December 12, 2024 ‘George Washington Slept Here’

No. He didn’t sleep here in Madison. Well, not as far as I know. But I thought the title would get your attention.

You see, every day seems like Christmas when you work at an historical archive. There will always be fantastic discoveries in the collections that come to light in roundabout ways.

That leads me to today’s lesson, dear students of genealogical research: When doing research on your family history, keep an open mind about where to look for documents and artifacts. They might, literally, be anywhere.

Such is the case of a document we found tucked away in a safe here at the archives. Why it is kept in a safe is immediately obvious.

“The Bearer hereof, Sam’l Woodsom, Private in the late Alden’s Regiment of Massachusetts and in Captain _______ Company, having served during Nine Months being the Term for which he was engaged, is hereby discharged from the said Regiment, in which we certify that he hath behaved as a brave and faithful Soldier. Given at Head Quarters this 21^st Day of November, 1782. Registered in the books of the Regiment.”

The signature of the Adjutant next to that last word is that of Gen. George Washington, who later became the first president of the United States. When the war ended, Washington famously insisted on signing the discharge papers for every soldier who served in the Continental Army and survived the war.

What is NOT immediately obvious is how this document found its way into the Jefferson County Historical Society archives collections in Madison, Indiana.

We came across the document after two researchers from the John Paul Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution found a news clipping in a scrapbook kept in the early years of the local organization. The clipping is the reprint of a letter written by a J.B. Lane, who was so impressed with the work the chapter did to create John Paul Park (on West Third Street) that he decided to donate this document to them.

J.B. Lane, I discovered, was, in fact, John Ballard Lane, born in 1824 in Boston, Massachusetts. A lifelong bachelor, Lane was appointed to be a postmaster in Nebraska by Abraham Lincoln in 1861 and served in that position for 40 years. After retirement and in declining health, Lane came to Madison to live with his sister, Harriet Eliza, wife of Judge Charles E. Walker.

Born in Pennsylvania, Walker’s parents moved the family to Switzerland County when he was a young boy. He lived his entire adult life in Madison; after earning a degree from Hanover College, he went on to practice law. Eventually, he became a judge in the Jefferson County Court of Common Pleas.

So none of the “players” involved in bringing this document to Madison were, actually from Madison. And Samuel Woodsum (not Woodsom) seems to never have left his hometown of Buxton, Maine; he died there in 1841.

How did Mr. Lane come into possession of this document? I did some tree-building for J.B. and Harriet and discovered that there is likely a family link between the Lanes and the Woodsums. I haven’t determined exactly where in the tree they connect, but Private Woodsum served with at least two other men with the surname Lane. They may have been cousins, or their children may have intermarried—at this point, it’s hard to say.

J.B. Lane may have inherited the document from a family member; oddly, there were many family lines in the Lane family that ended with both male and female offspring who never married and, presumably, never had children of their own.

Or, it may be a coincidence: He may have been an avid collector who purchased the document at an estate sale.

The provenance of how the document fell into Lane’s possession may remain a mystery forever. But one thing we know, and I am grateful for, is that in 1906 he donated it to the DAR. Lane died nine years later in 1915.

At some point, the DAR chapter donated the document to the Jefferson County Historical Society for safekeeping and preservation. It is the only authentic document signed by Washington that I, personally, have ever had the chance to see and actually touch. (And that was only so I could take the picture of it for this blog post!)

Stay tuned for my next post, which is about the military career of Samuel Woodsum. It’s fascinating!