Revolutionary War Soldiers Series: Remembering Dempsey Capp
By Betty F. Crum and Pat Young
Waw-wil-a-way Chapter Daughters
of the American Revolution, 250 Project
Dempsey Capp filed for his pension in Highland County on the 25th of April 1825. He stated that he enlisted on the 20th of May 1777 and served for three years as a Private under Capt. Redding Blount, Captain Robert Mebane, and Colonel Gideon Lamb in the North Carolina line. He was a Prisoner of War at Haddrell’s Point after the Fall of Charleston, South Carolina and was exchanged at Jamestown, Virginia after fifteen months. He was discharged August 1781. He was awarded a pension of $8 per month. After his death, his widow received $80 per year. His pension papers are available on fold3.com under his pension #W22735
Dempsey was born 7 September 1760 in Pasquotank, North Carolina, the son of Dennis and Betty Capps. He married Sarah (Poole) Overman in 1784. They had five children before 1800: Mary Capps, 18 July 1785-1843 (William Garrett); Rhoda Capps (Rev. Elijah Harbour), 22 April 1788-1870; William Capps, 17 June 1791-1875; James Capps, 13 September 1794-1867; Elijah Capps, 10 January 1797-1891. All five children survived the parents per war pension papers filed 1844 in Illinois. The wife and mother, Sarah (Poole) was first married to Nathan Overman, until his death. They had two children brought into Sarah’s second marriage to Dempsey Capps, Nathan, Jr. born 8 February 1777, and Sarah Overman born 26 February 1782.
Sarah, his wife, was born 8 November 1756, and died 18 May 1840. Although Elsie Ayers in her book states that Sarah died near Rainsboro, Highland County, Ohio, no documentation has been found as to the location of Sarah’s death. One might infer that since the family removed to Illinois sometime after the 1830 census, the 1 married daughter lived in Indiana, and Dempsey died in Illinois in 1839, that Sarah would have died in Fulton County, Illinois as well as she died about a year after Dempsey in 1840.
In 1843 after the death of their mother in 1840, the youngest son of Dempsey and Sarah Capps, Elijah, filed from Fulton County, Illinois for the remaining pension owed to their mother. All five children were listed in the Illinois court records as were the two half siblings Nathan and Sarah Overman. The oldest daughter, Mary (Capps) Garrett presented to the court the family Bible which contained the birth records of all the five Capps siblings, the two Overman half-siblings, and the deaths of the Dempsey and Sarah Capps. This record is included in the Dempsey Capps pension file at the National Archives.
The name of Dempsey Capps or Capp is on the Highland County DAR court house plaque and is listed in the NSDAR database as ancestor #A018998. Dempsey died 16 March 1839 in Fulton County, Illinois. He is buried in the Old Capps Farm Family Cemetery, Fulton County, Illinois. Submitted By: Pat Young Waw-wil-a-way Chapter, NSDAR; Contributing to the article: Betty Crum, Roots.