Tracks of My Georgia Ancestors: Colonial First Born Son and Revolutionary Soldier

Buckner Pittman was the oldest son of the Colonial Pittmans, John and Mary Polly Rowe Pittman of Virginia. He is not mentioned by name in the records of the Pittmans migration from Virginia to Georgia, but it is assumed that he spent his youth in the ways of colonial boys.

As young as four years of age, boys began to help with the daily chores by working along side their fathers learning how to farm, cut wood and follow in their fathers footsteps of providing for their family. Boys also wore clothing just like their father, and by the age of nine they began their schooling. For most frontier colonials, parents educated their children at home from a *Horn Book with an emphasis on their sons book learning and apprenticeships which were more often than not learning about farming from their fathers. *Horn Book...Colonial Education

Buckner's enlistment in the early Revolutionary War days is not duly recorded, but it is known that he and his brothers joined their father who enlisted in December 1776. In May 1780, Sergant Buckner Pittman enlisted in the Commonwealth of Virginia under Captain George Rogers Clark's Company of Artillery. The fact that he was a senior non-commissioned officer suggests that he had prior military service. Under the service of Clark, Buckner Pittman is documented as a Master Boatman at Fort Jefferson which suggests that he was in Clarks Navy Brigade that was responsible for moving troops and supplies on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

It was during this time that Buckner was counted as one of the 100 men in Clarks service who participated in the bloody conflits against the Chickasaw Indians at Fort Jefferson located on the 'Ironbanks' (now Kentucky) on the east bank of the Mississippi River. The building of Fort Jefferson was ordered by then Govenor Thomas Jefferson of Virginia who saw the fort as a strategic location for controlling traffic on the Ohio and Mississippi and a source for protecting the settlers.

At the end of his three year service under Clark, he was part of an encampment on the Falls of the Ohio River. His plan after being discharged was to return to Georgia or Virginia, however his discharge came during a hard winter when the Ohio River was impassable. He was forced to wait for favorable conditions to cross. After all the hardships and battles he had survived during his war service, he was severly injured when his horse fell on him as they disembarked the flatboat that carried them across the Ohio River. He was forced to remain in Kentucky to convalesce from the injury that left him crippled.