Pension Application of John Hunter: R5404
Transcribed and annotated by C. Leon Harris
State of Illinois}
County of Wabash} SS On this third day of December 1832 personally appeared in Open Court, before Ephraim Phar, Beauchamp Awbry and John Compton, Judges of the County Commissioners Court of Wabash County now sitting John Hunter, a resident of Mount Carmel, in the County of Wabash and State of Illinois, aged Seventy years, who being duly sworn doth on his Oath make the following declaration, in order to obtain the benefit of the act of Congress passed June 7th 1832.
that he entered the service of the United States, under the following named officers and served as herein stated. The first term he entered the service in December in the year 1780 as a substitute for his father John Hunter Sen’r. under Captain George Baxter of Rockingham County Virginia, and was attached to Gen’l. Muhlenburgs [sic: Peter Muhlenberg’s] Brigade, that he then resided in Rockingham County Virginia, that his Company was marched through Richmond and Manchester, to the long Bridge near Portsmouth that he was engaged in a skirmish at said Bridge with the British that he served three months was discharged and returned home. That some time in the latter part of the Summer of 1781. he was drafted and hired a substitute by the name of Charles Osman to serve in his place, that his said substitute served under Gen’l. Muhlenburg and was in the service two months that during the time his said substitute was in the service he volunteered and entered the service himself, under Captain Jacob Coger, that he marched directly to YorkTown, and arrived there on the morning the Batteries were opened, that he served during the siege and was there when Cornwallis and his Army were taken prisoners [19 Oct 1781], that at the siege he was attached to Gen’l. Muhlenburg’s Brigade, and returned with the prisoners to Winchester, under the Command of Col [Samuel] Vance and served about two months at this Term. That he does not know of any person by whom he can prove his services in the revolutionary War, that he has written some time since for affidavits of his services but has received no answer and does not know that any person is living by whom to prove said services
That he never received any written discharge from the service
That he was born near Hagerstown in the State of Maryland on the 27th day of November 1762; he has a record of his age at home taken from the original record in his fathers family Bible, said Bible is at present in possession of Joseph Hunter near Jonesborough [Jonesboro] in East Tennessee,
As above stated he was living in Rockingham County Virginia when called into the service where he continued to live for about one year thereafter, from there he removed to East Tennessee and resided there about ten years from there he removed to Madison County Kentucky where he lived about Twelve years from there he removed to Mountgomery [sic: Montgomery] County in said State and lived in the latter County about four years from there he moved to (Knox) now Gibson County in the (then Territory) now State of Indiana in the Spring of the year 1807. and that has lived there and in Lawrence and Wabash Counties in the State of Illinois since
He hereby relinquishes every claim whatever to a pension or annuity except the present, and declares his name is not on the pension roll of the agency of any State. [signed] John Hunter
NOTE: On 23 Jan 1854 Isaac W. Hunter, son and heir of John Hunter, authorized an agent to determine whether his father had been owed an increase in pension.