Seven years ago, in June 2018, we published one of our periodic “History Mysteries,” trying to unravel with legend of Revolutionary War hero Sgt. Lawrence Everhart. The “mystery” in this case, was that Sgt. Everhart was claimed by both Lovettsville, in Loudoun County, Virginia, and by Middletown, in Frederick County, Maryland, where he lived most of his life, and is buried.
We pointed to Yetive Weatherly’s book Lovettsville: The German Settlement – the most thorough history of Lovettsville –whereinthe section on “Lovettsville’s Revolutionary War Heroes” (page 18) features two such heroes: Lawrence Everhart, and Johannes Axline. A letter quoted by Mrs. Weatherly refers to “Laurence Everhart who was indeed from Lovettsville.” The quoted letter continued: “He was the first born son of Christian Everhart who was born February 13, 1720 in Pfaltz, Germany, and who came to Loudoun County around 1764. Christian Everhart’s son Johannes Lorenz Everhart, called Lawrence, was among the first Virginians to enlist….”
We concluded that Frederick County had the far stronger claim on Everhart. Although Lawrence had leased land here after the War, in the 1790s, from Adam Axline, and had paid taxes on the land and on “personal property” of six horses and one or two enslaved blacks, the bulk of the available evidence showed him living in Frederick County for all of his life, since his family emigrated from the Rheinland Palatinate in Germany in 1764.(Court records in Frederick also showed him freeing his slaves in 1795 and 1799.)
The ”new” evidence
In the time since I wrote the “History Mystery” piece in 2018, some more documentation has come to light. Last year, the Frederick Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution (named the “Sergeant Lawrence Everhart Chapter,” which I joined in 2017), asked our Chapter Genealogist Kenneth Coppage to undertake a new study of Everhart’s life. This was triggered by the upcoming 270th anniversary of his birth in May 1755, and also the need to attempt to resolve some of the inevitable discrepancies in his life story, to separate legend and fact.
Coppage’s research can be summarized as follows:
Johannes Lorenz Eberhard (Lawence Everhart) was born on May 5, 1755, in Hessheim in the Rheinland-Pfalz in what is now Germany. In 1764, his parents brought him to America, and they settled near a relative in Frederick County, Maryland. On August 1, 1776, Lawrence enlisted in the Maryland Flying Camp and was engaged in battles in New York and New Jersey. He returned home in the Spring of 1777, where he remained until Fall 1778, when he enlisted in Col. William Washington’s regiment of cavalry. He served in the Southern Theatre from 1779 through the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781, including being wounded in January 1781 in South Carolina, and then saving the life of Col. William Washington at the Battle of Cowpens. Lawrence Everhart died at Middletown on August 2, 1840.
Coppage’s research convinced him that Everhart likely did live in Loudoun County in the early 1790s. In addition to the property and tax records cited above – which show that Everhart leased 237 acres of land here, and paid taxes here in the 1790’s –Everhart himself stated in an 1834 court proceeding that, “with the exception of three or four years since the revolution,” he had always resided in Frederick County. This almost certainly refers to the first half of the 1790s when he was leasing and working land in Loudoun.
This is not surprising, as he had family ties here. His parents had moved to Loudoun around 1787, and lived here the rest of their lives; they are buried at the old German Reformed (St. James) Cemetery. Many if not all of his brothers and sisters came here as well, and are buried at the Reformed and the Lutheran Cemeteries, and other burial places in the area.
Perhaps even more important, is that the Everhart family had been here since 1765, when a Jacob Everhart purchased the mill on Dutchman’s Creek which was known for many years as “Everhart’s Mill.” Because “Jacob” was a frequently-used name among the Everharts in Germany, we have been unable to determine for certain if Jacob was a brother of Lawrence’s father Christian, or a cousin. (Various genealogical sources say one or the other.) The mill stayed in the Everhart family for many decades; it was destroyed in the flood of 1889.
So in conclusion, we can confidently say that although Sgt. Everhart was not “from” here, he did have many ties here, before and after the War. We can justly be proud of this Revolutionary War hero’s connections ties to Lovettsville and the German Settlement.