons I was
anxious to get home was to get to work on my family tree. This all began
innocently enough last fall . . .
I
was invited to speak to the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) in
Turlock which turned out to be a delightful experience. The ladies were anxious
for me to have my granddaughters join the DAR so they might be eligible for
scholarships to college. However, in order to be eligible for these
scholarships you have to prove that one of your relatives had served in the
American Revolution. I admitted to the ladies that I did not know of any family
members having served that far back. The Civil War? Yes! But I had no knowledge
of any family serving in the Revolutionary War.
I
shared this information with my daughters, Laura and Jenny, which was
immediately seized upon by Laura. She jumped in with both feet, as it were,
signing up on Ancestry.com. Before we knew it, Laura’s research had borne much
fruit. She managed to trace as far back as 1693 to a Major Philip Rootes (born
in Virginia) who served in the English militia in America. He died in 1756. And
yes, the spelling of the last name is different than mine. Major Philip Rootes
had a son, Captain John Reade Rootes (1735-1798), who, interestingly, was
assigned as the personal attorney for General George Washington throughout the
Revolutionary War! Who’d a thunk it?
So
the question of having a family member serve during the American Revolution has
been satisfied. But wait! There’s more!
Captain
John Rootes had a son, Lieutenant Philip Reade Roots. Did you catch that? The
last name was changed! Why? We don’t know. However, it was not uncommon for
these new Americans to change the spelling of their names even though they
defeated the vaunted British Redcoats. You will remember that the British came
back again to try and even the score in the War of 1812. Making some separation
from British connections was considered by some as a prudent move at the time.
That’s pure speculation, as I have not been able to substantiate this through
my research.
Now
here’s one of those Twilight Zone moments. I mentioned above that our family
member who served in the American Revolution was Captain John Reade Rootes. He
held the rank of captain in the colonial army. He was also a lawyer by vocation.
He was also assigned as the personal attorney for General Washington. I know
that’s really cool, but here’s what’s so fun about this. My brother, John
Christopher Roots, is a retired Marine colonel. He is also a lawyer (retired)
by vocation. And he also served in the White House during the Reagan and George
H.W. Bush Administrations. Whoa! That’s just a little bit weird.
There’s
so much more that I’ve discovered! For instance, Major Philip Rootes married
Mildred Reade. She is the granddaughter of George Reade who was born in
Hampshire, England in 1608. George became the acting governor of Virginia in
1640. But check out this next paragraph, taken straight from documents I
researched.
“In
1641 George Reade married Elizabeth Martiau, daughter of Nicholas Martiau, one
of Virginia’s early settlers and a skilled engineer of French origin, who had
first come to Virginia in 1620 as a representative of Henry, the fifth Earl of
Huntington. Their daughter, Mildred Reade married Augustine Warner of Warner
Hall, and the daughter of this marriage, Mildred Warner, married Lawrence
Washington, the grandfather of George Washington.”
Nicholas
Martiau was a captain in the French Army, having been born in France in 1591.
He was also a Huguenot. After arriving in Virginia in 1620, he became
responsible for developing the area called Yorktown, earning him the moniker, “The
Father of Yorktown.”
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