04/08/2024
The first recorded total Solar Eclipse in the United States.
Credit to Kentucky Genealogical Society
An eyewitness account of the first recorded total solar eclipse in the United States:
On June 2, 1848, Nancy Gentry Bailey, who lived in Hardin County, Kentucky and was 86 years old at the time, applied for a widow's pension based on her husband's service during the Revolutionary War. In her application, she recounted witnessing the Solar eclipse which occurred 246 years ago on June 24, 1778.
This eclipse was notable as the first total solar eclipse documented in the United States. Interestingly, it was the same eclipse that General George Rogers Clark and his soldiers saw as they traveled over the Falls of the Ohio on their way to Kaskaskia during the Illinois Campaign. They interpreted the eclipse as a positive sign or omen.
"That although she can not give with certainty the time of the service of her husband yet she remembers distinctly that it was during the year of the great eclipse of the sun, when stars were seen, for some time, during the day. That she remembers that it produced almost universal alarm. That at the time she was at her aunts, ten miles from home, and she remembers that when she saw the eclipse she thought she never would see her brother John Gentry again, who was then in the army as aforesaid."
-Excerpt of affadavit of Nancy Bailey – 1848 in Elizabethtown, Kentucky
Nancy and her husband, Revolutionary War soldier Thomas Bailey, both Virginia natives, are buried in Maffet Cemetery just outside of Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
Sources:
(1) National Archives and Records Administration: Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files Series M805 Roll 39 Image 443
(2) Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_June_24,_1778
(3) Find-A-Grave Memorial for Nancy Gentry Bailey: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/127165020/nancy_bailey
-Compiled by Society board member and descendant of Nancy Gentry Bailey; copy of records held in Louisville in a family archive.