Holy Rood Cemetery, in the Glover Park neighborhood of Washington D.C., is the oldest Georgetown cemetery still in operation. At its western edge is a small headstone that reads:
What Nevitt might have been, or done, in his lifetime, is not to be learned from those few words, but Nevitt was probably one of the last living veterans of the War of Independence to be seen on the streets of Georgetown. Today, his grave is the only original grave of an identified Revolutionary soldier in Georgetown (the original borders of which once included much of Glover Park).
In the early 1830s Congress had enacted legislation to award pensions to surviving veterans of the Revolution. Nevitt applied in 1833. In his application Nevitt states that he became a Minuteman when the news of the battle at Bunker Hill reached him in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. The Potomac shore of Maryland was being raided by Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, whose ultimate goal was to sail up the Potomac, occupy Alexandria, and divide the colonies in two. Dunmore’s plan was thwarted by the resistance he met in southern Maryland. Minutemen assembled wherever the governor’s fleet appeared. After the battle at St. George’s Island (where Nevitt saw action), Dunmore withdrew.
Congress granted Nevitt’s pension, but he had less than two years to enjoy his seventy dollars a year. When he died he was laid to rest in the Upper Graveyard of Georgetown’s Trinity Church, which we know as Holy Rood Cemetery.
On July 8th, 2000, one hundred and sixty-five years after his death, Joseph Nevitt was honored by the unfurling of “Old Glory” and the playing of “Taps” over his rediscovered grave. The National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution unveiled a bronze plaque:
REVOLUTIONARY WAR SOLDIER JOSEPH NEVITT PRIVATE OF MARYLAND BORN 1752 IN ST. MARY’S COUNTY, MARYLAND DIED OCTOBER 25, 1834 IN WASHINGTON COUNTY, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
MARKER PLACED BY THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA STATE SOCIETY, NSDAR
Supporting information:
Joseph Nevitt, the Minuteman in the American Revolution, can be found in the 1830 DC census (pp.200-1), in Tenleytown. He is aged 70-80. But it should be remembered that Nevitt had a son named Joseph Nevitt, and it is not always possible to know which one a given record refers to. We do know that one of them once owned property in what is now Glover Park.
In 1808 Henry Gaither bought and improved a lot on the west side of High street, B&H 266 (on Wisconsin Avenue, just below Calvert Street. Gaither, veteran of the Revolutionary War, died in 1811. A few years later Joseph Nevitt owned the lot, which now had two houses on it. Nevitt advertised that it was particularly suitable for a gardener (i.e., someone who grew produce for the market) because it had a well. But, Nevitt also thought it had possibilities as an inn, and described it as “well-situated for a wagon stand and house of entertainment for travelers”. (The sale was to be at auction, but since Nevitt was still paying taxes for these houses the following year, it may be that he did not find his price.) (Federal Republican, Nov.23 through Dec. 15, 1812)
References to Joseph Nevitt in District records link him––or them––to other families who all kept inns and taverns. Joseph Nevitt, Jr. married Barbara Willet, of a family that had inns on River Road and elsewhere. John Tennally (whose name survives in Tenleytown) kept an inn; when his sister and heir Sarah wrote her will, Joseph Nevitt, Jr. was her executor, and Barbara Nevitt her witness. Sarah Tennally’s house and furniture went to the daughter of Theophilus Robey, an innkeeper with whom Joseph Nevitt owned land in partnership. A Joseph Nevitt was one of the executors of Robey’s will. Henry Riszner also had an inn in Tenleytown, but in 1816 he sold it and bought one of Joseph Nevitt’s houses in this neighborhood.
The elder Joseph Nevitt appeared in DC Circuit Court Jan. 8, 1833, stating his age as 80, a resident of Washington County, DC. In his affidavit he describes himself as a Minuteman, who served whenever called, 3 to 6 times a year, every year, from 1775 until the end of the war. Nevitt’s witnesses include Georgetown tanner Thomas Hyde, Nathan Luffborough (Loughboro), Lewis Carbery, Isaac Peirce, Charles A. Beatty, and the Revd. S.L. Dubuisson, “Pastor of the Church to which I belong” i.e. Holy Trinity, Georgetown. (Pension File S11136, indexed in 1870 in Vol. A, page 274. It is on Roll 1809 of Microfilm M-804, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files 1800-1900, and begins on frame 0466 (National Archives).
Joseph Nevitt, Private, Maryland Line, began to receive a pension on March 4, 1831. This was retro-active. The pension granted was under an act of June 7, 1832, and was granted January 30, 1833. (District of Columbia File, Revolutionary Pensioners, DAR Library)
Final Payment Voucher Received From General Accounting Office, indexed in Vol. C, pp.199-224; missing after 1953, but index of vouchers made in that year reads: Agency of Payment: DC Date of Act: 1832 Date of Payment: 1st. qtr. 1835 Date of Death: Oct. 25, 1834
Trinity Church Death Register, p.60: Joseph Nevitt, died October 25, 1834, aged 85, full pay range, Trinity Church upper grave yard.
The match of dates in these two separate records is the evidence that the Daughters of the American Revolution required to prove that the man buried at Holy Rood was the man who drew the pension for service in the Revolutionary War.
While date of Joseph Nevitt’s death is known, the year of his birth is uncertain. When Joseph Nevitt applied for his pension in 1832, he stated that he was eighty (i.e. born 1752), but that he had no record of his birth. The age given by the tombstone inscription, on the other hand, would suggest that he was born in 1749. It is possible that the priest estimated Nevitt’s age.
Regarding burials of Revolutionary War veterans in Georgetown, it emerges that, however many Revolutionary soldiers may have been buried in what is now Volta Place Playground, or in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, their names are now lost, and their headstones, if they had any, long gone. Only two patriots, Uriah Forrest, and Stephen Bloomer Balch, were sufficiently revered to have their remains moved to new graves; in the case of the latter, twice. (Ely, Selden Marvin. The District of Columbia in the American Revolution; and Patriots of the Revolutionary Period who are Interred in the District or in Arlington, published by the District of Columbia Sons of the American Revolution, and quoted in Washington Past and Present, 1930, I:363.)
“A Marker of Honor for Revolutionary War Soldier” Washington Post, July 9, 2000, p.C3
“Maryland Minuteman” Catholic Standard, July 6, 2000, p.28
“A Revolutionary find” The Georgetown Current, February 3, 1999
“GU opts to allow Revolutionary memorial” The Georgetown Current, March 31, 1999
“Revolutionary vet draws final honor” The Georgetown Current, July 12, 2000
“Unearthing cemetery’s past history” The Georgetown Current, October 30, 2002
(The information in this article originally appeared in the Glover Park Gazette from 1998 to 2000. All rights reserved.)
Carlton Fletcher
