Ancestors
George Fetty Sr.
1755-1848 · Amwell Township NJ → Greene County NY → Monongalia County WV
Also recorded as George Fetty senior
Born 1755, near Princeton, New Jersey
Died 1848
Children include Vinson
George Fetty fought in the Revolution, and there is a federal pension file to prove it.
On 19 November 1833, at seventy eight years old and living in Greene County, Pennsylvania, he applied for a pension under the Act of 7 June 1832. His sworn declaration is the only document in this family in which the man himself describes his own life.
He said he enlisted in May 1776, when he was living in Amwell Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, fifteen miles from Trenton, as a militia man on drafted service. He served most of his time at South Amboy under Captain John Phillips, and he was at Trenton and in the Battle of Brandywine.
He was born near Princeton, New Jersey, in June 1755, and told the court he had no record of his age. He said he had left New Jersey for Pennsylvania about fifty years before, which puts the move at about 1783, and had lived there ever since.
Levi Anderson and Joseph Ailes, both of Greene County, deposed that they knew him and had no doubt of his veracity. The pension was allowed: certificate 22727, twenty six dollars and sixty six cents, from 12 December 1833, paid through the Pittsburgh agency. In September 1841 a man at Waynesburg wrote to ask what had become of the payments, and the Commissioner replied that they had gone to a succession of attorneys.
The file says, in as many words, that there is nothing in it about his family.
He died on 22 March 1848 in Monongalia County and is buried in the Fetty-Hogue Cemetery at Arnettsville, aged ninety two. Greene County, Pennsylvania and Monongalia County are the same country with a state line through it, so the pension's Pennsylvania and the burial's Virginia are ten miles apart, not a contradiction.
A compiled family genealogy credits him and his wife Elizabeth, called Phebe, with eleven children, born across nearly thirty years from John Henry in 1770 to Vinson in 1798. The eldest does not fit: George was fifteen in 1770, and the 1790 census counts only one man over sixteen in his house. The surname spread from him through Monongalia into Marion, Mason, Pleasants and Tyler counties, which is why a Fetty turning up anywhere in West Virginia is difficult to place without a document.
He is the founder of the American family.
Sources
West Virginia, County Marriage Records, 1776-1971, Levi Fetty and Narcipa Cormeons, Mason County, 1 July 1863. United States Census, 1850, Mason County, Virginia, household 123. United States Census, 1880, Hannan District, Mason County. Fetty family genealogy, descendants of George Fetty Sr.
National Archives, Washington, D. C., Revolutionary War Pension Application of George Fetty, New Jersey, file 22764, certificate 22727, Pittsburgh agency, Act of 7 June 1832; declaration made Greene County, Pennsylvania, 19 November 1833. Abstracted by Mabel Van Dyke Baer, Washington, D. C., 14 June 1960. Read through FamilySearch full text search of unindexed images.
William S. Stryker, Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War (Trenton, 1872), under Felty · with Revolutionary War pension file 22764, certificate 22727, declaration of 19 November 1833
Calendar of New Jersey Wills, Administrations etc. (Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey, First Series), volumes covering 1664-1683, 1730-1750, 1751-1760, 1761-1770 and 1771-1780 · Marriage Records 1665-1800, ed. William Nelson (same series, vol. XXII, parts 1 and 2)
Monongalia County, West Virginia, Land and Estate Tax Records 1838-1840 (FamilySearch full text) · Theodore F. Chambers, The Early Germans of New Jersey: Their History, Churches and Genealogies (Dover, N.J., 1895), pp. 36-37 · William S. Stryker, Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War (1872)
The New Jersey Genesis Quarterly, vol. 7 (July 1970 issue), Hunterdon County Ratables, Amwell Township 1780, printed by courtesy of the New Jersey State Library, Archives and History Bureau · original in New Jersey county tax ratables 1778-1832, FamilySearch DGS 8139298, film 411300, Hunterdon County, Amwell Township items 865-872
The New Jersey Genesis Quarterly, vol. 19, Hunterdon County Ratables, Hopewell Township 1778, printed by courtesy of the New Jersey State Library, Archives and History Bureau, pp. 813, 814, 815 and 829 · Mercer County, New Jersey, Deeds 1896 · United States Census, 1880, Hopewell, Mercer County, New Jersey
Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States taken in the Year 1790: Pennsylvania (Washington, 1908), p. 75, Cumberland County, Hopewell, Newton, Tyborn and West Pennsboro Townships
If George Fetty Sr. is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "George Fetty Sr. (1755-1848)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/george-fetty-senior-1755-1848-101fea.