A Legacy As Old As America
Thirty-six men answered when their country called. Their lines run directly down to one boy. After his loss, the call was answered again: to help save others in his honor.
When my wife, Kim, and I founded Maverick’s Legacy, we wanted our son’s name to mean help for someone else.
Maverick Scott Chambers died in a choking accident in April 2022, at only four months and twenty-six days old. We could not give him the lifetime we wanted for him, but we could build something in his memory that would help other children and families have more time together.
That is where our organization began.
In the family history I had been building for more than 20 years, I documented connections reaching back centuries, long before there was a Maverick’s Legacy and before there was even a United States. What turned up were 36 men who took the American side in the War of Independence, every one of them a documented ancestor of Maverick’s. Anyone who does this kind of research will tell you that number is uncommon.
As America’s 250th birthday approached, I began bringing that research together in a project I nicknamed Mav 250. It connects Maverick’s family history to the America 250 celebration through one simple idea: Protecting others runs in the family.
The soldier and the family man
One of the most meaningful words in all that research appears beside the name of Samuel Mase, a private in the 2nd New Jersey Regiment. When he enlisted, it was not for a season or any known term he could count down toward. His term was simply listed as “War.” He had committed himself to remain until the war was finished, without knowing when that would be or how it would end. There was no promise of success. He signed on anyway.
His service lasted about six years and nine months. He served at Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and Yorktown, remaining under arms until his discharge in 1783.
Decades later, the records show another side of him. By 1822, Mase was a laborer suffering from rheumatism and struggling to support his household. His property was appraised at just $23.77. Also under his roof was his granddaughter, Prudence, left dependent on him after her father abandoned her. He could barely provide for himself, yet he was still providing for a child. The military record lets us see the soldier, but the pension papers and other historical records let us see the person, too.
Samuel Mase is one of Maverick’s grandfathers, many generations back. His story belongs in the history of the Revolution. It also belongs in the history of a family caring for its own.
What connects Samuel’s story to ours is the commitment to helping others while carrying responsibilities of our own. Kim and I have three children, full-time jobs, and all the demands and expenses of family life. Building Maverick’s Legacy takes countless hours and effort on top of those responsibilities. We make that commitment because we believe in what we are doing and in helping protect our family, friends, coworkers, and community.
20 years of research, brought together for 250
After more than 20 years of building our family tree, America’s 250th anniversary gave that work a new purpose. Mav 250 became a way to bring these family histories together as Maverick’s Legacy’s contribution to the celebration.
The collection, A Legacy As Old As America, brings together the stories of 36 Revolutionary War veterans in Maverick’s family tree. Their contributions took different forms: military service, leadership, supply work, and civil responsibility. Some left detailed accounts. Others survive in only a handful of records that took years to connect. Across generations, their families became part of the family into which our son was born. Honoring these people means taking their lives and their service seriously.
To me, these are not just names on a chart. I want to understand who these people were, how they fit into their communities, and how their lives connect our family to the past, present, and future.
They helped build the country we inherited. Now Maverick’s Legacy is working to help build a safer future.
They weren’t strangers
Samuel Mase’s daughter married the son of Samuel Merritt, a Morris County militiaman. Merritt’s wife was the daughter of Jacob Garrigus, another Revolutionary soldier, who answered the call at sixty alongside four of his sons. Through that marriage, three soldiers’ families came together.
A later marriage brought Joseph Swayze’s line into the same branch. Four men who had served the American cause became ancestors within one closely connected family.
A list of names cannot convey what these connections reveal: family, community, and relationships that continued across generations. Their children married, their grandchildren built households, and those connections continued long after the military records stopped.
Seen separately, these are accounts of individual men. Seen together, they become the story of community members whose families joined through marriage until separate families became one extended family, eventually leading to the family Kim and I built and to Maverick.
For a reader, these may be unfamiliar names from another century. For me, they are part of the family behind my son, and part of the generation whose service helped shape the country we all inherited.
What it meant to stand watch
Not every kind of service leaves behind a famous battlefield. William Leary served as Town-Major of New York City in 1775–1776, responsible for the city’s peace and good order, including its watchmen and night guard. His surviving correspondence describes the burden of the work and the limited means he had to support himself while doing it.
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Others guarded roads and shorelines, moved supplies, or answered repeated militia call-ups. Their work could be demanding and dangerous without ever becoming the subject of a famous painting or a familiar battlefield story.
Their service belonged to the circumstances of their time. The responsibility behind it remains recognizable: people depending on other people to be ready, to act, and to help protect a community.
What connects us across the centuries is a shared commitment: common people doing uncommon things to help protect others.
A name that still stands watch
On a family chart, generations can fit into a small space. A name, a date, a line connecting one person to another. Maverick never had the chance to grow up and learn these stories. He never got to ask about the names or hear how his family’s history reached back to the founding of the country.
He is still part of that history. And through Maverick’s Legacy, his name is part of what happens next.
Our 501(c)(3) nonprofit works to reduce avoidable choking deaths and injuries, raise safety awareness for children and families, help the community, and spread joy. We want Maverick to leave a lasting footprint upon this world.
One way we accomplish this is by donating LifeVac choking rescue devices to schools, daycares, and first responder agencies to provide a critical backup when standard protocols are not enough. We also give demonstrations that help people become familiar with the devices before an emergency occurs. So far, we have donated more than 3,300 devices, given countless demonstrations, and, best of all, helped save 13 lives.
13 lives.
Behind that number are people, and the people who love them. It means another birthday, another family trip, lunch with friends, or simply more time together that otherwise might not have been there.
For Kim and me, this isn’t abstract. We know how much a family can lose in a moment. We also know why it matters to keep showing up: to give another demonstration, place another device, reach another school, and help another community become better prepared.
I would trade everything I have in the world to have had a LifeVac to try on the day of Maverick’s accident.
Nothing about that work replaces our son. It gives the love we have for him a continuing place to grow in the lives of others.
His ancestors stood watch over communities in the world they knew.
Today, his name stands watch in another way: in rescue devices placed in schools and daycares, and in the hands of first responders preparing to help.
The circumstances have changed, and the work takes a different form, but the commitment to protecting others is the connection we share and continue to carry forward.
What we carry forward
Mav 250 is our way of bringing two deeply personal parts of our lives into America’s 250th celebration: the family history I have spent years researching and the work Kim and I are doing in Maverick’s memory.
I want these veterans’ names to be remembered. I want readers to see the people behind the records, the responsibilities they carried, the years they gave, and the families whose lives continued after them.
And I want people to remember Maverick, not only because we lost him, but because of the protection, help, care, and joy that continue to be given in his name.
Maverick’s family was helping protect America nine generations ago. Today, through Maverick’s Legacy, we are carrying that commitment forward for the families and communities of today and tomorrow.
That commitment continues in the schools, daycares, first responder agencies, and other facilities we equip, and in the people we reach through demonstrations and safety awareness.
Those veterans left a legacy through their service. Kim and I are building one for Maverick through the work we do in his name. This project brings those stories together, honoring what they gave and what we are working to give through Maverick’s Legacy.
Protecting others runs in the family.
A legacy as old as America and still being written.
Originally published at MavericksLegacy.org/articles
