The following information was assembled from numerous sources and cannot be used directly as proof of Qualifying Service or Lineage.
It is considered a research aid and is intended to assist in locating sources that can be used as proof.
State of Service: VA
Qualifying Service: Civil Service
Upright V/A stone, unclear if he's buried here or if this is a cenotaph.
Directions to Cemetery / Gravesite:
Author: CSM Delmont Gary Stephens Jr.
This biography has been edited and augmented by PRS staff.
Richard Bailey was born in about 1748, likely in Virginia. As a young man, he settled with his family in Bedford County, Virginia, which later became Franklin County.1
He is thought to have married Annie Belcher, although genealogists with the SAR and DAR no longer recognizer her as the mother of his children due to lack of proof. The following children are known children attributed to him:2
John was born in 1763 and married Elizabeth “Betty” Lusk.
James was born in 1770 and married Margaret Stinson.
Eli was born between 1760 and 1770 and married Nancy Bailey.
Reubin was born in about 1771 and married Sarah Ferguson.
Micajah was born in about 1774 and married Naomi Shufflebarger.
Archibald was born about 1776 and married Agnes Nancy Godfrey.
Richard Jr. was born in 1775 and married Isabel Ferguson.
Henry was born in 1780 and married Elizabeth Peters.
Sarah
Chloe
He lived in Bedford County, Virginia, in 1782, when he served as a road surveyor,7 which is currently the only recognized patriotic act accepted by the DAR and SAR. However, there were multiple men of the same name in Virginia during this time period, so it becomes difficult to correctly attribute events to a particular person. We do know that Richard was living in Tazewll County when he died.
Richard moved his family west to Montgomery County in what is now the Virginia and West Virginia border, settling in an area known today as Bluefield, located in present-day Tazewell County, Virginia (created in 1800).3 It is possible he was the same man who played a crucial role in building and defending the Davidson-Bailey Fort near Bluefield.4
That Richard Bailey is documented in the Revolutionary War Pension Application of Joseph Davidson (R2690), which notes that Richard and Joseph guarded the fort and conducted spying excursions across the Bluestone River, between the waters of the Bluestone and the Gauyandotte Rivers, in what is now Wyoming County, West Virginia.5
Richard died about 1818 in Tazewell County, Virginia, and was laid to rest at the head of Beaver Pond Spring in Mercer County, West Virginia.6 A Revolutionary War grave honors his service at the burial site.
Sources:
Mary Keller Bowman, Reference Book of Wyoming County History (Parsons, West Virginia, McLain Printing Company, 1965), 358.
Ibid.
Ibid, 358 – 359.
Ibid, 359.
Pension Application of Joseph Davidson, R2690, Virginia
Patricia Law Hatcher, Abstract of Graves of Revolutionary Patriots (Pioneer Heritage Press, Dallas, TX 1987), 39.
Creel, Bevin, Bedford County, Virginia Court Orders 1774-1783, self-published, 2011, pages 126-127
Send a biographical sketch of your patriot!
Patriot biographies must be the original work of the author, and work submitted must not belong to another person or group, in observance with copyright law. Patriot biographies are to be written in complete sentences, follow the established rules of grammar, syntax and punctuation, be free of typographical errors, and follow a narrative format. The narrative should unfold in a logical manner (e.g. the narrative does not jump from time period to time period) or have repeated digressions, or tell the history of the patriot's line from the patriot ancestor to the author. The thinking here is that this is a patriot biography, not a lineage report or a kinship determination project or other report published in a genealogy journal. The biography should discuss the qualifying service (military, patriotic, civil) of the patriot ancestor, where the service was rendered, whether this was a specific state or Continental service, as well as significant events (as determined by the author) of the patriot's life. This is the entire purpose of a patriot's biography.
Additional guidelines around the Biography writeup can be found here:
Send your submission1, in a Microsoft Word compatible format, to patriotbios@sar.org for inclusion in this space 1Upon submission of a patriot biography, the patriot biography becomes the property of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and may be edited to conform to the patriot biography submission standards.