A Demographic View of North Carolina Militia and State Troops, 1775–1783

Originally publishing in the Journal of the American Revolution on October 1, 2020.

After nearly a quarter of a millennium, what do we really know about the militia and state troops that served during the Revolutionary War? Historians and researchers over the past century have dedicated entire volumes to addressing this question with numerous publications of militia rosters. While this research has proven invaluable, what does it really tell us about the men and their units beyond their service in a particular unit or battle? For instance, how old was the typical militiaman (if there was a “typical” militiaman)? How long did he serve and in how many battles did he fight? Was he a volunteer or a reluctant draftee? Where did he serve? Was he literate? Where did he live after the war? And perhaps most importantly, what was his personal experience? What unique circumstances or events did he have a part in that is not covered in already written histories of the war?

Information contained within pension applications provides at least some answers. In the past fifteen years, most of the 150,000 known Revolutionary War pension documents have been digitally scanned.^[1] Tens of thousands of these have been transcribed and posted in online databases. The most prominent repository of these transcribed pension documents is the Southern Campaigns Revolutionary War Pension Statements & Rosters website. Researchers Will Graves, C. Leon Harris, and several others have, since 2006, meticulously deciphered and transcribed thousands of pension applications. To date there are over 25,000 transcribed documents on the site. All of the known Federal pension applications from men who served in Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia have been posted there.^[2]

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