[We had a big power failure, due to the wind yesterday.]
What it meant to be a member of the militia is not clear. The traditional thought is that every able-bodied man had to belong. This was an ancient prescription. In Virginia, it dated from the first days of the colony. Maintaining an army was expensive and the burden was shifted to civilians, who were supposed to train and be ready to protect the neighborhood. The training was minimal. The men met every three months, perhaps every month, where they received the most elementary training. A gun was assigned to each individual, who kept it, and used it in normal activities, such as hunting. So, they were pretty well acquainted with their weapons. What they probably lacked was the discipline to act as a unit.
When one looks at the number of men in the Culpeper militia, it seems as if they are not enough. Determining how many there should be can be done in several ways, such as counting the number of citizens, and allocating them to the age groups such as 16 to 50, the age when men were subject to service in the militia. When one does this, the number listed in the militia seems short or too few. Supporting this concept is the following fact. In twenty-two of the Culpeper Classes, a substitute from each class was hired to act on behalf of the each class as a whole, or to replace the drafted person, and this substitute does not appear anywhere in the lists of men in the classes, which was supposedly the entire militia. So it definitely appears that not all of the men in a specific area and class were in the militia, and one wonders if membership were voluntary .
On the other hand, the men in the militia do not appear to be supporters of the revolutionary cause. They went to great lengths to avoid service. Entire classes hired substitutes. Or, note that many drafted people hired a personal substitute. Then, twelve of the drafted men refused to serve, and twelve absconded (though two came back after thinking it over).
So it comes back to a question of what were the conditions of membership? I wish that I knew better, but I have seen little that would enlighten me. It seems as though this question could absorb the attention of a Ph.D. candidate for his/her research project.
I wonder if the list of men that made up the names in the classes was composed by an inventory taken for the purpose, and if this inventory was far from perfect. The neighborhood concept shows strongly. I cited the four consecutively numbered classes from the Little Fork area, and these four classes are rich in Little Fork names. How often would one expect to find a list of military men listed by the neighborhood?
If anyone has ideas that might help resolve the questions, please post your answers.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.