Revolutionary War veterans fought for the nation and pushed for a pension
Ichabod Beckwith was a 24-year-old patriot who heard the call for revolution in 1775 and set off with a company of battle-ready Minutemen on a march toward Lexington.
That's where Beckwith's record as one of America's first veterans begins.
And it ends in 1820, when the town overseers in Ludlow, Massachusetts, described the 69-year-old war veteran as 'a pauper disabled in body and mind' with no means of support other than the charity of friends and his town.
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