Andrew Campbell b1747 - YDNA

I have a special fascination with an "Andrew Campbell" who served in the Continental Army for all 8 years of the Revolutionary War.

I wrote an article about him for the Journal of the Clan Campbell Society of North America. 

I blogged about his military discharge at Snake Hill in New Windsor, New York.  

I even started an autosomal DNA project to find my improbable 7th cousins. 

I searched for Andrew's descendants and (more importantly) I searched for people doing the same.

It has been over 10 years since the CCSNA article. It has been a long slow journey, a journey that continues. This week marked a huge step in finding out ... Who is "Andrew Campbell?"

As recently as 2020, I believed that Andrew had no paternal descendants. However, another family researcher, Debi L., continued to uncover Andrew's children and their descendants. A few years ago, she found a living paternal descendant.  It took me another few years to make the contact and make arrangements for a YDNA test with Family Tree DNA.  The test is now "in the mail."  Results are expected in a few months.

Why is this so interesting to me and to other descendants of Joel and Andrew? Currently the parentage of Andrew is unknown. His geographical proximity to Joel in 1775 makes a relationship more than a remote possibility.  Joel was in the same local militia company in Hanover Precinct, Ulster County, NY. 

Andrew was in the minuteman company of Captain Peter Hill of Hanover. Joel is enumerated on the same page as Captain Peter Hill in the 1790 census. [The Campbells and the Hills had lived in the area since the 1760s.]  Peter was the son of Nathaniel Hill referred to in a prior blog.  His home still stands.

Andrew also served in the Continental company of Captain William Jackson of Hanover Precinct (as he testified for his pension application in 1818.) Nathan, Samuel, and Robert Campbell were also in a militia company commanded by Jackson the same year, prior to Jackson raising a company in the Continentals. Nathan and Samuel were brothers of Joel. 

Was Andrew a nephew? (son of an older sibling of Joel?) Or perhaps a 2nd cousin (a grandson of a brother of Joel's father.) Or possibly related to the Alexander Campbell family living in that area in the 1760s who were part of the Lachlan Campbell immigration party of 1739...and unrelated. YDNA will answer most of those questions.

Here is the genealogy from the father of the Tester to Andrew:

Arthur L Campbell 1911-1989
Richard James Campbell 1886-1946
Albert S Campbell 1842-1918
Richard Campbell 1798-1869
Andrew Campbell 1747-1833