Pension Application of Mary, widow of Emery Altizer: W4720
Transcribed and annotated by C. Leon Harris
State of Virginia Sct.
On this 5th day of October 1840 personally appeared before the county Court of Montgomery, now in session, Mary Altizer a resident of said county and state, aged about eighty one years, who being first duly sworn according to law, doth on her oath make the following declaration in order to obtain the benefit of the provision made by the act of Congress passed July 4th 1836 That she is the widow of Emery Altizer, who was a soldier, in the war of the revolution, that sometime during the war the precise date she is not prepared to state, her husband the said Emery Altizer entered the service under Capt. Adam Wallace or Capt. Paxton, she is not certain which, perhaps he was under each, That Green was the General, that he continued in the service until the taking of Cornwallis [19 Oct 1781], that he was there [at Yorktown VA] but was so unwell, he was unable to render any service on that day; that she well knows that he served eighteen months which would date his service eighteen months before the taking of Cornwallis, at which time he returned home, she does not undertake to state the name of all the officers under whom he served, as she has to rely very much upon the declarations of her said husband which were detailed to her many years ago. it is probable that he served under others; She further declares that she was married to the said Emery Altizer on the [blank] day of July in the year seventeen hundred & seventy three, that her husband the aforesaid Emery Altizer died on the [blank] day of September 1819 and that she has remained a widow ever since that period, as will more fully appear by reference to the proof hereto annexed; That she was married to the said Emery Altizer in the county of [blank] in Hagerstown in Maryland under the following circumstances: one of her parents were opposed to the marriage, and they ran off, and were married by a minister of the Gospel, whose name she never knew, by publication of banns, that no marriage license were obtained for their marriage; That no record or documentary evidence is in her reach nor does she now know of any living person by whom she can prove her marriage, as she was an entire stranger in Hagerstown and lived in Berkley county in Virginia [sic: Berkeley County, now West Virginia] at the time they ran off. Mary her X mark Altizer
NOTES:
According to the statement, Altizer entered service in April 1780. A Capt. Adam Wallace of the 8th Virginia Regiment of the Continental line was killed 29 May 1780 at Waxhaws SC, where the surrendered troops under Col. Abraham Buford were attacked by Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton’s Legion. Gen. Nathanael Greene took command of the Southern Department of the army on 2 Dec 1780, and a company of the 1st Virginia Brigade under Capt. John Paxton fought at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina on 15 March 1781. Greene’s army remained in the Carolina’s and was not present at Yorktown.
In Montgomery County VA on 14 Nov 1840 John L. Crockett, 63, stated that some 50 years previously Emery and Mary Altizer with three or four children settled on his father’s place for a few weeks, then moved elsewhere in Montgomery County.