CHRISTOPHER ELROD JR.  
Biographical Sketch
(husband of Sarah Douthit Elrod)
 

 		     Claim is made that Christopher ELrod, Jr., served for three years in
		the Militia of Surry County, N.C.; the claim being based on the following
		facts:

		     Moravian Church records show that he was born in North Carolina in
		1757 and that at the time of the Revolution he was unmarried and living
		with his father, Christopher Elrod, Sr., near the Yadkin River, in what was
		then called the Maryland settlement because the Elrods and other settlers
		had come to N.C. from the Manacasy in Maryland.  (Death record of Christopher
		Elrod, Sr.)

		     He was nineteen years of age in May, 1776, when all Taxables from Fried-
		berg, Friedland, and the Maryland Settlement were obliged to meet at Steiners
		Mills where Captain Heinrich Schmidt took the names of all young men as belonged
		to his Company, and, therefore, he enlisted.  (Salem Diary, May 8, 1776, trans-
		lated in Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, Vol. III, page 1063.)

		     On May 24, 1777, it is recorded that "Captain Heinrich Schmidt mustered
		the men from the Friedland and Maryland Settlements beyond the bridge over
		the Wachovia.  (Salem Diary.  Translated in the Records of the Moravians in
		North Carolina, Vol. III, page 1151.)

		     At the session of the North Carolina Assembly in January, 1779, an act
		was passed which released the Moravians from militia service, they offering
		to pay a three-fold tax in lieu of military service.  (Acts of 1779, Chapters
		1 and 3.)  This applied to men who filed their names as Moravians and who
		voluntarily paid the state taxes three-fold, a certificate of membership in
		the Moravian Church being required by the Militia officers.

		     March 2, 1779, "Brother Christopher Elrod from the Yadkin came to Brother
		Graff and asked that certificates for his unmarried sons (three."  Moravian
		records show that Christopher Elrod, Jr., married Sarah Douthit, December
		7, 1780, and that he and his brothers Robert and John were the three sons of
		Christopher Elrod, Sr., who were unmarried in 1779.  (From entry of March 2,
		1779: see Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, Vol. III, Page 1295.)

		     It is therefore clear that Christopher Elrod, Jr., served in the militia
		from May, 1776, to March, 1779, and that he lived during that time on the
		Yadkin River in Surry County, N.C.  Further, that when he asked to be
		released from Militia service it was to pay a volunteer three-fold tax which
		the Assembly of N.C. had decided was the equivalent of the militia service
		in its value to the cause of Independence.

		     I hereby certify that the above facts are taken directly from the Moravian
		records in the Salem Archives.  (Signed: Adelaide L. Fries.)
		The above is found in Family Records, Book B. Page 34.

Charlotte Curlee Ramsey
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cramsey/index.html