As America approaches its 250th anniversary, I have been looking more closely at my own Sussex County roots.

With help from the amazing Daughters of the American Revolution volunteers, I am in the process of documenting descent from Delaware Revolutionary War patriots connected to the Clark and Harmon families. The application is still being reviewed, and I do not want to get ahead of that process, but the records already point to something worth remembering: Black, brown, mixed-race and Nanticoke-associated people were part of Delaware’s Revolutionary story.

My fifth great-grandfather is Thomas Clark, born July 4, 1759, and connected to Sussex County. His marriage to Elizabeth Morris, described in church records as “Mustees, free,” appears in records of the United Presbyterian Churches of Lewes, Indian River and Cool Spring. Another family line leads to Edward Harmon, whose Revolutionary service is also being gathered and reviewed.

These are not distant names to me; they belong to families long connected to Indian River, Millsboro, the Nanticoke community and the Cape Region’s wider history.

Too often, Revolutionary history is told through familiar portraits and well-known surnames. But some patriots left traces in church books, court records, pension files, tax lists, military rolls and family lines that later generations had to piece back together.

For descendants, those records are more than paperwork; they are restoration.

The 250th anniversary should not simply celebrate what America said about liberty. It should also ask who believed in that promise, served it and helped carry it forward even when the country did not fully recognize them.

Sussex County’s history includes people whose race, identity and status were complicated by the laws and customs of their time. Some were remembered as Nanticoke. Some were recorded as Black, mulatto, mustee, free colored or other terms imposed by officials. Their descendants are still working through what those records mean.

If my DAR application is accepted, as I anticipate, I will be grateful. But the larger point is not membership; it is memory.

As Delaware prepares for 2026, I hope our historical societies, churches, schools and families will look again for the overlooked patriots of Sussex County.

They belong in the 250th story too.