BLOGGING BRUNCH10

Not many new posts this morning on the genealogy blog patrol
as I sit and drink my coffee. I did find a few interesting news
articles to tide me over for a bit.

One is from Rhode Island about the sad state of historical
cemetaries there and how one woman is getting folks to help
do something about it.

Another story is from a few days back and tells about a DAR
member's quest to get her Revolutionary War ancestor's
name cleared from a charge of desertion. It got my attention
because my 4x Great Granduncle Benjamin Barker's pension
file has the notation "deserter" on it, but both he and later
his widow Dorcas did receive the pension. Not without some
difficulty, mind you. That's why there's 85 images in the file.

As the descendant points out in the article, many times battles
were fought close by a soldier's home and some of them would
go "AWOL" to go home and tend to some family business,
then eventually return to their units which was apparently the
case with Benjamin Barker. This was one of the things about the
Minutemen that frustrated Washington during the siege of
Boston. In the case of the soldier in the article, there's a
circumstance that might make it more difficult to clear his name
and the author James Beidler makes some suggestions that
might help.

And finally, another article from Rhode Island is about a former
governor's Irish roots and has excerpts from letters and a play
about the Great Famine and Irish immigrants in America. It
made me think of my mom's grandparents and what they must
have gone through both before and after they came here.