Hi again, this is my last posting for tonight. I promise. I wanted to thank Bette for sending me the complete pension file on Burwell, all forty some pages. I have always relied on other transcriptions and what is printed in books on Burwell's pension applications. Right away I saw several things that made great sense. ALWAYS get the original source document if you can ! That is genealogy rule # ONE. In this case others transcriptions can and have been wrong. As I told Bette I had an envelope ready to go into the mail the very day she offered to send me these documents that she got from the National Archives. I'm sending her a CHART in gratitude and maybe a little surprise ! First, Burwell was uneducated. He could not sign his name. He signed with an X, so in these cases you always have to wonder, did they know what they signed ? Which leads me to question his Will, which in my personal opinion, is just a tad strange. Second, in Grayson court in 1832, they asked Burwell where he was born. He replied , " My parents tell me I was born in Bedford County." This little sentence tells me that Burwell had a set of parents ! He was not illegitimate. The word "tell" makes me wonder if his parents were still alive in 1832 ? He did NOT say "told" in the past tense, but in the present tense. When asked, when he was born, he replied that " he knows not." He thought himself to be 69 years old, which is where the 1763 birth year is coming from. Burwell did NOT say that he was born in 1763, he didn't know. If he knew the year, why wouldn't he have said so ? I'm working on transcribing these documents in addition to what Bette had already transcribed. I have poor copies in my records that I got a couple of years ago, that are copies of copies of copies and are really very poor quality. Already I have noticed several words that appear different between the originals and the copies. See why my plate is full ? Carolyn