A Revolutionary War Patriot from the Days of GeoCities
Do you remember GeoCities?
Long before blogs, Facebook groups, and online family trees, many genealogists shared their research on personal GeoCities websites. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, those sites became an important way to exchange information with distant cousins and fellow researchers. I even maintained my own genealogy pages there.
When GeoCities closed in 2009, thousands of genealogy websites disappeared overnight. Fortunately, projects like the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine have preserved snapshots of many of those pages, allowing us to revisit a small piece of early internet genealogy.
Today’s Friday’s Find is a photocopy I saved more than twenty years ago from a GeoCities website devoted to Revolutionary War patriots buried in Indiana. The page featured James Crawford (1758–1836) of Jefferson County, Indiana, complete with the Sons of the American Revolution emblem and a photograph of his gravestone.
The second page summarized James Crawford’s life and military service:
Born: 1758, Augusta County, Virginia
Died: 1836
Burial: Hebron Cemetery, Jefferson County, Indiana
Service: Private from Botetourt County, Virginia
Served under Capt. William Colbert and Col. Patrick Lockhart; later under Capt. Alex Hensley and Col. Morgan; fought at the Battle of Camden and in a skirmish at the Yadkin River.
Proof: Pension Claim S1191
Married Rebecca Anderson and was the father of eight children.
The page credits the information to the John Paul Chapter, DAR, in Madison, Indiana, with directions and photographs provided by Stephen D. Franklin of the Hoosier Pioneer Patriots Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution. The third page even included driving directions to Hebron Cemetery and noted several other Revolutionary War soldiers buried there.
At the time this page was created, it was hosted on an individual’s GeoCities website but linked from the Hoosier Pioneer Patriots Chapter of the SAR. While most of those original links have long since disappeared, archived versions of the site can still be found through the Wayback Machine.
For me, this page represents more than an interesting Revolutionary War biography. It is also a reminder of how genealogy research was shared in the early days of the internet. Before collaborative trees and searchable databases, dedicated researchers built personal websites to preserve local history, cemetery records, and family research. Many of those pages have vanished, making saved printouts like this one surprisingly valuable.
This particular James Crawford also illustrates why genealogical conclusions must continually be revisited. He shares the same birth year and death year as another James Crawford who lived just across the Ohio River in Fleming County, Kentucky. Over the years, the records of these two men became intertwined, creating confusion about which Revolutionary War service belonged to which individual.
Although both graves are marked by the Daughters of the American Revolution as Revolutionary War patriots, the military service attributed to the Jefferson County, Indiana, James Crawford has since come under question. Today, descendants seeking admission to the Sons or Daughters of the American Revolution through this line must provide documentation establishing his qualifying military service rather than relying on earlier published accounts.
That doesn’t diminish the value of this old GeoCities page. Instead, it preserves an important chapter in both genealogical research and internet history—a snapshot of what researchers believed twenty years ago and a reminder that genealogy is always an evolving process. Sometimes, an old printout from a long-forgotten website can become an artifact in its own right.