Pension Application of Peter Howard: X893

                        Transcribed and annotated by C. Leon Harris

 

Voucher 1784              From copy of original in Richmond Va. State Library.

I do certify that Peter Howard substituted himself in March 1778 to serve one year in the 5th Virginia Regt. and continued as a soldier in the said Regt. until the 9th of September following, at which time he reinlisted the 24 or 29 of December 1778 for the duration of the war. He then went on a furlough to Virginia where he was ordered to join Col. Bufords detachment of Levis [sic: levies]. He has drawn no part of his pay since he left the State of New Jersey excepting a partial payment made to him by Col. Buford as I have been informed.

Richmond Va. Jul 4, 1784         John Roney Lt.  3rd Virg. Regt.

 

Rev. War Section.            February 19, 1919.

Mrs. D. R. Wood, Martinsburg, Virginia [sic: West Virginia]

Madam:

            In response to your communication received the fourteenth instant, you are advised that the records of this Bureau show that one Peter Howard, a Private, was allowed a pension for disability, of $40. per annum, which was paid at the Virginia Agency. His residence is unknown, and there are no particulars of service given, as there are no papers on file, the same having been destroyed in the burning of the War Office.

            The list of applicants for invalid pension returned by the District Court for the District of Virginia, submitted to the House of Representatives by the Secretary of War on April 25, 1794, and printed in the “American State Papers, Class 9, Claims”, page 105, shows that Peter Howard enlisted for the war, was mustered in May, 1779, as a Private in the 3rd Virginia regiment and that he was wounded in several places, while in the service of the United States, at the defeat of Colonel Abraham Buford on May 29, 1780 in South Carolina.

            He was pensioned from March 4, 1794 under the Act of June 7, 1795.

            The date of his death is not shown.

                        Very respectfully,    [signature illegible] Commissioner.

 

NOTES:

            The Continental Army of George Washington entered winter quarters at Morristown NJ on 1 Dec 1779, and that may be when Howard returned to Virginia on furlough. In the same month Col. Abraham Buford took a detachment of 350 troops to try to aid the southern army under siege in Charleston SC, and Howard was evidently in that detachment. Many were wounded multiple times at Buford’s defeat at Waxhaws SC.

            The letter above was in reply to a query by Mrs. Doc Robertson Wood for information regarding the Peter Howard (4 Apr 1762 - 9 May 1827) who was a minister at Pine Creek Baptist Church in Floyd County. (A copy of her inquiry is in the file.)