Meet my 5th-Great Grandfather

So this week I'm very excited for our homework- we get to choose someone in our family to do research on.  I'm super fascinated with my ancestry and spent a good amount of my senior year researching my family and tracking my genealogy back to Charlemagne.  However, he is not my topic.

The person in my family I'm most interested in learning about is a man named Colonel James W. Curry.  I chose him because he was a Captain in the Revolutionary War, the reason my Dad is a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, and because my brother is named after him.  

James was born in Belfast, Ireland on January 29, 1752.  He immigrated to Staunton, VA in 1762 and most of my family is still living in that area.  He moved around a lot due to the war- even ending up in Charleston at one point as one of the 700 veteran Virginians sent to defend the city from the British and ended up being captured and taken prisoner until the end of the war.

He died in Marysville, Ohio, on July 5, 1834, most likely due to a stroke because it was said he just "fell down dead". He was 82.

I think it's interesting that he worked as a judge in Ohio after his days in the army- he was given a land grant in the area, so he uprooted his family to make them live in a log cabin in the Plains.  Also, he didn't like his wife's- Mary Burns - name and had her change it to Maria Magdalene.

The cemetery he is buried in looks like a public one to me, although the pictures aren't great.  I'm so excited to learn more about him.

James Curry's Grave