McDonough County Genealogical Society
In the northwest corner of McDonough County, along LaHarpe Creek, sits Liberty Cemetery in Blandinsville Township. More than 200 people are buried there, including twenty-five pioneers who were born before 1800 in states and territories outside Illinois. Among them is one of only four known Revolutionary War soldiers buried in McDonough County—Lamech Blandin, Jr.
Lamech was born in Massachusetts in 1759, the fifth of eight children born to Lamech Blandin, Sr. and Rachel Allen Blandin. He survived many of his brothers and sisters, most of whom remained buried in their home state.
When Lamech applied for a Revolutionary War pension in 1830, he recalled entering the service on April 1, 1776, and serving until 1780. Although he no longer had records to prove his service, he remembered being stationed at Dorchester Heights and serving under Colonel Eleazer Francis, Major Daggett, Captain Isaac Hodges, Lieutenant Abdul Bliss, and Ensign Cobble.
Other military records show that Blandin also answered the Rhode Island alarm in December 1777, serving as a private in Captain Alexander Foster’s company under Colonel John Daggett. A War Department letter issued in 1919 documented additional service from August 1776 through September 1780, during which he rose from private to sergeant.
During or shortly after the war, Lamech married Lydia Lambert. Together they raised at least eleven children before moving to Vermont and later spending time in New York.
In 1830, while living in Westminster, Vermont, he applied for his Revolutionary War pension.
The Blandin family’s connection to military service continued into the next generation. Their son, Daniel Blandin, served during the War of 1812 but was killed at Fort Erie on August 31, 1814. As one of Daniel’s heirs, Lamech later received a 160-acre military bounty land patent in what would become Blandinsville Township, Section 33.
In 1837, Lamech traveled west with his youngest son, Joseph Lambert Blandin, and settled in McDonough County. The following year he requested that his pension payments be transferred from Vermont to Illinois. As part of the process, he once again had to prove his Revolutionary War service.
One of the most memorable stories found in his pension file came from fellow soldier Jonathan Thortly. During the war, Thortly watched a soldier named Blandin fall into a river. Unable to swim, Blandin disappeared beneath the water, and everyone assumed he had drowned. Nearly forty years later, Thortly was astonished to meet Lamech Blandin walking down a street in Westminster, Vermont. When he asked about the incident, Blandin confirmed he had indeed gone under the water— but had somehow survived. Thortly later testified that the man he met in Vermont was the same soldier he had served beside during the Revolution, helping confirm Blandin’s claim for his pension.
Lamech Blandin, Jr. died on May 4, 1839, and was buried in Liberty Cemetery, where his grave continues to remind visitors of McDonough County’s Revolutionary War heritage.
The Blandin family’s story did not end there. Lamech and Lydia’s granddaughter, Harriet L. Blandin, married Charles Rose Hume, another McDonough County pioneer whose story has also been featured in Pioneers of the Past.
This version is about 20–25% shorter, reads more like a story than a pension file, and matches the narrative style you’ve used in previous Pioneers of the Past columns while preserving the important historical facts.
This Pioneers of the Past is furnished by Julie Terstriep of the McDonough County Genealogical Society, facebook.com/ mcdcgs. For more Pioneers of the Past, go to www.mcdcgs.com/pioneers-of-the-past/ Sources: US Land Patent “Lameck Blanden”, Document #13970, National Archives and Records Administration, Revolutionary War Pension, Lamech Blandin or Blanden, Mass., S12.123
