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: NY
Qualifying Service: Civil Service / Patriotic Service
Levi Preston was born 06 Sep 1736 in Killingly, Windham, Connecticut. He was a fourth-generation descendant of Roger Preston, who settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1635. Much of what we know of know of him and his family comes from a Preston Genealogy published in 1931 by Charles Henry Preston entitled Descendants of Roger Preston of Ipswich and Salem Village.
In 1758, Levi Preston married Deliverance Mosher and their first child, John, was born in Springfield, NY on 15 Sep 1759. Sometime before 1769, the family moved to Cambridge, NY and their last two children were born there.
Early applications for DAR and SAR cited Levi’s service as a private in Captain John Salisbury's Company of Colonel William Bradford Whiting's Regiment, 17th Albany Co., NY Regiment as reported in the Preston genealogy. That work also gives an account that was presumedly passed on among descendants that Levi Preston was “supposed to have perished while a prisoner in the hands of the British in 1781 near Albany.”
Unfortunately, Roberts’ New York in the Revolution, the definitive work on New York soldiers in the Revolutionary War, does not list a Levi Preston in that unit. In fact, while there is a complete listing of a full complement of officers, there are only ten soldiers named as enlisted men. It seems that the records for that unit are incomplete.
Recent DAR and SAR applications rely on the fact that Levi Preston was a member of the Committee of Correspondence for Cambridge from June, 1776 to October, 1776 and he is named several times in Sullivan's Minutes of the Albany Committee of Correspondence 1775-1778. He was also a fence viewer according to The History of Washington County, NY.
The currently accepted date for his death is 14 Sep 1777 in Esopus, NY rather than the 1781 date, however, various sources still report both dates. There are no records available that indicate he was a prisoner of the British, but there is no known gravesite, either. His wife, Deliverance, survived him and apparently, at some point, returned to her home state of Rhode Island where she died in 1813.
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.