‘Book of Merit’ Honors Patriots on Eve of 250th Anniversary

Genealogical.com is proud to announce the publication of The Book of Merit: Honorary Badges of Distinction, compiled and annotated by Kenneth Wayne Virgil.

On August 7, 1782, General George Washington authorized the Badge of Honorary Distinction to acknowledge enlisted soldiers who had completed three or more years of service in the Patriot Cause. Unlike the Badge of Military Merit, the precursor to the Purple Heart, the Badge of honorary Distinction appeared as a notation on soldiers’ discharge papers and was signed by Washington.

For this new book, Mr. Virgil has reproduced the surviving discharges as they exist in the archival record (from Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files M804). The author has added to each discharge image a narrative reformulation based on Virgil D. White’s Genealogical Abstracts of Revolutionary War Pension Files. Most of the narratives are full of valuable information about the recipients’ families. Owing to the 1800 fire that destroyed the War Department building, and the 1812 fire during the British attack on Washington, DC, only a portion of total Badges of Military Merit have survived. Complete with a name and a location index, The Book of Merit both preserves what remains of 508 distinguished soldiers and sets the stage for what else can be recovered.