It’s Memorial Day weekend and we are honoring those who gave their lives so that we can live in freedom. I have no ancestors who died in service, but I am thankful for their bravery.

Memorial Day weekend is also the traditional start to the summer season, even though summer won’t officially arrive for a few more weeks. (Please tell that to Tucson’s Mother Nature, as we’ve had several days over 100 degrees and quite a few days well into the 90s!)

Randy Seaver has a fun challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun this weekend:

1)  Are there ancestor’s occupations that you know nothing about?

2)  Pick a great-grandparent or earlier ancestor who held an unfamiliar job (cooper, cordwainer, hostler, etc.). Look it up and write a short description of what their daily work life might have been like. 

This one took no thought at all since I’ve been delving into the military life of my Loyalist ancestor, John Adams. Full text search has found a number of Revolutionary War muster rolls, now digitally available in FamilySearch’s Canada collection.

Several of those rolls state that John Adams was a wagoner, sometimes with the 3rd Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers, but also noted in those muster rolls as “on command” with the Grand Army (which I take to mean perhaps loaned out to Lord Cornwallis or General Howe.

One muster roll actually states that he was on command with Howe.

On the surface, I thought being a wagoner might be a less life-threatening military job than that of a regular soldier. I’ve since changed my mind.

This is one of the very few times I’ve cheated and asked Claude for a description of John’s military life:

Role and Responsibilities

A wagoner’s primary job was keeping the army moving and fed. Under Howe’s command — particularly during the campaigns around New York (1776), Philadelphia (1777), and the intervening marches — a wagoner would:

• Drive supply wagons hauling food (salt pork, hardtack, flour), ammunition, artillery equipment, tents, and medical supplies
• Maintain horses and oxen, which were chronically scarce and precious — animals had to be fed, watered, shod, and kept healthy even when the men went hungry
• Repair wagons on the road, fixing broken axles, wheels, and harnesses with whatever materials were at hand
• Forage for supplies, sometimes under orders to requisition (or simply take) grain, hay, and livestock from local farms — a deeply unpopular task even among sympathetic civilians

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A Typical Day on Campaign

A day on the march was physically brutal. He would rise before dawn — often around 4–5 AM — to harness and feed the animals before the column moved. On a good road, the army might cover 10–15 miles, but in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, roads were often rutted dirt tracks that turned to mud in rain, bogging wagons axle-deep. A wagoner might spend hours digging out a mired wagon while soldiers watched or, if he was lucky, helped push.

On campaign he ate standard British army rations — monotonous and often spoiled. Salt meat, dried peas, bread or biscuit, and small amounts of rum or spruce beer made up the diet. Fresh food depended on what could be foraged.

Nights were spent camping near the wagon train, often outside the main army’s perimeter, making the wagoners among the most exposed to Patriot raids and partisan attacks — a constant danger in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

When you think about it, the enemy would always want to disrupt or destroy the army supplies of their opponent.

While a wagoner didn’t have a glamorous job or high military rank, his service was vital to military efforts and he was always a target for attack.

Thanks, Randy. This was an interesting question.