A New York Militia index card offered one of the earliest “maybe” ancestor clues in my decades-long search for Fessenden. It came from the 1838 Patriot War collection and listed just a name:

Fisher, Fessinden
No birth date. No service details. No story.

Just a name—spelled close, but not quite right.

And for years, that’s all it was.
Another “maybe” in a long list of almosts.

I filed it away like a footnote. A possible piece of the puzzle with no way to tell if it truly belonged.

But then—years later—something surfaced that gave this tiny card a voice.

📷 New York Militia index card for “Fisher, Fessinden”—an ambiguous clue.