Dunmore's War Payroll and Service Claims

Overview

At Virginia's Third Revolutionary Convention in July 1775, the delegates passed an ordinance appointing commissioners to pay the militia soldiers who had participated in Lord Dunmore's expedition against Native Americans of the Ohio Valley in 1774. They would also settle the accounts of those who provided goods or services to the expedition. The claims commissioners' account ledger for the counties of Augusta, Bedford, Botetourt, Culpeper, and Fincastle has been digitized, and this is a partial index of the personal names linked to images of the relevant pages. The ledger entries include names, length of service or goods provided, and the amount of compensation. Not all pages in the ledger have been indexed.

Background

Following attacks on white settlers in Ohio Valley region (then claimed by Virginia), the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, organized a large force of militia from Berkeley, Hampshire, and Frederick counties and led them to Fort Dunmore (Pittsburgh), arriving at the end of August 1774. Dunmore also ordered Colonel Andrew Lewis to raise an army from Augusta, Botetourt, Fincastle, Bedford, Culpeper, Dunmore, and Kentucky counties and join Dunmore's force along the Ohio River. On October 10th, Colonel Lewis' unit encountered a large group of Shawnee and Delaware, and they fought the Battle of Point Pleasant (West Virginia), eventually driving an Indian retreat across the Ohio River. Soon after that, Dunmore negotiated a treaty that prohibited Delaware, Mingo, and Shawnee tribes from settling or hunting south of the Ohio River. 

Search Tips 

• This collection can be searched by personal names or by county of origin.
• Using quotes around phrases may return fewer, more relevant results.
• Boolean operators OR, NOT and AND written in ALL CAPS may be used. By default, all search terms will be combined with the AND operator. To exclude terms, use the NOT operator before a term.
• Wildcards can be used to find variant spellings. The question mark (?) will match any one character. For instance, “Ols?n” will match “Olsen” or “Olson”. The asterisk (*) will match any number of characters (including zero characters). “Ch*ter” would match “Charter”, “Character”, and “Chapter”, and “Temp*” would match “Temptation”, “Temple”, and “Temporary”. Wildcards cannot be used as the first character of a search or within phrase searches (quotation marks).

Books

• Bockstruck, Lloyd DeWitt. Virginia's Colonial Soldiers. (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1988).
• Crozier, William Armstrong. Virginia Colonial Militia, 1651–1776. (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co.,1973). Available online (Hathitrust).
• Eckenrode, Hamilton J. List of Colonial Soldiers of Virginia. (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1980). Available online (Hathitrust).
• Kegley, Mary B, comp. Soldiers of Fincastle County, Virginia. (Dublin, VA: Kegley, 1974).
• Smyth, Cecil B. Dunmore's War, 1774: A Concise Narrative of the 1774 Campaign of the Virginia Frontiersmen Against the Indian Tribes of the Ohio Valley (Midlothian, VA: C.B. Smyth, 1995).
• Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. Documentary History of Dunmore's War, 1774 (Madison, WS: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1905). Compiled from original records in the Draper Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society. Available online (Hathitrust).
• Williams, Glenn F. Dunmore’s War: The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era. Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2017.

Archival Collections

• The claims commissioners' account ledger is part of the Virginia Colonial Government records (Record Group 1). Additional Dunmore's War claim records include Pittsburgh, Romney, and Winchester Vouchers, 1775; Pittsburgh payrolls, 1775; and West Augusta Public Service Claims, 1775. These records have not been indexed or made available online. They are available on Miscellaneous Microfilm Reel 78.