Author: George Geoffrey Baggett
William Armstrong was born July 4, 1756, at the Craig (Irish) Settlement in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. After a couple of family relocations, he was living at Neshaminy, Pennsylvania (Bucks County), at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. There is some confusion about his form of service in the war. Records accepted by the Daughters of the American Revolution indicate that he was an Ensign in the 6th Company, 2nd Battalion of the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Militia. This service is verified in the Pennsylvania Archives, which shows William Armstrong of Bucks County commissioned as an Ensign in that county’s militia on May 10, 1780. The Bucks County Militia was involved much earlier in the war. The county sent its full militia into New Jersey in July 1776. Colonel Joseph Hart’s Battalion of the Flying Camp was formed from this original muster of militia. The “Flying Camp” was, basically, a local militia that existed to protect one’s own community. However, these militia groups were often called up into active service, as was the case for the Bucks County militia and its subsequent Battalion of the Flying Camp. Parrot, curiously, records that this William Armstrong served in, “Lewis’ Pennsylvania Battalion of the Flying Camp from July to December 1776.” The Lewis that he referred to was Colonel Robert Lewis, Commander of the Philadelphia Flying Camp. This is a questionable claim, since there appears to be no record of the William Armstrong of Bucks County ever having been associated with the city of Philadelphia. There is a possibility that both the DAR records and Parrot are referring to the same William Armstrong. However, it seems unlikely. There is another difficulty associated with the rank of the William Armstrong of Lewis’ Battalion. The William Armstrong in the Philadelphia Flying Camp was a Second Lieutenant, not an Ensign. Parrot further claims that after the Flying Camp was dispersed at the end of 1776, Armstrong enlisted in March 1777 as an ensign in the 7th Pennsylvania Regiment. However, that soldier was an altogether different William Armstrong. He was born in 1763 and died in 1848 in Garrett County, Maryland. He is buried in the McCarty Church Cemetery south of Oakland, Maryland, and his grave is marked with a government stone. Unfortunately, it seems that the rather common name of William Armstrong has led to some confusion and erroneous claims with regard to his service. However, his participation in the Bucks County Militia in 1780 has been investigated and vetted by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Indeed, they have admitted at least twenty-three descendants of this Patriot for membership in the DAR. Due to a lack of Bucks County Militia records, there remain no details about his service, and we do not know about the locations where he served or any battles in which he fought. We can be satisfied, however, that William Armstrong was both a soldier and a Patriot who served the Cause. His exact location in the years immediately following the war are unknown. The first reliable record of his location is a family document that shows him and his family in Davidson County, Tennessee, in 1796. Family historians claim that he had gone there to fight the Creek Indians. His wife was Mary Randolph Harrison of Virginia. A few years later the Armstrong clan relocated to Christian County, Kentucky, and settled in an area that would later become Trigg County. Mary R. Armstrong died either in Tennessee or Christian County. Her exact place of death and burial are unknown. Soon after arriving in Kentucky Armstrong married a young woman named Mary Graydon. It seems clear that William Armstrong was a community leader in rural Western Kentucky. He was appointed sheriff of Christian County in 1806 and 1807. After Trigg County was founded in 1820, he served in leadership in that county government, as well. He served as the foreman of the grand jury of inquest at the second term of the Trigg County Circuit Court on August 23, 1820. Armstrong’s home was in the Caledonia community, along the Sinking Fork of Little River. We can pinpoint the location from an entry in a book that describes an event on his property. A man by the name of William Randolph taught school at the Cool Springs Cave, which Neal describes as, “on the William Armstrong property on Sinking Fork of Little River in the Caledonia community, Trigg County, KY.” The Cool Springs Cave is a well-known location in Trigg County. Interestingly, William Armstrong owned the first significant industry in the Caledonia area, a distillery that he started around 1825 and operated successfully until his death. This is, indeed, interesting, in light of the fact that in more recent history Trigg County was a “dry” prohibition county until 2009. William Armstrong wrote his will on February 1, 1832. He died in Trigg County some time soon after that date. The exact place of his burial remains unknown, though it is reasonable to assume that he rests somewhere on his property in the vicinity of the Cool Springs Cave near the Sinking Fork Branch. Robert E. Parrott, Pisgah’s Earth: The Story of Mary McGough Armstrong (1793-1885) and Her Family, Knoxville: Robert E. Parrott, p.32. Ibid., 33. DAR Ancestor Search, William Armstrong, Ancestor # A003172, , Accessed 02 June, 2014. William H. Egle, Ed., Pennsylvania Archives: Second Series (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: E.K. Meyers), p, 201. Francis E. Devine, "The Pennsylvania Flying Camp, July-November 1776," Pennsylvania History. Vol. 46, no. 1 (Jan. 1979), p. 61. Parrott, p. 33. Thomas Scharf, History of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., Press of J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1884), p. 331. Parrott, p. 33. Garrett County Revolutionary War Veterans , accessed 05 June, 2014. Parrott, p. 33. Ibid., p. 37. Ibid., p. 36. Ibid., p. 38. Henry Perrin, Ed., Counties of Christian and Trigg, Kentucky: Historical and Biographical (Chicago & Louisville: F.A. Battey Publishing Co., 1884), p. 56 (Christian County section). Perrin, p. 22 (Trigg County section). Eurie Pearl Neel, The Wilford-Williford Family Treks into America (Nashville: Self Published, 1959), p. 293. Perrin, p. 135 (Trigg County Section). Will of William Armstrong, Trigg County Will Book A, pp. 275-278.