The Parrot family were, according to genealogies, among the earliest German-speaking settlers of the Shenandoah Valley in 1734. They are believed to have been Swiss, which would make Jacob and his brothers Joseph and George three of several Swiss-descended soldiers in the 8th Virginia, alongside Chaplain Christian Streit, Lt. Jacob Rinker, and private soldier Joachim Fetzer. The name was originally spelled "Parett" or possibly "Barrett."

What Lieutenant Parrot did when he "left his detachment" is not clear, though the term "detachment" hints that it happened before the regiment was united in the spring of 1777. A fair guess is that he went home sick from the south without permission. After the ignominious end to his military service, he returned to the Shenandoah Valley and remained there until his death in 1829. He is buried next to his wife in a small cemetery northwest of Harrisonburg, several miles south of his old home in Shenandoah County. Though the stones match, it should be noted that one genealogy states that Jacob was never married.

Benjamin, the older brother, was the founder of Berryville—a town just north and west of the old Mercer property. Benjamin is better remembered because of his namesake town, but Thomas’s military service deserves to be remembered as well.

Read More: "Lost & Found: James Kay & Thomas Berry"

He described the priest’s ornate vestments, the beautiful music, and the bloody crucifix above the altar. “Here is every Thing which can lay hold of the Eye, Ear, and Imagination. Every Thing which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.” He admitted, though, that the sermon was good.

​Protestants’ views of Catholics aside, it was the Church itself, and more specifically the Papacy, that presented a problem for the British Empire. The influential political thinker John Locke asserted in his 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration that a “church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate, which is constituted upon such a bottom, that all those who enter into it . . . deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince.”[3] By tolerating such a church, a ruler would “suffer his own people, to be lifted, as it were, for soldiers against his own government.”[4] The example he used was Islam, but it was Catholicism he was concerned about.

​Michael Breidenbach is a Cambridge University-educated associate history professor at Ave Maria University, an orthodox Catholic school in Florida. His book Our Dear-Bought Liberty: Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America illustrates the remarkably rapid transformation of Americans’ treatment of Catholics during the Founding Era. Irish Catholics like Capt. John Barry, Lt. Col. John Fitzgerald, and Col. Stephen Moylan played important roles in the Continental Navy and Army. Maryland’s Charles Carroll signed the Declaration of Independence and held a seat on the Continental Congress’s powerful Board of War. Generals Lafayette and Pulaski were both Catholic, as were the French and Spanish empires that came to America’s aid.

While the Grand Union flag and the Stars and Stripes may have appeared on some battlefields, they were more likely to be seen on forts and ships. Virginia had no state flag until the Civil War. Every regiment, however, had a flag that served important symbolic and battlefield purposes. Regimental flags were unique works of art, often featuring symbols from antiquity or popular culture with mottos in English or Latin. The flags of the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment and Connecticut’s 2nd Continental Light Dragoons are among the very few that survive.

​There is, however, an 8th Virginia flag that still exists—but it is not the regimental banner. It is a “grand division standard,” one of two that were used to direct halves of the regiment on the battlefield. These were utilitarian devices with little ornamentation. The most important thing about them was their color. 

Several counties proceeded to draft "resolves" or resolutions asserting their rights and proclaiming their loyalty to King George III in a sometimes subtly conditional way. Among them was the following declaration from Dunmore County, which was selected from the many at hand by Mrs. Rind for publication. It was drawn up by a committee chaired by Rev. Peter Muhlenberg, the future colonel of the 8th Virginia. Also on the committee were future lieutenant colonel Abraham Bowman, future lieutenant Taverner Beale, and the brother of future captain George Slaughter. They borrowed the text from neighboring Frederick County. The two counties had a shared history: Dunmore was carved out of Frederick in 1772. Muhlenberg may also have felt comfortable borrowing the text in part because Frederick's committee was similarly led by an Anglican clergyman: Rev. Charles Mynn Thruston.

Rind misspelled Muhlenberg's name two different ways, indicating that he was not yet well known in Williamsburg. The word "votes" was set in capital letters where the word "resolves" would make more sense—another apparent error. Dunmore County was renamed "Shenandoah" County during the Revolution.

Only one other 8th Virginia county issued resolves that summer. Culpeper County produced its document on July 7, but the text is evidently lost. The document below predates both the First Virginia Convention and the First Continental Congress. More counties issued resolutions after the First Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Association, formalizing a uniform boycott and calling upon county committees in all of the colonies to enforce it. Augusta, Berkeley, Fincastle, and Hampshire counties issued resolutions 1775 and raised companies for the 8th Virginia the following spring. The resolutions from Augusta and Fincastle survive. Fincastle's resolution is famous for being the first to openly threaten war. 

At a meeting of the freeholders and other inhabitants of the county of Dunmore, held at the town of Woodstock, the 16th day of June, 1774, to consider the best mode to be fallen upon to secure their liberties and properties, and also to prevent the dangerous tendency of an act of parliament, passed in the 14th year of his present majesty’s reign, intituled an act to discontinue in such manner and for such time as we therein mention the landing and discharging, lading or shipping of goods, wares, and merchandize, at the town and within the harbour of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America, evidently has to invade and deprive us of the same, the reverend Peter Mechlenberg being voted moderator, a committee of the following gentlemen, viz.  the reverend Peter Mechlenberg, Francis Slaughter, Abraham Bird, Taverner Beale, John Tipton, and Abraham Bowman were appointed to draw up resolves to the same occasion, who withdrawing, for a short time, returned with the following VOTES, which had been previously agreed to and voted by the freeholders and inhabitants of the county of Frederick:

1. That we will always cheerfully pay due submission to such acts of government as his majesty has a right, by law, to exercise over his subjects, as sovereign to the British dominions, and to such only.
2. That it is the inherent right of British subjects to be governed and taxed by representatives chosen by themselves only, and that every act of the British parliament respecting the internal policy of North America is a dangerous and unconstitutional invasion of our rights and privileges.
3. That the act of parliament above mentioned is not only itself repugnant to the fundamental laws of natural justice in condemning persons for a supposed crime unheard, but also a despotic exertion of unconstitutional power, calculated to enslave a free and loyal people.
4. That the enforcing the execution of the said act of parliament by a military power will have a necessary tendency to raise a civil war, thereby dissolving that union which has so long happily subsisted between the mother country and her colonies, and that we will most heartily and unanimously concur with our suffering brethren of Boston, and every other port of North America, that may be the immediate victims of tyranny, in promoting all proper measures to avert such dreadful calamities, to procure a redress of our grievances, and to secure our common liberties.
5. It is the unanimous opinion of this meeting, that a joint resolution of all the colonies to stop all importations from Great Britain, and exportations to it, till the said act be repealed, will prove the salvation of North America and her liberties; on the other hand, if they continue their imports and exports, there is the greatest reason to fear that power and the most odious oppression will rise triumphant over right, justice, social happiness, and freedom.
6. That the East India Company, those servile tools of arbitrary power, have justly forfeited the esteem and regard of all honest men, and that the better to manifest our abhorrence of such abject compliances with the will of a venal ministry, in ministering all in their power an encrease of the fund of peculation, we will not purchase tea, or any other kind of East India commodities, either imported now, or hereafter to be imported, except saltpetre, spices, and medicinal drugs.
7. That it is the opinion of this meeting, that committees ought to be appointed for the purpose of effecting a general association, that the same measures may be pursued through the whole continent, that [the] committees ought to correspond with each other, and to meet at [such] places and times as shall be agreed on, in order to form such [general] association, and that when the same shall be formed and agreed to by the several committees, we will strictly adhere to, and till the general sense of the continent shall be known, we do pledge ourselves to each other, and to our country, that will inviolably adhere to the votes of this day.
8. Voted, that the reverend Peter Mecklenburg, Francis Slaughter, Abraham Bird, Taverner Beale, John Tipton, and Abraham Bowman, be appointed a committee for the purpose aforesaid, and that they or any three of them are hereby fully empowered to act.

 Samuel Brady of the 8th Pennsylvania was a military legend in his own time and the stories of at least some of his exploits have likely been embellished in the retelling. The Biggs and Brady families lived within two miles of each other and were, according to Brady's son, "always o the most intimate term." This story appeared in Graham's Illustrated Magazine in February 1857. The Philadelphia-based magazine did not identify the author. The story is dramatically told, betraying at least some artistic license. There are also some small identifiable inaccuracies (Col. Daniel Brodhead is called "General Richard Brodhead"). While some skepticism is warranted about its details, there is no reason to doubt that the story's basic elements are true. The story was instantly popular, reappearing in numerous publications through the 1880s. Biggs went on to become a general of Virginia militia, playing a role in suppressing the Whiskey Rebellion in 1792. At roughly the same time, Brady was tried in court for murdering Indians, but he was acquitted by the jury.

Brady had served at the siege of Boston, fought at Long Island and White Plains, gone through the whole of the terrible campaign of Trenton and Princeton, suffered at Valley Forge, distinguished himself at Germantown and Brandywine, and narrowly escaped death at Paoli. But his tastes led him to the erratic mode of warfare known upon the frontier. Indeed, his early education upon the upper Susquehanna had inculcated and developed those tastes from the very earliest boyhood. Hating an Indian with that instinctive hatred, which is begotten in the bosom of the white race, by long years of contest and outrage, a bitter intensity was imparted to the feeling in his case by the murder of his father and younger brother by the Indians, under trying and terrible circumstances, ​

Quite a discussion arose between Biggs and his captain at the mouth of Beaver river, about a mile above the fort, and where they must cross the Ohio, if they continued upon the northern side. Biggs finally yielded his objections, and they crossed Beaver, and proceeded with the habitual caution of woodsmen who fully understand their business. They had started early, and by rapid traveling they had reached, ere noon came, the last piece of bottom land on the north side of the river, just below what is known as the Narrows. Upon this bottom a pioneer, more daring than most others, had built a cabin, and opened a small spot of cleared land. He had planted it in corn, and it gave promise of a most abundant harvest. 
 
But, as they approached the edge of the clearing, just outside of the fence, Brady discovered “Indian signs,” as he called them. His companions discovered them almost as quick as he, and at once, in low tones, communicated to each other the necessity for a keen watch. They slowly trailed them along the side of the fence toward the house, whose situation they well knew, until they stood upon the brow of the bluff bank which overlooked it. A sight of the most terrible description met their eyes. The cabin lay a mass of smouldering ruins; from whence a dull blue smoke arose in the clear August sunshine. They observed closely everything about it. Brady knew it was customary for the Indians after they had fired a settler’s cabin, if there was no immediate danger, to retire to the woods close at hand, and watch for the approach of any member of the family who might chance to be absent when they made the descent. Not knowing but that they were even then lying close by, he left Bevington to watch the ruins, lying under cover, whilst he proceeded to the northward, and Biggs southward, to make discoveries. Both were to return to Bevington, if they found no Indians. If they came across the perpetrators, and they were too numerous to be attacked regularly, Brady declared it to be his purpose to have one fire at them, and that it should be a signal for both of his followers to make the best of their way to the fort. ​

Brady wore, as he almost always did, the Indian garb, and had war paint upon his face. He knew that if he showed himself upon the path, Gray would shoot, taking him to be an Indian. He therefore suffered Gray quietly to approach his lurking place. When the time came, he sprang forward ere the settler could have time to prepare, drew his tomahawk, and seizing him, dragged him from his horse. As he did so, he whispered to him: ‘‘I am Captain Brady, for God's sake be quiet.” 
 
Gray, with the instinctive feeling of one who knew there was danger, and with that vivid presence of mind which characterizes those acquainted with frontier life, ceased at once to struggle. The horse had been started by the sudden onslaught, and sprung to one side. Ere he had time to leap forward, Brady had caught him by the bridle. His loud snorting threatened to arouse any one who was near. The Captain soon soothed the frightened animal into quiet. 
 
Gray now hurriedly asked Brady what the danger was. The strong, vigorous spy, turned away his face unable to answer him. The settler’s already excited fears were thus turned into realities. “The manly form shook like an aspen leaf, with emotion—tears fell as large drops of water over his bronzed face. Brady permitted the indulgence for a moment, whilst he led the horse into a thicket close at hand and tied him. When he returned Gray had sunk to the earth and great tremulous convulsions writhed over him. Brady quietly touched him upon the shoulder and said, “Come.” He at once arose, and had gone but a few yards until every trace of emotion had apparently vanished. He was no longer the bereaved husband and father—he was the sturdy, well-trained hunter, whose ear and eye were acutely alive to every sight or sound, the waving of a leaf or the crackling of the smallest twig. 
 
He desired to proceed directly toward the house, but Brady objected to this, and they passed down toward the river bank. As they proceeded, they saw from the tracks of horses and moccasin prints upon the places where the earth was moist, that the party was quite a numerous one. After thoroughly examining every cover and possible place of concealment, they passed on to the southward and came back in that direction to the spot where Bevington stood sentry. When they reached him they found that Biggs had not returned. In a few minutes he came. He reported that the trail was large and broad; the Indians had taken no pains to conceal their tracks—they simply had struck back into the country, so as to avoid coming in contact with the spies whom they supposed to be lingering along the river. ​

He then told them that he would attack them. It was impossible to use fire arms. They must depend solely upon the knife and tomahawk. The knife must be placed in the left hand and the tomahawk in the right. To Biggs he assigned the duty of securing their arms. He was to begin the work of slaughter upon the right, Gray upon the left, and Bevington in the centre. 
 
After each fairly understood the duty assigned him, the slow, difficult, hazardous approach began. They continued upon their feet until they had gotten within one hundred yards of the foe, and then lay down upon their bellies and began the work of writhing themselves forward like a serpent approaching a victim. They at last reached the very verge of the line, each man was at his post, save Biggs, who had the farthest to go. Just as he passed Brady’s position, a twig cracked roughly under the weight of his body, and a huge savage, who lay within the reach of Gray’s tomahawk, slowly sat up as if startled into this posture by the sound. After rolling his eyes, he again lay down and all was still. 
 
Full fifteen minutes passed ere Biggs moved; then he slowly went on. When he reached his place, a very low hissing sound indicated that he was ready, Brady in turn reiterated the sound as a signal to Gray and Bevington to begin. This they did in the most deliberate manner. No nervousness was permissible then. They slowly felt for the heart of each savage they were to stab, and then plunged the knife. The tomahawk was not to be used unless the knife proved inefficient. Not a sound broke the stillness of the night as they cautiously felt and stabbed, unless it might be that one who was feeling would hear the stroke of the other’s knife and the groan of the victim whom the other had slain. Thus the work proceeded. Six of the savages were slain. One of them had not been killed outright by the stab of Gray. He sprang to his feet, but as he arose to shout his war cry, the tomahawk finished what the knife had begun. He staggered and fell heavily forward, over one who had not yet been reached. He in turn started up, but Brady was too quick, his knife reached his heart and the tomahawk his brain almost at the same instant. 
 
All were slain by the three spies, except one. He started to flee, but a rifle shot by Biggs rang merrily out upon the night air and closed his career. The women and children, alarmed by the contest, fled wildly to the woods; but when all had grown still and they were called, they returned, recognizing amid their fright the tones of their own people. The whole party took up their march for McIntosh at once. About sunrise next morning the sentries of the fort were surprised to see the cavalcade of horses, men, women and children, approaching the fort. When they recognized Brady, they at once admitted him and the whole party,