Aaron Thompson was a fifer with the Third New Jersey Regiment during the Revolutionary War. He kept a journal in which he wrote down many tunes. A copy of the manuscript is currently in the possession of the the library at Yale University. My wife and I are currently in the process of transcribing Thompson's writings from the journal.

Thompson wrote a version of Dog and Gun in his journal. Six stanzas appear there, while the rest of the ballad was apparently on a portion of a page which is missing from the journal.

This is fascinating, since the earliest printed version of the ballad was apparently in the 1820s, and the ballad is often attributed to Timothy Connor, who supposedly wrote the song while in Forton Prison, an English prison which held prisoners-of-war.   Connor was imprisoned there between 1777 and 1779. Connor was released in a prisoner exchange in May 1779. Thompson appears to have written down the version he knew no later than November 1779. Either Connor's song became popular in the American army very quickly, or Dog and Gun existed earlier than previously believed.