Once I mapped out my New England and Pennsylvania ancestors, I discovered I had several Revolutionary War veterans in the family! In this post I’ll concentrate on William Hayward of Massachusetts (1758-1834). Long story short, he served at various times and in various places during the war, but ended up being denied his pension benefits and died while trying to get them. For years afterwards, the family continued pursuing the claim, to no avail.
I first “met” William as a result of researching another ancestor, Clifford Henry Thomas (1786-1865) (in my paternal grandmother’s line). Clifford married Nancy Hayward (1793-1871), who turned out to be the daughter of said William Hayward and Nancy Green. I’ll cut to the chase and show you Nancy Jr.’s Hayward ancestor chart, so far as I have completed it:
The bulk of the information I have on William comes from his Revolutionary War pension application files (along with other records from DAR and elsewhere). Here’s a nice summary letter about his life from 1931, written to a descendant of William who had requested information from an administrator in Washington DC.:
Just the facts, ma’am, neatly summarized from the piles of handwritten papers in William’s folder. We see Nancy (Hayward) Thomas living in Eastford CT, where I know she and Clifford lived after moving down from Massachusetts, probably via the Old Connecticut Path. We also see the widow Nancy (Green) Hayward also living in Eastford.
So what other information is hiding in those primary documents?
William’s birth date: This one is interesting, as he only had one unofficial record of his birthday (from the family Bible)! The above letter gives the date as “August 6, 1758”. That probably came from William’s own 1833 declaration, as recorded here:
William’s children: I know for certain that Nancy is one of his children, as I have seen her connected to William as well as her husband Clifford Thomas and the location in which they all lived (Ashford/Eastford CT); see official letter above.
Among the pension application papers is a letter from another descendant (Clifford Thomas’ granddaughter) written to Washington DC, seeking supporting information for her grandson’s application to the Washington Guards (Pittsfield MA). In the letter she gets William Hayward’s birthplace wrong/death place right and (hopefully accurately) lists his children. The list includes the Nancy I know but also siblings for whom I have found no certain references in my research: Hiram, Henry, Richard, [Nancy], Elisa, Benjamin “and others”:
What was William’s experience with dealing with the government? An 1840 letter to the government by an acquaintance of William tells an interesting story about his pursuit of his pension, beginning in 1832. In order to be approved for a pension, one had to prove a minimum length of service. William tried to do this from memory but had lost some relevant documents. The lawyer who was helping him died around that time. So William set off on foot from CT back to the Boston area to try and find this documentation. He managed to do so and returned home, but the trip was too much for this “enfeebled old man without much energy” and he died shortly thereafter.
As you can see in the typed letter above, the government was (a century later!) able to pull together William’s complete war records, which sadly he himself was not able to do.
Clifford Thomas (William’s son-in-law, or possibly Clifford Jr.) wrote the government 20 years after William’s original application, asking about the pension:
There are a lot more details about the pension adventure in the papers, I could almost write a book about it all.
Who were William’s parents? Based on the birth date William gave in the document above, I know he was born somewhere around August 6th, 1758. Note that the date came from a notation in the family Bible, as discussed above. I have not been able to find a William Hayward born on that exact date, but I have found multiple references (including MA vital records) for one born on August 21, 1758 (i.e., same name, same part of Massachusetts, same month, same year). Birth and baptism dates are often separate, so maybe that’s what we have here.
If we are to go with the William Hayward born on August 21, 1758, his parents would then be Moses Hayward (born 1724) and Margaret Wetherell (born 1728). Fun fact: One of Moses’ ancestors was an earlier William Hayward, who has several famous descendants.
Where is William Hayward buried? This is not revealed in the papers nor in any other references I could find. However, I know where the Clifford Thomas family and William’s wife are buried, all together in a row: The Gen. Lyon (or Phoenixville) Cemetery in Phoenixville CT, just outside of Eastford. Here (L-R) are the graves of Clifford’s mother Marcy, William’s wife Nancy, Clifford, Clifford’s wife Nancy and four of their children:
Here is a closeup of Nancy (Green) Hayward’s stone:
Maybe William is still out looking for those papers?