The finding, in brief
Most family trees are lucky to touch the American Revolution once. This one touches it four times over, on four different lines — enough that the research established four separate Patriots of the Revolution, each the anchor of an independent lineage path recognized by the Daughters of the American Revolution. They did not all serve the same way. One carried a musket on the Continental Line; one held a county's law together from the justice's bench in the war's worst years; and two more served on the Carolina-and-Southern lines that would, generations later, run down into Mississippi and meet the Searcys. Together they are why the same family that began in a Tudor priory also stands, four times, in the founding of a republic.
The two whose service records are in hand
Gideon Johnson Jr. DAR Patriot A063204
A Private of the 2nd North Carolina Continental Line, serving under Captains Armstrong and Gates and Colonels Alexander and Martin, 1776–1777 — his service fixed by his own pension file (S4456). He married Mary Baker DeGraffenreid, and the direct line descends through the two of them. He is the family's Revolution at its most ordinary and most real: an enlisted soldier in the line.
Anton Tscharner DeGraffenreid DAR Patriot A031346
The keeper of the family Bible, and a Patriot by civil service: Justice of Lunenburg County, Virginia, from 1781 to 1783 — holding the county's courts and law together through the war's hardest southern years, the kind of patriotic service the record recognizes alongside the soldier's. He is Mary Baker's grandfather; the same hands that kept the family's record kept its county's.
And a fifth, who fought but is not counted here
Beside these four stood one more soldier the family cannot claim as a separate patriot path, because he is a brother of the line rather than an ancestor of it: Vincent DeGraffenreid, Mary Baker's brother, who enlisted at fourteen and served from Brandywine to Yorktown. His war is told in its own story — a reminder that the record counts patriots by descent, but the war was carried by more of the family than the count shows.
The other two paths
William Allen DAR path
The third established Patriot line, carried on the Allen branch that joins the family between the Johnson and Rorie descents. His recognized service is documented in the family's DAR lineage portfolio.
William Rorie DAR path
The fourth established Patriot line, on the Rorie branch — the family that would carry down into northeast Mississippi and, in 1867, meet the Searcys when Mary Jane Rorie married Freeman Jones Searcy. His path is documented in the DAR portfolio; the wider Rorie patriot material is cross-referenced in the National Society's records (A097611 line).
Four ancestors, four kinds of service, four separate roads back to 1776.
A note on what is shown here
Two of the four — Gideon Johnson and Tscharner DeGraffenreid — are set out above from their own service and pension records. The service particulars of William Allen and William Rorie live in the family's DAR lineage portfolio (Paths C and D) and are summarized here rather than reproduced; a fuller page on each can follow as those files are drawn out. The headline, though, is documented and firm: four established Patriots, four DAR paths, one family.
Key sources
- Gideon Johnson Jr. — DAR Patriot A063204; Revolutionary War pension file S4456 (2nd North Carolina Continental Line).
- Anton Tscharner DeGraffenreid — DAR Patriot A031346; Justice of Lunenburg County, Virginia, 1781–1783 (Lunenburg County Order Books).
- Searcy DAR lineage portfolio, Paths A–D (Gideon Johnson Jr., Tscharner DeGraffenreid, William Allen, William Rorie); Reynolds A097611 patriline reference (Rorie), National Society DAR.
This story is drawn from the family's documented research across I Am Coming, Volumes II and III.