British and Hessian Prisoners of War in the American Revolution

 

General John (“Gentleman Johnny”) Burgoyne surrendered a British Army at Saratoga, New York in October, 1777. The surrender terms documented in the “Convention of Saratoga,” called for 5,900 British and German troops to march to Boston where they would be shipped to England, with a pledge not to fight against the Americans again. The Continental Congress found a way to thwart the surrender terms and keep the prisoners.  Congress insisted that the surrender articles be ratified by “the King and Parliament.”  This was an impossible condition since it implied British recognition of the legitimacy of the Congress and the independence of America.

In November 1778, the Convention Army prisoners began a seven hundred mile march from Boston to Virginia.  They were divided into six divisions, each marching one day behind the other.  The prisoners crossed the Potomac River in late 1778 and passed through Leesburg, Prince William County, Warrenton, Culpeper County, and Orange Court House, before reaching Charlottesville, their final destination.  At Charlottesville, the prisoners built wooden huts, on what is today called Barracks Road.

While the common soldiers lived rough, the British and German officers were able to pay to rent private accommodations.  British General William Phillips and the Hessian commander Baron Frederick von Riedesel were treated more as guests than as prisoners.  Thomas Jefferson played the violin with Baron Frederick von Riedesel at Monticello.  Baron Frederick von Riedesel and General William Phillips were later exchanged for General Benjamin Lincoln.

Murder in Colonial Virginia

Anna Maria Lane a Soldier in the American Revolution

 

 Anna Maria Lane (1755–1810) joined the Continental Army in 1776 with her husband John.  Lane’s is the only documented case in Virginia of a woman dressing like a man and fighting on the battlefield.  Lane and her husband fought side by side. The couple were on campaigns in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Anna Maria received a severe wound at the Battle of Germantown (Pennsylvania) in 1777 which rendered her permanently lame. Despite her disability, she continued to fight alongside her husband and was with him when he was wounded during the siege of Savannah in 1779. Husband and wife served until 1781. They then settled in Virginia.

   In 1808, Virginia Governor William H. Cabell asked the General Assembly to grant Anna Maria Lane a soldier’s pension, writing that she was “…very infirm, having been disabled by a severe wound which she received while fighting as a common soldier, in one of our Revolutionary battles, from which she never has recovered, and perhaps never will recover.”  The pension was granted and the record notes that, “in the Revolutionary War, (she) performed extraordinary military services at the Battle of Germantown, in the garb, and with the courage of a soldier.”

How Martha Washington Lived: 18th Century Customs

Secrets of Early America 1607-1816

Andrew Ferguson: Black Patriot of the American Revolution

 

Hundreds free and enslaved men from Virginia fought in the Patriot cause.  Like the rest of the population, these men had their own motives for doing so.  Some had no choice and were simply enlisted by their enslavers.  Others could see a path to emancipation.  Still others saw a possible avenue for economic advancement.

Take for example the case of Private Andrew Ferguson.  Andrew Ferguson was born in Dinwiddie County in the early 1760s.  Ferguson was born to free black parents.  Andrew and his father were captured by British forces who, assuming they were enslaved, offered father and son freedom if they would fight for the King.  They refused and were beaten for their obstinate refusal.  The pair escaped from the British and joined the Patriot forces.  Andrew Ferguson was destined to see a great deal of action, in several theaters, during the war.  He fought at Brandywine (Pennsylvania), at Kings Mountain (South Carolina) and Cowpens (South Carolina).  He was severely wounded at the Battle of Guilford Court House (North Carolina), but later fought at the Siege of Ninety Six and the Battle of Eutaw Springs (both in South Carolina).  Andrew Ferguson served five years and six months.

By June 1781 some 1,500 (25 %) of the 6,000 troops under George Washington’s direct command were black.

Secrets of Early America 1607-1816

An Independently Minded Woman of the American Revolution

 

 Hannah Lee Corbin (1728–1782) is reputed to be the first Virginia woman to take a stand for women's rights. She was born Hannah Lee, a member of the wealthy and influential Lee family of Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County. Two of her brothers Francis Lightfoot Lee and Richard Henry Lee were to become prominent American patriots and signers of the Declaration of Independence.

 Hannah married her cousin Gawain Corbin in 1747 at the age of nineteen. They had one daughter. Gawain Corbin died in 1760, leaving the thirty-two-year-old Hannah a rich widow, and so she would remain unless, as stipulated in her late husband’s will, she re-married, in which case she would forfeit her inheritance. Being a woman of advanced thinking for the age, Hannah did not let this stipulation stand in her way. She began to co-habit with her lover, a physician named Richard Hall. They had two children which she gave the Corbin surname. Hannah’s private life scandalized her family. She further aggravated her siblings by leaving the Anglican Church in 1764 and joining the Baptist Church.

 The ever-independent thinking Hannah Corbin wrote to her brother Richard Henry Lee in 1778, echoing back the very sentiments of “no taxation without representation” that animated the Revolution. “Why,” she asked, “should widows pay taxes when they have no voice in making the laws or in choosing the men who made them?” She railed against male domination in law and politics and argued for women’s suffrage. Like many whose lives did not reflect the promise of the Declaration that “all (people) are created equal,” Hannah’s Corbin’s dream would have to wait. Women did not get the vote across America for almost one hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

Virginia in the American Revolution

Elizabeth Zane a Heroine of the American Revolution

 

Elizabeth “Betty” Zane (1765–1823) was a heroine of the Revolutionary War. In 1782 Native American and Loyalist forces attacked a small garrison of forty-two at Fort Henry in western Virginia (modern day Wheeling, West Virginia). The garrison began to run out of black powder for their muskets and rifles. Zane immediately volunteered to leave the fort to retrieve a secret cache of powder. She ran fifty yards in full view of the enemy to retrieve the gunpowder. Her mad dash allowed American forces to hold the fort.

In 1861, John S. Adams wrote a poem entitled, Elizabeth Zane which immortalized Betty Zane and which reads, in part:

“No time had she to waver or wait
Back must she go ere it be too late;
She snatched from the table its cloth in haste
And knotted it deftly around her waist,

“Then filled it with powder –never, I ween,
Had powder so lovely a magazine;
Then scorning the bullets’ deadly rain,
Like a startled fawn, fled Elizabeth Zane.

“She gained the fort with her precious freight;
Strong hands fastened the oaken gate;
Brave men’s eyes were suffused with tears
That had been strangers for many years.”

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

How Martha Washington Lived: 18th Century Customs

How Colonial Americans Travelled

 

George Washington's Riding Chair

Movies often give the impression that everyone in the eighteenth century owned a horse.  In fact, horses were transportation reserved for the upper class and professionals because of the expense involved in keeping them.  At most, a horse could effectively cover about fifty miles a day and most common folk walked if they needed to travel.  In the colonial period, the Virginia gentry traveled often by horse and carriage to visit family and friends, to attend social events, and to take part in the political life of Williamsburg.  The circumference of travel was generally fairly small except for business or political reasons.

Overland on horseback from Williamsburg to Richmond, in good weather, would take one day (fifty miles).  The journey from Williamsburg to Charlottesville could take four days and to the Shenandoah Valley five or more days.  Even riding the fastest horse, a trip from Williamsburg to New York City would take ten days.  The most famous overland trip from New York to Williamsburg was that made by the allied Franco-American army of George Washington and General Rochambeau. The army began its march on August 19, 1781, and arrived in Williamsburg, a march of some four hundred miles, on September 14.

The easiest method of travel between Williamsburg and Philadelphia or New York City was by ship. The trip to Philadelphia would take about a week, that to New York ten to fourteen days, depending on the weather.  Over land, the journey could take twice as long.  Ships traveling across the Atlantic took at least six weeks.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

How Martha Washington Lived: 18th Century Customs

The Personal Sorrows of Patrick Henry

 

It is not generally known that during the time when he was becoming one of the leading Patriot leaders of Virginia Patrick Henry was under severe pressure in his personal life. Henry’s wife Sarah began to show signs of mental illness after the birth of her sixth child (some speculate that this was post-partum depression). Patrick Henry’s mother wrote a letter in which she stated, “We feel Sarah is losing her mind after the birth of Neddy.”

Sarah's doctor strongly recommended that she be sent to the new Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg. Built in 1773, this was the only facility in Virginia at the time devoted to the care of the mentally ill. Patrick Henry refused to send his wife to the asylum and decided to keep her confined to the basement of the family home. This may actually have been a kindness, for although the new hospital was created with the best of intentions the treatments were harsh.  Patients were bled, blistered, subjected to pain, shock, and terror. They were dunked in water and restrained.

Sarah’s behavior was reputed to be unmanageable, and she was confined in a cellar room, bound in a straitjacket and attended by a servant. This secret was kept from the public. After several years of confinement, Sarah died in the spring of 1775 at the age of thirty-seven. She may have killed herself.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

Murder in Colonial Virginia

William Grayson the First Member of Congress to Die in Office

 

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, William Grayson served as a captain of the local militia but left the Virginia forces to become an aide-de-camp to General Washington. He later took command of one of the sixteen regiments of the Continental Army. After a bloody battle at Monmouth, New Jersey that virtually destroyed his entire regiment, Grayson, now a Colonel, went on to serve on the Board of War. After the war, Grayson served as a member of the Continental Congress and was later one of Virginia’s first two Senators. 

 Grayson died in Dumfries on March 12, 1790, the first member of the United States Congress to die in office. He was interred in the Grayson family vault in Woodbridge, Virginia on a hill overlooking Marumsco Creek. The family burial vault was originally located on a one-thousand-acre plantation. Now less than five acres remain undeveloped. The burial vault, now sitting in the midst of a Woodbridge residential neighborhood, was encased in concrete in the early 1900s by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Reverend Spence Grayson, a “fighting parson” of the Revolution and lifelong friend of George Washington is also buried in the vault.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

Murder in Colonial Virginia

Fielding Lewis, American Patriot

 

Wealthy merchant Fielding Lewis, the husband of George Washington’s only sister, Betty, was a colonel in the Spotsylvania County militia. More importantly he provided saltpeter, sulfur, powder, and lead for the production of ammunition. 

In 1775, Lewis was appointed with four others to establish and equip a manufactory of small arms for the newly formed Virginia government. Most of the operating capital for the new enterprise was provided by Fielding Lewis. By May 1777, the Fredericksburg Gunnery was producing twenty muskets, complete with bayonets each week. Lewis also outfitted ships for the Virginia Navy, most notably the Dragon which was built in Fredericksburg. The Dragon was initially used to protect the Rappahannock River from British and Loyalist raiders but was later used in the Chesapeake Bay.

Fielding Lewis’ patriotic zeal ruined him financially as he advanced increasingly large sums of money for the Patriot cause. Fielding Lewis died in December 1781, two months after the defeat of General Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

Murder in Colonial Virginia

The American Revolution: The Race to the Dan (1781)

 

General Nathanael Greene

The legendary “Race to the Dan”, was one of the most dramatic episodes of the American Revolutionary War.

 In December of 1780, the British Army under the command of Lord Charles Cornwallis was on the verge of victory in the Southern theater of war. Cornwallis had captured Charleston and had destroyed an American army at the Battle of Camden (South Carolina). 

General Washington sent the able General Nathanael Greene to North Carolina to retrieve the situation. Although outnumbered, Greene was both aggressive and smart, as he fought a guerilla campaign against the British.

On December 21, 1780, Greene sent General Daniel Morgan, a Virginian, into South Carolina with one wing of his army to harry the enemy. Morgan set a clever trap.

He allowed the British under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton to pursue his force until out of range of Cornwallis’ main army. He then turned and decisively defeated Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens.

Morgan utterly smashed Tarleton’s force and retreated north into North Carolina with huge numbers of prisoners as well as much needed weapons and supplies.

General Greene re-united the two wings of his army in North Carolina as an enraged Lord Charles Cornwallis set out after the Americans with the bulk of his forces, intent on recapturing the prisoners taken by Daniel Morgan and smashing the Americans for good.

Greene’s objective now was to keep his smaller army out of the reach of the British.

The Dan River, was a significant natural barrier near the boundary of North Carolina and Virginia. If the Americans could reach the Dan, they could prevent the British from crossing.

The “Race for the Dan” was on.

The Americans pushed the prisoners forward as rapidly as possible. The British burned their slow moving supply wagons and pursued with remarkable speed, sometimes being only a few hours behind the Americans. Both sides were playing for high stakes.

On February 14, 1781, the American army reached Boyd’s Ferry on the Dan River.   Anticipating the arrival of General Greene’s army, a flotilla of small boats had been assembled to carry men, supplies and cannon to safety. When the British arrived, they could only look with frustration at the impassable river.

Treasure Legends of Virginia

Westover Plantation in the American Revolution

William Byrd III

 

Charles City County - Westover Plantation: At the time of the Revolution this was the home of William Byrd III. Byrd inherited a large fortune which he turned into a very small fortune, through his lavish lifestyle and addiction to gambling. On July 6, 1774, Byrd made his will, disposing of an estate that “thro’ my own folly and inattention to accounts the carelessness of some entrusted with the management thereof and the villainy of others, is still greatly encumbered with debts which embitters every moment of my life.”

   Byrd deplored the “frantic patriotism” sweeping Virginia and urged moderation and continued loyalty to the king. On July 30, 1775, he wrote offering his service to the king. In November 1775, however, he changed his mind after Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, offered freedom to slaves who ran away and joined the fight against the Virginia revolutionaries.

   This was too much for Byrd, who now sought appointment as colonel of the 3^rd Virginia Regiment. This came to nothing, as did his attempt to persuade the Continental Congress to appoint him as a Major General. In early January 1777, the embittered Byrd killed himself at Westover.

   During Benedict Arnold’s 1781 raid on Richmond, the British made Westover their base of operations for a week. William Byrd’s widow, Mary Willing Byrd, was a cousin of Benedict Arnold’s wife, Peggy Shippen.

Treasure Legends of Virginia

The Declaration of Independence and Slavery

 

In 1776, Jefferson was chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence, putting forward the arguments of the colonies for declaring themselves free and independent states.

The Declaration is regarded as a charter of universal liberties, proclaiming that all men are equal in rights, regardless of birth, wealth, or status; that those rights are inherent in each human, a gift of the Creator, not a gift of government, and that government is the servant and not the master of the people.

Although slavery, practiced in all thirteen colonies at the time, made a mockery of Jefferson’s poetic vision, no less a figure than Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, wrote:

 “All honor to Jefferson – to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, and so to embalm it there, that to-day and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.”

Murder in Colonial Virginia

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800