Names of Revolutionary War Honorees and Other Long-Serving Veterans Revealed
On August 7, 1782, George Washington authorized the Badge of Honorary Distinction to acknowledge enlisted soldiers who had completed three or more years of faithful service, a rare formal recognition at a time when honor was seldom extended beyond rank.
The Badge of Honorary Distinction survived chiefly in written form. It appeared as a notation on soldiers’ discharge papers, entered by commanding officers at the moment of separation from service. Those handwritten endorsements, preserved today within the Revolutionary War pension files of the National Archives, form the foundation of two new volumes from Kenneth Wayne Virgil.
Mr. Virgil derived both books from surviving discharge papers found in the National Archives’ Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files (M804). The first of the two volumes to be published, The Book of Merit: Honorary Badges of Distinction, reproduces and documents 507 surviving discharges that actually contain George Washington’s authorization of distinction.. The second book, Revolutionary War Patriot Discharges: A Companion to the Book of Merit, consists of an additional 500 discharge papers from the same record set that do not explicitly reference the badge but, nonetheless, refer to other Revolutionary War veterans who served for three or more years.
Following are the complete lists of soldiers whose discharge papers, with annotations by the author, are found in each book (Click the “Toggle Fullscreen” option below each list for better visibility):
