Robert Mush (ca. 1758-1837)

OC-47

Robert Mush (or Mursh), a Pamunkey Indian, was a Revolutionary War soldier. After attending the Brafferton Indian School at the College of William and Mary, he enlisted as a private in the 15th Virginia Regiment in 1776. He fought in the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown in Pennsylvania in 1777 and was taken prisoner of war in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780. Exchanged after about 14 months, he marched to Georgia with a Virginia battalion and served in the Southern Campaign until the end of the war. Mush later served as a member of the Pamunkey Tribal Government and became a Baptist minister. He eventually moved to South Carolina, where his family settled among the Catawba Indians.

Department of Historic Resources, 2019

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Revolutionary War muster rolls Robert Mush Pension Application Pamunkey Indian Tribe, December 27, 1798 Petition, Virginia State Archives Legislative Petitions, King William County, Box 134, Folder 43, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA. Charlotte Journal, 16 Feb. 1838. Jack Darrell Crowder, African Americans and American Indians in the Revolutionary War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2018). Karen A. Stuart, “‘So Good a Work’: The Brafferton School, 1691-1777,” (M.A. Thesis, College of William and Mary, 1984). Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990).