Email From Gary Aden to Gary Aden
Email Dated 8/4/2001 

      The above application is included in this book as a matter of
interest. This person is now inactive in DAR. In addition, while she is
unaware of the following information(DAR has been completely supplanted
by other interests), in point of fact, in the long run she would not be
affected by the following revelation because she could also retained her
membership using  William Allen as her  ancestor Revolutionary War
service member, providing she were willing to go to the trouble of
documenting her mother Maybell ALLEN Criner Shaw's  paternity by Beverly
Joseph Barkley Allen by going to the trouble(birth records of Beverly
Joseph Barkley Allen's children were destroyed by courthouse fire in
Brownwood, Texas). I also must confess that I am not sure she has not
already taken the latter step  and has been, in fact, a member by virtue
of double lineage. 

      If the application on the reverse side utilizing Thomas Camp, Sr.
as the Revolutionary ancestor, had been received in the mid 1980's and
thereafter by the DAR, the applicant would likely have been rejected.
What's more if this member's status is of single lineage and based on
this application, then she would likely be expelled or disenfranchised,
whatever term the DAR uses for such action. By way of background, the
DAR discovered when examining the credentials of an Illinois chapter
that all or most had used this ancestor as their Revolutionary member.
That resulted in a very scrupulous examination of the lineage resulting
in the discovery that Thomas Camp Sr. had been suspected of
collaboration with the British and his son, John Camp, had been accused
of treason and found guilty. Even thought the verdict was set aside by a
higher court and none of John Camp's property was conficated which was
the usual penalty in that time, The DAR steadfastly refused to change
their decision to expel the Illinois chapter. No matter  that Thomas
Camp's home was burned and ransacked  by the British or that the conch
shell that Nicolas Camp, John Camp's brother, found and donated on his
property where the Battle of King's Mountain was fought graces the
museum of the DAR in Washington, D.C..The Camp Family Association has
threatened litigation to challenge the DAR position, but no law suits
have been filed to date. The whole episode must have been quite a
scandal, not only for the Camp family, but for his in-laws, the
Tarpleys. His father-in-law owned and operated Tarpley Store on Governor
Square in Colonial Williamsburg and was the donor of the Bell to Bruton
Parish Church in Colonial Williamsburg where George Washington, John
Jay, Thomas Jefferson and other leaders of the Revolution worshiped and
were members of the Congregation. Today, those sites are tourist
attractions. 

      The episode must be viewed with the perspective that battlefield
areas rapidly shifted during the war with first one side controlling
contested territory and then the other. One did the best they could to
protect their lives and property under such conditions. 

      Until this development in the 1980's, the DAR had listed John Camp
as a Lieutenant with a Virginia regiment and even marked a grave in
Lebanon South Carolina with a DAR marker. However, that must be another
John Camp or someone else as serious researchers have found that John
Camp had left Virginia years before that period of service, moving to
Georgia where he is supposedly buried at Jug Tavern, Winder, Georgia
although the gravesite has never been identified.