Jordan

[upper left corner and upper right corner contain printed text of a congressional report for a House bill:]

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
50th Congress, 1st session
Report No. 2277

MARY NEWTON [handwritten:] (Sister of Britton Jordan) [end of handwriting]

May 23, 1888 - Committed to the Committee of the Whole House and ordered to be printed.
Mr. Bliss, from the Committee on Pensions, submitted the following
REPORT:

(To accompany bill H.R. 9227.)
The Committee on Pensions, to whom was referred the bill (H.R. 9227) granting a pension to Mrs. MaryNewton, have considered the same and report:

That the claimant, Mrs. Mary Newton, is the only surviving child of John Jordon, who was a soldier for three years in the War of the Revolution. She is now in her eighty-fifth year, having been born as shown by the family record before your committee, on the 2d day of July, 1804, and in her old age applies to Congress for relief.

It is shown by the records of the soldiers who served in the Virginia Continental line that John Jordon served as a bombardier in Colonel Harrison's regiment of artillery (Virginia quota) for three years from and after the 20th of December, 1776. A land-warrant was issued to him by the State of Virginia in November, 1783. It appears that during his term of service he was captured by the British and confined on board a prison-ship for over three months.

The identity of the soldier who rendered the above-mentioned service with the father of the applicant is fully established by the testimony of very estimable people, whose affidavits were filed in the pension claim of the widow of the soldier more than forty years ago. One of these witnesses, Jincey Riddle, testified that when she was a small child she well remembers John Jordon came to her father's house in Greenville County, Va., having just been released from a British prison-ship, and that there was a great stir among the women of the settlement to have some clothes made for the soldier before he went back again to join the Army.

The death of the mother of the applicant occurred on the 6th day of July, 1847.

Your committee return the bill to the House with the recommendation that it do pass.

(Private - No. 311)
An act for the relief of Mary Newton.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Interior be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to place on the pension-roll the name of Mrs. Mary Newton, the daughter and only surviving heir of John Jordan, of the Continental Line, in the war of the Revolution, and to pay her at the rate of twelve dollars per month from and after the passage of this act.

Approved, March 2, 1889.

Related Documents

Letter excerpt from Julia M. Jordan (daughter of Britton Jordan's brother John) to George F. Tennille, July 31, 1895