While Leona W. Martin's forebears were fighting for the British during the Revolutionary War, the freed slave that genealogist David Lambert counts as an adopted ancestor was performing heroically for the patriots at Bunker Hill.
For that, Salem Poor was honored in 1975 with his image on a 10-cent postage stamp. Details of Poor's life after the Revolution -- his troubled marriage, his death as a pauper -- were unknown, however, until Lambert pieced them together over the past decade.
David Lambert is a professional genealogist who has been mentioned numerous times in this newsletter (click here to see earlier articles). He is employed as the online genealogist at the New England Historic Genealogical Society. He is also descended from the Massachusetts family that owned Poor in Andover. Ever since an uncle gave him a first-day cover of Poor's stamp, he's been interested in his story.
"He was one of the first American heroes," says Lambert. "I'm glad to have found the final chapter."
You can read more about this interesting story in the Boston Globe if you click here. You can also learn more about Salem Poor at http://tinyurl.com/yrz64g and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_Poor.
