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David Spainhower — Description

I've tried really, really hard to find more information on David Spainhower, but goddamn, it just doesn't seem to be out there. I know he was born on May 22, 1786 in Stokes County, North Carolina, the sixth and youngest son of Johann Jacob Spaenhauer and Anna Fulk. I know he married Maria Catharina Helsabeck on January 18, 1808, and that the couple had six kids together: Jeremiah (born just nine months after they got married, methinks the sweethearts couldn't wait to consummate the union), Eve Charlotte (born 1810), Veronica Frances (born 1811), Isaac Helsabeck (born 1813), Thomas Daniel (born 1816), and lastly my own ancestor Abraham (born 1817). I know he was primarily a farmer eking out a living on his family estate, but anything more specific than that is just completely lost to history. It's really frustrating, because I have a lot of keywords to search, and yet none of them seem to lead anywhere.
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For example, David Spainhower is listed as being a part of the 5th Regiment of the North Carolina militia during the War of 1812, but I can't for the life of me find any semblance of a service history for this troop, let alone for David himself. All I know is that… it existed. I'm honestly not sure they ever even got the chance to fight at all, because they were mustered in August 1814, just five months before the Treaty of Ghent was signed and put an end to the conflict. I'm more than happy to be proven wrong, but that doesn't seem like enough time to get out there and put a few musket balls in a line of lobsters. Hell, the White House had already been burnt down, what the hell were they supposed to do now anyway? If anyone's got a paper trail to help me navigate this extremely thin slice of history, I'd be thrilled to review it.
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Other than that, there's really not much else to say about this ancestor. The next closest thing to a biographical note is in Rosemary Lovell’s 1994 genealogical survey Owen County Cousins, wherein she goes into detail about how David's sons all packed up and moved to greener pastures in October 1838. I already went over the nitty gritty of this migration in my blurb on Abraham Spainhower, but the gist is that Andrew Jackson fucked the economy and triggered the Panic of 1837. North Carolina was also already getting too crowded, so David only had one property to pass down to his children. Apparently it had become local tradition that one son would inherit the house and the rest would take that as their cue to head west and find a nest egg of their own. For some reason, it was David's second-oldest, Isaac, who stayed in North Carolina, while the oldest kid Jeremiah led the caravan to Indiana in 1838. Lovell notes that David would've gone with them, but “it was still not a trip for the weak or aged” and “Farewells, to most, were final”. Well goddamn that's dark, but apparently true. David died in Stokes County at the age of 56 on June 1, 1845, likely never to see most of his sons again. It's really unfortunate, since Isaac was clearly a massive disappointment, because he turned traitor during the American Civil War despite his family's ties to the abolitionist Moravian Church. Meanwhile Abraham's son, James David, clearly named after his grandfather, volunteered five years of his life to the 1st Indiana Heavy Artillery Regiment to kick some rebel ass. I hope somewhere up there, David is as proud to call his grandson family as I am.
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Design notes, in stark contrast to my frustration with compiling a biography for this man, I'm actually extremely happy with how this design came out. At first I thought I was making him a little too clean cut and militaristic when clearly his military service was minimal at best, but I got into a rhythm and I decided ehhh fuck it, let's dress grandpa up nice. I didn't really reference anything in particular. Again I've kinda been wanting to just flex my fashion muscles for this time period, so his vibe ended up being “vaguely Napoleonic”, but it worked really well. I did cast a few glances at some uniforms from the Swiss regiments of the Corsican's continental conflict, because we're getting excitedly close to my Swiss heritage now, but the problem with uniforms is that they're so… uniform, so again I opted to keep the design flow freer and “vaguely Napoleonic”. I think my only real gripe is now that I look at the finished piece, he kinda looks a little too much like Charles Lee, and that is an unforgivable sin. I'm sorry, grandpa.