Here is the first 'hero' I heard about in my bunch of famlies. I know little about him. His name was Lewis Richars. He lived in Virginia and I don't know just where. He joined the Virginia Militia and fought in the Revolutionary War. He was sent west and fought the Indians mostly in Ohio, being part of an effort to destroy several 'Indian cities.' I suspect the reason was that they were aiding the British. He then was moved into Kentucky where he fought in The Bttle of Blue Licks, after which he was attached to George Rogers Clark who led him on his long march to Vincennes where they beseiged the fort. When the war ended, Lewis Richards returned to Virginia, where he apparently had a wife. He took advantage of an offer of the new government to get land in the frontier and so he returned to Kentucky, this time the western side of it and had a farm near Morganfield and/or Strugis. I do not know if his wife remained living or if he married a second time. The only wife I have heard of was a Nancy Richards, who married on Alexander Henry, who lived in what was more central Kentucky. Mr. Henry was probably a farmer but he became an ordained minister not long before he died. They had a very large family, many with patriotic names: America, George Washington, Benjamine Franklin, and their youngest daughter was Henrietta Summerfiled Henry, who married a young man of German descent, William Hieronymus whose family lived at the time near Frankfort, but who had moved to the western end of KY and also lived ner Morganfield KY in a small but lively town at that time, Caseyville, KY. Wm. Hieronymus had been married before but his first wife die and he married Henrietta Summerfield Henry and they lived in Caseyville, but were in easy riding distance from her grandfather's farm. Lewis Richards died known as the 'Oldest Revolutionary Soldier in Kentucky.' Wm. and Henrietta Hieronymus owned a mill, a farm and a general store in Caseyville. They had a large family. I have their Family bible which holds the names of their children and their marriage and deaths. Unfortunately I do not know much about their children, other than their daughter, Mary Virginia Hieronymus, once named The Belle of Union Country. She first married an older man but divorced him and later married a young German who was working at the time as a cook on a river boat. He was ordinarily a coal miner in Evansville, IN and my great-grandfahther. He had run away from his parents when he was nine to join the Confederal Army, the only one that neutral Kentucky would produce. His parents however went to Lousville where the Brigade was forming and found him. He had enlisted as a drummer boy and had been accepted. They told his captitan that they had never given permission for him to leave home at such an early age, and they were permitted to take him back home to Evansville, where his father put him to work in the coal mines, saying that the age of nine was old enough to be a soldier, it was old enough to be a miner. He died at 88, having been a miner the rest of his life.