The story of William Blunk isn’t neatly documented, but it’s exactly the kind of tale that built early America. Tracing him means following faint paper trails, family memories, and a series of misunderstandings! Taken together, though, they reveal something powerful: an ordinary man who did his part in both the Revolution and the settlement of Delaware County.
To mark the United States’ 250th birthday, the Daughters of the American Revolution has joined forces with America250, the nationwide commemoration of our country’s semiquincentennial, to pay tribute to Revolutionary War Patriots. As part of the celebration, I’ll be sharing the stories of those laid to rest in Delaware County, with help from Kathi Hirons Kesterson -the regent of the Paul Revere Chapter of Muncie’s DAR– over the next several Fridays.
William Blunk was born in 1756 in Pennsylvania. The details of his early life have slipped through the cracks of time, but one solid piece remains: Blunk’s name surfaces in the muster rolls of the Washington County, Pennsylvania militia, where he was listed as a private in the 4th Battalion, 7th Company, from 1781 to 17831.
Muster rolls were practical records created to track pay and supplies. Today, preserved returns from the Pennsylvania Comptroller General’s office offer the only clear proof that William Blunk served in the Revolutionary War. Blunk’s years in the Washington County militia would have been very different from the experience of soldiers in the Continental Line: militiamen didn’t march to distant battlefields for years at a time. Instead, they stayed close to home defending the frontier, guarding settlements from British-allied Native raids, keeping order, and turning out whenever an emergency flared up2.
In the early 1780s, the Washington County militia operated on a simple structure that reflected the communities it protected. Small companies were made up of local men- neighbors, cousins, and relatives like William Blunk and his brother Andrew, who served concurrently3. Unfortunately, their service was anything but tidy on paper: a militiaman might turn out for multiple short tours over several years but only appear once in the surviving records! Muster returns only captured moments instead of entire careers4. Names are often misspelled, officers might be missing, and service dates are approximate5.
At any rate, William Blunk’s militia duty clearly counts as Revolutionary War service, even though it didn’t produce the same kind of detailed records that soldiers in the Continental Line often left behind. Militia service rarely came with pensions, discharge papers, or neat documentation. In fact, we only know that Andrew Blunk served even earlier than 1781 because his widow later described it in sworn testimony for a pension!
Given Andrew Blunk’s reported enlistment in 1776, the brothers’ later service together in the same militia, and the common Revolutionary-era pattern of family enlisting side by side, it’s reasonable to infer that William may have served earlier than his 1781 militia stint as well. Whether or not that was actually the case, we can piece together clues about what that might have looked like by examining Mary Blunk’s pension declaration from 1839.
According to her testimony -supported by the recollections of William and Andrew’s brothers, John and Amos- Andrew first enlisted in the fall of 1776 in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, from which Washington County was later carved6.
As a private for three years, Andrew’s service first carried him to Fort Pitt, then east to Philadelphia, where he helped guard ammunition stores around the time of the Battle of Brandywine. After that, he returned to the western frontier and spent the remainder of his enlistment closer to home7. Like many frontier soldiers, on the other hand, William Blunk’s service likely outpaced the paperwork. No Continental muster rolls, pay records, pensions, or affidavits bearing his name have surfaced, so any earlier Revolutionary War service he may have undertaken remains unproven.
We do know that William Blunk moved west after the war. He eventually reached Kentucky and was among the early settlers of what became Wayne County, Indiana, in 1805. His entry into Indiana was later recalled in a series of newspaper reminiscences first published in 18608, but the details grew hazy with each retelling: along the way, Blunk became Blunt, a change that appeared not only in newspapers but elsewhere, like his first documented land purchase in Wayne County in 18149.
At the time, Indiana counties like Wayne, Randolph, Henry, and Delaware were not yet completely organized. Still, Blunk -under the name Blunt- eventually owned land in each of them. He formally settled in Delaware County in 1826 and died here in 1833. Nearly eighty years later, Blunk’s story resurfaced in a 1910 newspaper sketch. By then, his name had shifted again to Blount10!
The sketch appears to have confused his service with that of another William Blount, who died in Ohio, but it still preserved an important truth: locally, William was remembered as both an early settler and a man who served in the Revolution. Today, a well-intentioned cenotaph at Beech Grove Cemetery honors Blunk’s service as William Blount.
Despite the misspelled names, scattered records, and decades of confusion, the shape of William Blunk’s life still emerges from the haze. He may not have left behind pensions or thick service files, but his name appeared when the militia mustered, and that simple fact tells us he showed up.
Blunk served alongside his brother on the Pennsylvania frontier, then followed the familiar westward path into Kentucky and early Indiana. On the way, he helped settle the communities that would become Delaware County! Although his story may never fit neatly into the archives, William Blunk/Blunt/Blount was among the ordinary citizens of Delaware County whose local, often undocumented service helped win a war and build a home.
Sources Cited
1Pennsylvania, Office of the Comptroller General, militia muster returns, Washington County, 4th Battalion, 7th Company, class roll listing William Blunk as a private; Records of the Comptroller General, in Pennsylvania Archives, 7th ser., vol. 2, Muster Rolls Relating to the Associators and Militia of the County of Washington (Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1896), 154; digital images, Archive.org {https://archive.org).
2 Kesterson, K. H. (2026, February 4). William Blunk/Blunt/Blount – Rev War Service Notes and Historical Context. Document.
3 (See footnote 1).
4 (See footnote 2).
5 (See footnote 2).
6 Widow’s pension file of Mary Blunk, widow of Andrew Blunk (R.967), Revolutionary War; Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, ca. 1800-ca. 1912 (NARA microfilm publication M804, roll 275); digital images, Fold3 (https://www.fold3.com” accessed 31 January 2026); transcribed by Kathryn Kesterson.
7 (See footnote 6).
8 Old Settlers of Wayne County (1860, October 18). The Richmond Weekly Palladium. p. 1.
9 William Blunt 1814 Wayne County land deed (1814, June 24). Deed.
10 Builders of a Nation (1910, May 17). The Muncie Star. p. 4.
I suppose I should be amazed that the spelling of names in that era was as good as it was and that spelling changes didn’t happen more frequently.
Well, part of the problem is that it appears as though William Blunk was illiterate. He may have never even known it changed.