What I Discovered While Joining DAR

I haven't had a job for the past 6 months, this leaves me with a ton of time to do useless things, but sometimes I'm slightly productive, and browsing Ancestry.com happened to be one of the more productive things I've done lately. This all started around Christmas time, when Ancestry.com constantly runs commercials to try to convince people to gift memberships to their loved ones. I've always been interested in my family history, but no one seems to know much past my grandparents, so I thought I'd try out the free membership and see what I could find. This turned into one of the BEST things I've EVER done! I decided to trace all my paternal lines back to when they came to America. Most lines didn't go too far, but the Bowden line (My Dads, Mothers, Father) turned up some very interesting information. I traced the Bowden line because it's the family I look most like, and I knew they had been in this country for awhile. Well I traced the line back to 1280AD in France! The name has changed a few times over the years but the Beaudoin's were royals in France, before leaving everything to come to America for religious freedom in 1678. My 8x great grandfather Pierre Bowdoin brought his family to Ireland and then to America from Basse-Normandie, France and ended up settling in Isle of Wight, Virginia. The family name was changed to 'Bowden' from 'Bowdoin' shortly after. My 5X great grandfather John Bowden Jr ended up being the most interesting find of all. He fought in the Revolutionary War alongside George Washington and was good friends with both him and Ben Franklin! For history obsessed nerds like me, this was like finding ancestry gold! This find only adds to the strong military history in my family. My paternal grandfather fought in WW2 and my maternal grandfather was enlisted during Korea but was stationed in Germany for the cleanup. My husband is an Iraq veteran, and will most likely be sent to Afghanistan at some point (especially since he just reenlisted for 4 more years). Because of these findings I decided to contact the Daughters of the American Revolution to enquire about joining, I'm in the application process now but John Bowden Jr is already an approved patriot, which means my distant cousins are already DAR members! The whole process has been so educational and fun, I love to learn about my family history!