My First Brush with the Revolutionary War

As I continue to work my way through the Hull family lineage, I introduce to you my 5X great grandparents, Stephen Hull (1743 - 1803) and Comfort Babcock (1746 - 1806).

Stephen Hull, of Stonington, Ct., is the first ancestor I discovered who served in the American Revolutionary War as a member of the Continental Army. Using Ancestry.com, I viewed the 1920 "Sons of the American Revolution" application of Harold Bragdon Winslow. He is also a descendant of the Hull family and has documented that Stephen and his father, also named Stephen, served in the 8th Connecticut Regiment under the command of Captain Thomas Wheeler & Thomas Holmes between September 8 - November 17, 1776. They also served under Lt. Col. Oliver Smith's regiment out of New London but no dates were given. The site also provides a copy of the actual payroll for this militia and shows one of the Stephen Hulls as a sergeant. Also listed are some other names that I have become familiar with during my genealogy research, such Denison, Babcock, and Billings. I have not been able to locate much of the activities of this regiment during the time period indicated.

Roll Call of members of the Eighth Connecticut Regiment in 1776.

A year prior to enlisting in the army Stephen Hull had married Comfort Babcock in Willington, CT. According to other family trees that I have connected to they had seven children:

• Elias (1778-?)
• Comfort (1780-?)
• Ami (1782-?)
• Latham (1784-?)
• William Little (1786-?) *my 4x great grandfather
• Matilda (1788-?)
• Lucretia (1792-1870)

  According a variety of sources, they resided Willington, CT., Windham, CT., and Stonington, CT. According to the pension roll of the US Revolution, Stephen died in 1803 in Willington. The Newspaper Abstract from the Northeast reports that Mrs. Comfort Hull died in Boston at the age of 66.