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Robert Clark Simpson: WWI Patriot, Lovettsville Virginia

Company "I" 54th US Infantry, (Regulars) 6th Division

When Robert Clark Simpson was born on December 8, 1895, in Lovettsville, Loudoun, Virginia, United States, his father, Ebon Franklin Simpson, was 29, and his mother, Edith Capitolia (Wilt) Simpson, was 22. He married Ruth Roxanne Heskett on May 22, 1924, in Purcellville, Loudoun, Virginia, United States, just short of six years after enlisting in the military. They became the parents of five sons and six daughters, Robert, Jimmy, Irving, Lynn, Richard, Louise, Mary Elizabeth, Nancy, Ruth Lee, Barbara (my Mom), and Marian (Mern). He lived in Mount Gilead District, Loudoun, Virginia, United States, 1940 and Purcellville, Loudoun, Virginia, United States, in 1968. He registered for military service in 1919 and is listed as a World War I Veteran with the Lovettsville Historical Society. He died on October 16, 1968, in Martinsburg, West Virginia, United States, at the age of 72, while in the Veterans Administration Hospital, and was buried in Lovettsville, Loudoun, Virginia, United States, in Union Cemetary.
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When he worked on a farm in Loudoun County, he registered for the draft as a single young man with a medium build, brown eyes, and dark brown hair. June 6, 1918, he departed Brooklyn, New York, on the Briton, as a Private with Company "I" 54th US Infantry, (Regulars) 6th Division. The regiment was constituted on May 15, 1917, in the Regular Army as the 54th Infantry. It was organized on June 16, 1917, at Chickamauga Park, Georgia. It was assigned on November 16, 1917, to the 6th Division. It saw service in Meuse-Argonne and Alsace 1918 campaigns in France. On June 29, 1922, the 2nd Infantry Regiment was designated as the "Active Associate" unit for mobilization purposes. On July 17, 1922, the 17th Infantry Regiment was designated the Active Associate. The 54th Infantry Regiment was inactivated on October 24, 1922, at Fort Wayne, Michigan. On March 24, 1923, the regiment was relieved from the 6th Division and assigned to the 7th Division.

Robert Clark Simpson WWI.jpg

After the war, he became a carpenter by trade, building houses and making furniture; items I have seen that he made are a house my parents first lived in when married, a drop leaf table, and a small jewelry box my mother gave to me after my grandmother passed away. One Christmas, he made each of his eleven children a rocking chair as a gift. 

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© 2023 S.M. Sauer 

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