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The 8th Virginia Links List

11/17/2023

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Here are links to other great websites relating to Virginia and the Revolutionary War, organized by topic. Readers will also be be interested in separate lists of recommended books, specific online content, and "essential" posts from this website.

​Battlefields and Historic Sites
  • Brandywine Battlefield
  • Colonial Williamsburg
  • Locust Grove (Louisville, Ky.) - The postwar home Capt. William Croghan.
  • Monmouth Battlefield State Park
  • Princeton Battlefield State Park
  • Thomson Park Revolutionary War Battle Site
  • Valley Forge National Historical Park
  • Wilderness Road - "America's Heritage Migration Route"

History
  • Emerging Revolutionary War Era
  • Journal of the American Revolution
  • New River Notes - The history of the New River Valley in what was Fincastle County.
  • Of Sorts for Provincials - 18th century firearms, the Virginia backcountry, and material culture.
  • Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution

Living History Units
  • 8th Pennsylvania Regiment (Fort Laurens Detachment)
  • 1st Virginia Regiment
  • 2nd Virginia Regiment
  • 3rd Virginia Regiment
  • 7th Virginia Regiment
  • 8th Virginia Regiment
  • 10th Virginia Regiment
  • 11th Virginia Regiment
  • 13th Virginia Regiment

Museums and Historical Societies
  • 29th Division Museum - The 116th Regiment of the 29th Division is a successor unit to Capt. David Stephenson's Augusta County company.
  • ​American Revolution Museum at Yorktown
  • Augusta County Historical Society
  • Crab Orchard Museum and Pioneer Park (Tazewell, Va.)
  • The Fort Pitt Museum (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
  • The French & Indian War Foundation (Winchester, Va.)
  • Frontier Culture Museum (Staunton, Va.)
  • Harrisonburg-Rockingham County Historical Society
  • Historical Society of Western Virginia (Roanoke, Va.)
  • Historic Germanna (Locust Grove, Va.)
  • Jefferson County Historical Society (Charles Town, W.V.)
  • Jefferson County Museum (Charles Town, W.V.)
  • Museum of the American Revolution (Philadelphia, Pa.)
  • Pencader Heritage Museum (Newark, Del.) - A local history museum adjacent to the Couch's Bridge battlefield.
  • Shenandoah County Historical Society
  • Strasburg Museum (Strasburg, Va.)
  • Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society

Patriotic Societies

​Society of the Cincinatti​​
  • Pennsylvania
  • ​Virginia

​Daughters of the American Revolution
  • Kentucky (83 local chapters)
  • Ohio
  • Pennsylvania (93 local chapters)
  • Virginia (124 local chapters)
​
Sons of the Revolution
  • ​Ohio
  • Pennsylvania
  • Pennsylvania (Lancaster)
  • Virginia

​Sons of the American Revolution
  • Kentucky (23 local chapters)
  • Ohio (23 local chapters)
  • Pennsylvania (23 local chapters)
  • Virginia (30 local chapters)

​Reference
  • Southern Campaigns Revolutionary War Pension Statements and Rosters - Searchable transcriptions for southern states.
  • Western Heritage Mapping - Animated battlefield maps.
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The 8th Virginia Reading List

11/5/2023

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Here are links to recommended articles, videos, and digitized expired-copyright content about Virginia in the Revolution, listed in rough historical order. All content should be free to access, but some  sites such as JSTOR may require readers to create accounts. Posts from this site are not included, but a list of "essential posts" can be accessed here. There are also list of recommend books and menu of links to recommended websites. 
—Gabe Neville

Reference

  • William S. Baker, Itinerary of General Washington, June 15, 1775 to December 23, 1783 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1892).

Colonial Pennsylvania and Virginia

The Shenandoah Valley and backcountry Virginia had close ties to Pennsylvania. The two colonies even overlapped in the territory around Pittsburgh—a dispute that was not settled until 1780. The vast majority of Virginia's western settlers were Protestant Irish and German immigrants who came from Philadelphia via the Great Wagon Road, either immediately or over the course of one or two generations.
​
  • Charles E. Kemper, "The Settlement of the Valley," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.
  • Lisa Minardi, "Pastors & Patriots: The Muhlenberg Family of Pennsylvania," Incollect Magazine.
  • David L. Preston, "Braddock's Defeat," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Edward Ingle, "Justices of the Peace of Colonial Virginia,"Bulletin of the Virginia State Library.

Pre-War Political and Indian Conflict

  • ​​Bob Ruppert, "How the Stamp Act Did Not Affect Virginia," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Michael Cecere, "Take Them at Their Word: Virginia's Opposition to the Townshend Duties," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • James Rife, "'So Calamitous a Situation,' The Causes and Course of Dunmore's War, 1744-1774," master's thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
  • Jim Glanville, "The Fincastle Resolutions," Smithfield Review. A survey of 1774 and 1775 county resolves and resolutions.
  • Donald M. Zweig, "The Virginia Nonimportation Association Broadside of 1770 and Fairfax County: A Study in Local Participation," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.
  • Michael Cecere, "A Posture of Defense: Virginia's Journey from Nonimportation to Armed Resistance," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Alex Colvin, "Religious Liberty in Virginia: How 'Dissenters' Parlayed Oppression into Freedom," Journal of the American Revolution.

New England and Canada (1775-1776)

The first truly Continental soldier were Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania frontier riflemen who were recruited to support the 1775 siege of Boston. Some, including Daniel Morgan, participated in the invasion of Canada.
​

  • Hugh T. Harrington, "Patriot Riflemen During the Ammunition Crisis at the Siege of Boston, 1775," AmericanRevolution.org.

The Ouster of Lord Dunmore (1775-1776)

  • Rob Orrison, "'The Sword is Not Drawn..." The Powder Incident, Lexington and Concord Moves Virginia to Revolution," Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
  • Patrick H. Hannum, "Virginia's 1775 Regular Company-Level Military Force Structure," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Kyle Willard, "Officers and Enlisted Men in the Culpeper Minutemen. - A list of men who may have served in the Culpeper Minute Battalion.
  • Eric Sterner, "The Connolly Plot," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Gerald Holland, "The Seizure of the Virginia Gazette, or Norfolk Intelligencer," Journal of the American Revolution.​
  • Patrick H. Hannum, "Norfolk, Virginia, Sacked by North Carolina and Virginia Troops," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Michael Cecere, "Battle of Gwynn's Island: Lord Dunmore's Last Stand in Virginia," Journal of the American Revolution.

The 8th Virginia Regiment

  • Michael Cecere, "The Fighting Parson's Farewell Sermon,"Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Joshua Horn, "Peter Muhlenberg: The Pastor Turned Soldier," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Gabriel Neville, "A Forty Year Bond: William Darke and George Washington in Politics, Business, and War", Magazine of the Jefferson County Historical Society.
  • Gabriel Neville, "The Mighty Oaks of the Forest," Journal of the American Revolution. A review of Gwynn Tuell Potts' dual biography of William Croghan and George Rogers Clark.
  • Gabriel Neville, "Shenandoah Martyr: Richard Campbell at War," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • George M. Smith, "The Reverend Peter Muhlenberg: A Symbiotic Adventure in Virginia, 1772-1783," The Report: A Journal of German-American History.
  • Gabriel Neville and Michael Cecere, "Muhlenberg & the 8th Virginia," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Scott Stephenson, "Flags of the American Revolution," C-SPAN (video). A look at the regiment's surviving grand division banner.

Virginia Continentals

  • John Settle, "The Eastern Shore Battalion: The Story of the 9th Virginia Regiment," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Jim Gallagher, "Virginia Continental Line Reorganization of 1778 and 1779," 7th Virginia Regiment - An explanation of the complex and sometimes ad hoc reorganizations of the Virginia Line through the end of the war.

The First Southern Campaign (1776)

  • Edwin C. Bearss, The Battle of Sullivan's Island (National Park Service).
  • Doug MacIntyre, "Danger at the Breach," Journal of the American Revolution.

The Mid-Atlantic Campaign (1776-1777)

  • Charles Dewey, "Forts Washington and Lee," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Rob Orrison, Dan Welch, and Mark Maloy, "The New York Campaign," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • John Diaconis, Libby del Greco, and Lynn Briggs, "With Washington at White Plains" Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Mark Maloy, Larry Kidder, Roger Williams, and David Price, "The Ten Crucial Days," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Robert A. Selig, Matthew Harris, and Wade P. Catte, "Battle of Princeton Mapping Project: Report of Military Terrain Analysis and Battle Narrative," John Milner Associates.
  • Mark Maloy and Will Krakow, "The Battle of Princeton,"Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).

The Philadelphia Campaign (1777)

  • ​Brooke Blades and Wade Catts, "The Short Hills Battlefield Study," John Milner Associates.
  • Gabriel Neville, "The Last Vestige of the Clove Road," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Gabriel Neville, "The 'B Team' of 1777: Maxwell's Light Infantry," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Gary Ecelbarger, "The Feint That Never Happened: Unheralded Turning Point of the Philadelphia Campaign,"Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Michael Harris, "Brandywine," Emerging Revolutionary War  Era (video).
  • Gary Ecelbarger, "Clement Biddle Partially Clears the Battle of the Clouds," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Michael Harris, "Germantown," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Phill Greenwalt, "The Winter the Won the War, Valley Forge," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).

The Saratoga Campaign (1777)

About 400 Virginia and Pennsylvania marksmen reinforced the northern army late in the summer of 1777 and participated in the battles at Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights leading to the surrender of British Gen. John Burgoyne.
​
  • Eric Schnitzer, "The Battle of Freeman's Farm," National Park Service (Video).

The Western War

  • Gabriel Neville, "Virginia's Independent Frontier Companies, Part One," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Gabriel Neville, "Virginia's Independent Frontier Companies, Part Two," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Thomas Thorliefur Sobol, "Virginia Looking Westward: From Lord Dunmore's War Through the Revolution," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Jordan Baker, "The Cherokee-American War From the Cherokee Perspective," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Joe Herron, Gabe Neville, and Eric Sterner, "Rev War in the West," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Mark Wilcox, "Simon Kenton: Frontiersman, Soldier, Spy,"Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
  • Phill Greenwalt, "McColloch's Leap," Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
  • Eric Sterner, "General Edward Hand: The Squaw Campaign," Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
  • Eric Sterner, "The Treaty of Fort Pitt, 1778: The First U.S.-American Indian Treaty," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Gabriel Neville, "A Portrait of John Cuppy," Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
  • Eric Sterner, "The Siege of Fort Laurens, 1778-1779,"Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Timothy C. Hemmis, "Under the Banner of War: Frontier Militia and Uncontrolled Violence," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Eric Sterner, "George Rogers Clark Recaptures Fort Sackville, Part One," Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
  • Eric Sterner, "George Rogers Clark Recaptures Fort Sackville, Part Two," Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
  • Eric Sterner, "Moravians in the Middle: The Gnadenhutten Massacre," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Eric Sterner, "The Battle of Upper Sandusky," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Eric Sterner, "Betty Zane and the Siege of Fort Henry, September 1782," Journal of the American Revolution.

The Second Southern Campaign (1780-1781)

  • Mark Maloy, "The Virgians' 800-Mile March to Save Charleston," Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
  • Jim Piecuch, "The Battle of Waxhaws (or Buford's Massacre)," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Michael Cecere, "Picking Up the Pieces: Virginia's 'Eighteen-Months Men' of 1780-81," Journal of the American Revolution.​
  • John Settle, "Abraham Buford's Virginia Battalion, 1780-1781," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Travis Shaw and Nathan Stalvey, "Daniel Morgan," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Daniel Davis and Kristopher White, "The Battle of Cowpens," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Andrew Waters on the "Race to the Dan," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Vanessa Smiley and Kristopher White, "The Battle of Guilford Courthouse," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).

The Yorktown Campaign (1781)

  • Mark Wilcox and John Pagano, "Arnold Along the James," Emerging Revolutionary War Era (video).
  • Klaus Wust, "Disaffection in the Rear: German Tories in the West Virginia Mountains," The Report: A Journal of German-American History.
  • Drummond Ball and Michael Cecere, "Virginia's Swamp Fox: Captain Amos Weeks of Princess Anne County,"Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Mark Maloy, "'Madness!' The Battle of Green Spring, 1781,"Emerging Revolutionary War Era.
  • Conor Robison, "The Battle of Green Spring: A Footnote on the Road to Yorktown," Journal of the American Revolution.

The Late War (1782-1783)

  • Michael Cecere, "The French Army in Williamsburg, Virginia, 1781-1782," Journal of the American Revolution.

The Constitution and Western Settlement

  • Neal O. Hammon, "Land Acquisition on the Kentucky Frontier," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society.
  • Richard J. Werther, "The Articles of Confederation and Western Expansion," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Jonathan Curran, "Examining Public Opinion During the Whiskey Rebellion," Journal of the American Revolution.
  • Brady J. Crytzer, "How the (First) West Was Won: Federalist Treaties That Reshaped the Frontier," Journal of the American Revolution.
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Stories From the Postwar Frontier

10/22/2023

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For American purposes, the best definition of "frontier" is the westward-moving zone of conflict between Indian life and encroaching white settlement. Though gunfights and broken treaties are best remembered, life on the frontier also involved now hard-to-conceive cultural role reversals. White men sometimes dressed like Natives and Indians sometimes dressed like white men. There were Christian Indians and white-skinned Indian warriors. Time, disinterest and fear of political incorrectness have erased most vestiges of Indian influence from mainstream American life, but those influences and interactions were once quite strong and sometimes had tragic consequences. Here, with all of its political incorrectness preserved, are the "reminiscences of a Western traveler" published in the Southern Literary Messenger. Though published anonymously, the author is believed to be Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, a Virginia aristocrat and literary light of the antebellum South who collaborated with Edgar Allen Poe. Tucker lived in the west for a time before returning to Virginia. 

From the Reminiscences of a Western Traveler

​For the Southern Literary Messenger.    

​EXTRACT

"I presume," said I, "that having so long resided in Kentucky, you must have had some acquaintance with Indian warfare."

​"I had no occasion," he replied, "to come to Kentucky to learn that. I may say, that I have had something to do with it all my life, and it had to do with me before I was born."
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Nathaniel Beverley Tucker (Colonial Williamsburg)
The speaker was a tall, handsome man, uncommonly stout, with an appearance of great strength, perfect health, and a quiet good humor, which disposed him to be communicative, merely by way of obliging. Though by no means garrulous, I had discovered that he was ready to tell whatever another might be desirous of hearing. He spoke with that strong accent, and deliberate tone, which characterize the Scotch Irish race, and which always, to my ear, conveys a promise that what is said will be said distinctly and clearly.

Here then was the very man I wanted. I had left the peaceful scenes of the Atlantic coast, expecting, not indeed to "roam through anters vast and deserts wild," in my western tour, (for my maps and gazetteer had taught me better,) but to find some traces of the scenes, which but a few years before, had made it dangerous for a white man to set his foot where we now rode along securely. My eye had eagerly scanned every object which afforded promise of food to my young and eager imagination; but as yet I had found none. The soft beauty and exuberant fertility of the country, need only the touch of civilization to take from it every appearance of wildness, and I could hardly bring myself to believe that it had been so lately the haunt of the prowling savage. My enthusiasm was consequently much damped; but it was not extinguished, and these last words of my companion blew it into a flame. A well directed question soon drew him out.
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Border Settlers in Ohio, Felix Octavius Carr Darley (NYPL)
"I was born," said he, "among the mountains of Virginia. I never saw my father. He was killed at the battle of Point Pleasant, just before I came into the world. That is the reason why I said that Indian fighting had to do with me before I was born. But that was not all; many years before that, the Indians made a break on our settlement, and carried off my oldest brother, and kept him."
"Did you never see him again?"

"I suppose I have, but I did not know it at the time." As he said this, a gloom came over his countenance, which checked my inquisitiveness, and he rode on, perhaps a mile, in moody silence. At length his brow cleared, and he again spoke, but in a somewhat saddened tone.

​"It is something strange; I am not superstitious, and yet it seems to me, as if at times, when people are in great distress of mind, they are apt to say things that turn out almost like a prophecy. It was a great grief to my mother, the loss of her child, and the longer she lived the more she mourned after him. He was quite small when they took him; and they carried him away over the lakes, so far, that they never heard where he was, until he was almost grown up, a perfect wild man. My mother was a religious woman; and the thought of his being brought up among savages, where the word of God could never reach him, went to her heart. She said, it was always borne upon her mind that he was not dead, and that he would grow up among those vile wretches, to be the death of his own father, and perhaps to die at last by the hand of one of his own brothers. When they raised a party to follow the Indians, she 
would go with them, and all the way, she said, she looked and looked, in hopes to see where they had dashed out her poor child's brains against a tree. It was the only comfort she hoped for, and that was denied her.

"As I told you, they never heard of him till he was near or quite a man; and that was just before Dunmore's war. There was no chance to do any thing towards getting him home at that time, for it was dangerous to go near the Ohio. Indeed, all they knew was, that there was a white man of about his age among the Indians, who answered to his name. It was not until after the peace that we knew certainly all about him.

​"Well! he was at the battle of the Point, fighting among the Shawanees; and there my father was killed. When my mother heard that he had been there, you may be sure her own words came back to her. No body knew who killed my father. But why not he as well as another? Flesh and blood could not have made her believe that it was not he.

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The Cumberland Gap, Samuel Valentine Hunt (LOC)
"Just after that I was born, and then again my mother took it into her head that I had come into the world to revenge my father's death. There was no great comfort in that thought, you may be sure; so as soon as the war was over, they tried all they could to get my brother back. He was told that my father was dead, and had left a good estate; and that he was the heir at law; (for you know that my father died under the old law,) but it all would not do. He was a complete Indian, and had an Indian wife and children that he would not leave. But he had kind feelings for us all, and sent us word to take the estate; for he wanted nothing but his rifle.

"Well! my mother died; and I and a brother a little older than me, sold out and went to Kentucky. Where we settled was a dangerous frontier near the Ohio, and the Indians once or twice every year, would come over and strike at us. Then we would raise a party, and follow them away almost to the lakes; and after we got strong enough, we commonly kept a smart company ranging about on that side of the river. Sometimes we volunteered; sometimes we were drafted; sometimes one went; sometimes another. One year my brother went, and had a fight with the Indians. Afterwards we heard that our wild brother was in that fight, and was badly wounded. The next year I went out, and we had a fight, and my poor brother was there again, and he was killed."

He ceased speaking, and again sunk into a gloomy silence, which none of us were disposed to interrupt. At length he said, in a softened voice, "Thank God! I was spared one thing. I never think of it, that it does not make the cold chills run over me. It was the night before the battle. We had been following hard upon the trail all day, and just before night we came up with them. But we did not let them see us, and lay back till they had camped for the night. We knew we could find them in the dark by their fires. Sure enough we soon saw the light, and crawled towards it. The word was to attack at day light. In the meantime every man was to keep his eye skinned, and his gun in his hand, and not to fire on any account till the word was given. But in this sort of business every man fights, more or less, on his own hook; and if a fellow only kills an Indian, they never blame him. There they were, all dead asleep, around their fire; and we standing looking at them, almost near enough to hear them snore. You may be sure we did not breathe loud. Well! while I was standing off on one flank, watching them with all my eyes, up gets one, and stands right between me and the light. Up came my rifle to my face. It was against orders, but I never had shot at an Indian, and how could I stand it? My hand was on the trigger, when the figure turned, and I saw the breasts of a woman. You may be sure I did not shoot. It was my brother's daughter, as I afterwards learned."

This story required no comment. It admitted of none. The ideas it suggested was such as reason could neither condemn nor justify. We could only muse on it in silence. At length, the other stranger, who, like myself, had listened attentively, said, "I too was once within an ace of shooting a woman."

I started at this, and turned to reconsider the speaker. I had already scrutinized him pretty closely, and had formed a judgment concerning him, which these words quite unsettled. The idea that he had been familiar with scenes, where every man must make his hand guard his head, had never entered my mind. He was indeed formidably armed, carrying a brace of pistols in his belt, and another in his holsters. The handle of a dirk peeped through the ruffle of his shirt, and a rifle on his shoulder completed his armament. I had been of course struck with an equipment so warlike, but attributed it to excess of caution. The mildness and elegance of his manners had fixed him in my mind, as one bred up in the scenes of peaceful and polished life, where, in youth, he had heard so much of the perils of the country he was now traversing, as to suppose it unsafe to visit it without this load of weapons. I certainly had never seen a man of more courteous and gentlemanlike demeanor; and though his countenance gave no token of one "acquainted with cold fear," I had nevertheless, emphatically marked him as a man of peace. He was the oldest man in company, but deferential to all, accommodating, obliging, and, on all occasions, modestly postponing himself, even to such a boy as I was. He seemed now to have spoken from a wish to divert the painful thoughts of our companion, and, in answer to an inquiring look from me, went on with his story.

"It was nearly thirty years ago," said he, "I was travelling from Virginia through the wilderness of Kentucky, then much infested by Indians. I had one companion, an active, spirited young man, and we were both well mounted and well armed. Vigilance alone was necessary to our safety, and as we had both served a regular apprenticeship to Indian warfare, we were not deficient in that. We soon overtook a company of moving families, who had united for safety. The convenience of the axes of the men, in making fires, and of the women in cooking, determined us to join them. We camped together every night; and as we derived great advantage from the association, we tried to requite it by our activity and diligence as scouts and flankers. We commonly rode some distance ahead, so as to give them time to prepare in case of attack; depending on our own diligence and skill to guard against surprise.

"Riding thus one day, a mile or two in advance, we were suddenly startled by an outcry from behind, which was not to be mistaken. We immediately drew up, and presently saw our party hurrying towards us, in great confusion and alarm, whipping up their teams, and only stopping long enough to say that they were pursued. The rear was therefore now our post, and, waiting till they had all passed, we dismounted,—hid our horses, took trees, and awaited the enemy. I did not wait long, until I saw the head and shoulders of a figure above the undergrowth, rushing at full speed towards me. My rifle was at my cheek, and a steady aim at the advancing figure made me sure of my mark, when an opening in the brushwood showed me the dress of a female. She was the wife of one of the wretches who had just passed us, completely spent and sinking with fatigue. Had there been Indians she must have perished. As it was, her appearance showed the alarm to be false; so I took her up behind me, and we went quietly on, in pursuit of her dastard husband, to whose protection I restored her."
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Emigrants on the Ohio River, Albert Bobbett (NYPL)
In speaking these last words, the face of the speaker underwent, for a moment, a change, which told more than his story. The tone of scornful irony too, which accompanied the word protection, gave a new face to his character. As I marked the slight flush of his pale and somewhat withered cheek, the flash of his light blue eye, the curl of his lip, and a peculiar clashing of his eye-teeth as he spoke; I thought I had rarely seen a man, with whom it might not be as safe to trifle.

The day was now far spent; and as the sun descended, we had the satisfaction to observe that he sank behind a grove, that marked the course of a small branch of the Wabash, on the bank of which stood the house where we expected to find food and rest.

None but a western traveller can understand the entire satisfaction with which the daintiest child of luxury learns to look forward to the rude bed and homely fare, which await him, at the end of a hard day's ride, in the infant settlements. There is commonly a cabin of rough unhewn logs, containing one large room, where all the culinary operations of the family are performed, at the huge chimney around which the guests are ranged. The fastidious, who never wait to be hungry, may turn up their noses at the thought of being, for an hour before hand, regaled with the steam of their future meal. But to the weary and sharp set, there is something highly refreshing to the spirits and stimulating to the appetite. The dutch oven, well filled with biscuit, is no sooner discharged of them, than their place is occupied by sundry slices of bacon, which are immediately followed by eggs, broken into the hissing lard. In the mean time, a pot of strong coffee is boiling on a corner of the hearth; the table is covered with a coarse clean cloth; the butter and cream and honey are on it; and supper is ready.

"Then horn for horn they stretch and strive."

It makes me hungry now to think of it; and I am tempted to take back my word and eat something, having just told my wife I wanted no supper. But it will not do. I have not rode fifty miles to-day, and my table is so trim and my room so snug that I have no appetite.

But it is only in the first stage of a settlement, that these things are found. By and by, mine host, having opened a larger farm, builds him a house, of frame-work or brick, the masonry and carpentry of which show the rude handy-work of himself and his sons. He now employs several hands, and the leavings of their dinner will do for the supper of any chance travellers in the evening. A round deep earthen dish, in which a bit of fat pork or lean salt beef, crowns a small mound of cold greens or turnips, with loaf bread baked a month ago, and a tin can of skimmed milk now form the travellers supper. It is vain to expostulate. Our host has no fear of competition. He has now located the whole point of wood land crossed by the road, and no one can come nearer to him, on either hand, than ten miles. Besides, he is now the "squire" of the neighborhood, with "eyes severe," and "fair round belly with fat bacon lined;" and why should not the daily food of a man of his consequence be good enough for a hungry traveller?

It was to a house of this latter description that we now came. No one came out to receive us. Why should they? We took off our own baggage, and found our way into the house as we might.

On entering, I was struck with the appearance of the party, as their figures glimmered through the mingled lights of a dull window and a dim fire. Each individual, though seated, (and no man moved or bad us welcome) wore his hat, of shadowy dimensions; a sort of family resemblance, both in cut and color, ran through the dresses of all; and a like resemblance in complexion and cast of countenance marked all but one. This one, as we afterwards found, was the master of the mansion, a man of massive frame, and fat withal, but whose full cheeks, instead of the ruddy glow of health, were overcast with an ashy, dusky, money-loving hue. In the appearance of all the rest there was something ascetic and mortified. But landlord and guest wore all one common expression of ostentatious humility and ill-disguised self-complacency, which so often characterizes those new sects, that think they have just made some important discoveries in religion. Mine host was, as it proved, the Gaius of such a church, and his guests were preachers of the same denomination. I have forgotten the name; but they were not Quakers. I have been since reminded of them, on reading the description of the company Julian Peveril found at Bridgnorth's.

When we entered, our landlord was talking in a dull, plodding strain, and in a sort of solemn protecting tone, to his respectfully attentive guests. Our appearance made no interruption in his discourse; and he went on, addressing himself mainly to a raw looking youth, whose wrists and ankles seemed to have grown out of his sleeves and pantaloons since they were made. Where the light, which this young man was now thought worthy to diffuse, had broken in upon his own mind, I did not learn, but I presently discovered that he came from "a little east of sunrise," and had a curiosity as lively as my own, concerning the legends of the country.

"I guess brother P——," said he, "you have been so long in these parts, that it must have been right scary times when you first came here."

"Well! I cannot say," replied the other, "that there has been much danger in this country, since I came here. But if there was, it was nothing new to me. I was used to all that in Old Kentuck, thirty years ago."
"I should like," said the youth, "to hear something of your early adventures. I marvel that we should find any satisfaction in turning from the contemplation of God's peace, to listen to tales of blood and slaughter. But so it is. The old Adam will have a hankering after the things of this world."

"Well!" replied our host, "I have nothing very particular to tell. The scalping of three Indians, is all I have to brag of. And as to danger; except having the bark knocked off of my tree into my eyes, by a bullet, I do not know that I was ever in any mighty danger, but once."

"And when was that?"

"Well! It was when we were moving out along the wilderness road. You see it was mighty ticklish times; so a dozen families of us started together, and we had regular guards, and scouts, and flankers, just like an army. The second day after we left Cumberland river, a couple of young fellows joined us, one by the name of Jones, and I do not remember the other's name. I suppose they had been living somewhere in Old Virginia, where they had plenty of slaves to wait on them; and it went hard with them to make their own fires, and cook their own victuals; so they were glad enough to fall in with us, and have us and our women to work and cook for them. But a man was a cash article there; and they both had fine horses and good guns; and, to hear them talk, (especially that fellow Jones,) you would have thought, two or three Indians before breakfast, would not have been a mouthful to them. We did not think much of them, but we told them, if they would take their turn in scouting and guarding, they were welcome to join us."

At this moment, our landlady, who was busy in a sort of shed, which adjoined the room we sat in, and served as a kitchen, entered, and stopping for a moment, heard what was passing. She was a good-looking woman, of about forty-five, with a meek subdued and broken hearted cast of countenance. I saw her look at her husband, and as she listened, her face assumed an expression of timid expostulation, mixed with that sort of wonderment, with which we regard a thing utterly unaccountable, but which use has rendered familiar.

Her lord and master caught the look, and bending his shaggy brow, said, "I guess the men will want their supper, by the time they get it."

She understood the hint, and stole away rebuked; uttering unconsciously, in a loud sigh, the long hoarded breath which she had held all the time she listened. Her manner was not intended to attract notice; but there was something in it, which disposed me to receive her husband's tale with some grains of allowance. He went on thus:

"The day we expected to get to the crab-orchard, it was their turn to bring up the rear. By good rights, they ought to have been a quarter of a mile or so behind us; and I suppose they were; when, all of a sudden, we heard the crack of a rifle, and here they come, right through us, and away they went. I looked round for my woman and I could not see her. The poor creature was a little behind, and thought there was no danger, because we all depended on them two fire eaters in the rear, to take care of stragglers. But when they ran off, you see, there was nobody between her and the Indians; and the first thing I saw, was her, running for dear life, and they after her. I set my triggers, and fixed myself to stop one of them; and just then, her foot caught in a grape vine, and down she came. I let drive at the foremost, and dropped him; but the other one ran right on. My gun was empty; and I had no chance but to put in, and try the butt of it. But I was not quite fast enough. He was upon her, and had his hand in her hair; and it was a mercy of God, he did not tomahawk her at once. He had plenty of time for that;—but he was too keen after the scalp; and, just as he was getting hold of his knife, I fetched him a clip that settled him. Just then, I heard a crack or two, and a ball whistled mighty near me; but, by this time, some of our party had rallied, and took trees; and that brought the Indians to a stand. So I put my wife behind a tree, and got one more crack at them; and then they broke and run. That was the only time I ever thought myself in any real danger, and that was all along of that Jones and the other fellow. But they made tracks for the settlement."

"Have you never seen Jones since?" said the mild voice of the courteous gentleman I have mentioned.
"No; I never have; and it's well for him; though, bless the Lord! I hope I could find in my heart now to forgive him. But if I had ever come across him, before I met with you, brother B——;" (addressing a grave senior of the party who received the compliment with impenetrable gravity;) "I guess it would not have been so well for him."

"Do you think you would know him again, if you were to see him?" said my companion.

"It's a long time ago," said he, "but I think I should. He was a mighty fierce little fellow, and had a monstrous blustering way of talking."

"Was he any thing like me?" said the stranger, in a low but hissing tone.

The man started, and so did we all, and gazed on the querist. In my life, I never saw such a change in any human face. The pale cheek was flushed, the calm eye glowed with intolerable fierceness, and every feature worked with loathing. But he commanded his voice, though the curl of his lip disclosed the full length of one eye tooth, and he again said, "look at me. Am not I the man?"

"I do not know that you are," replied the other doggedly, and trying in vain to lift his eye to that which glared upon him. "I do not know that you are?" muttered he.

"Where is he? where is he," screamed a female voice; "let me see him. I'll know him, bless his heart! I'll know him any where in the world."

Saying this, our landlady rushed into the circle, and stood among us, while we all rose to our feet. She looked eagerly around. Her eye rested a moment on the stranger's face; and in the next instant her arms were about his neck, and her head on his bosom, where she shed a torrent of tears.

I need not add, that the subject of the Landlord's tale, was the very incident which my companion had related on the road. He soon made his escape, cowed and chop-fallen; and the poor woman bustled about, to give us the best the house afforded, occasionally wiping her eyes, or stopping for a moment to gaze mutely and sadly on the generous stranger, who had protected her when deserted by him who lay in her bosom.
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The grave brethren looked, as became them, quite scandalized, at this strange scene. It was therefore promptly explained to them; but the explanation dissipated nothing of the gloom of their countenances. Their manner to the poor woman was still cold and displeased, and they seemed to forget her husband's fault, in their horror at having seen her throw herself into the arms of a stranger. For my part, I thought the case of the good Samaritan in point, and could not help believing, that he who had decided that, would pronounce that her grateful affection had been bestowed where it was due.

Originally Published in the Southern Literary Messenger, 1:7 (1835), pp.336-340.

More from The 8th Virginia Regiment

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The 8th Virginia Book List

10/10/2023

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Here is a list of printed works that will help readers learn more about Virginia in the Revolutionary War. A separate list of recommended free online content is available here. Essays originating on this website are not included, but a list of "essential posts" (in historical order) is provided at the top as a separate item.

The list below has an intentional focus on Virginia and the places where the 8th Virginia served, but exceptional works such as the autobiography of Joseph Plumb Martin and Robert Wright's The Continental Army are also included. Some selections are unique in their category while others represent just one of dozens of works on a subject. In most cases the listed items represent the most recent work on a subject. All researchers stands on the shoulders of the historians who preceded them. No disparagement is meant toward the many excellent works not included here. Books should be in print unless otherwise noted. This list will be updated as new items appear or when older works come to my attention. Merchant links are intentionally not provided.
--Gabe Neville

Essential Posts

  • What Were They Thinking?
  • The Stamp Act and Captain Berry
  • The Dunmore and Frederick Resolves
  • ​Three Germans: The Regiment's Field Officers
  • The Counties of the 8th Virginia
  • A First-Person History of the Regiment
  • The Fourth of July in Soldiers Eyes
  • Death by Mosquito
  • The 8th Virginia at Fort Lee in 1776
  • Pittsburgh Men at the Battle of Trenton
  • The Battle of Drake's Farm
  • Zachariah DeLong, We Hardly Knew You
  • Monmouth and the End of the 8th Virginia
  • David Stephenson Quits
  • The Murder of Joseph Carman
  • Darkesville: A Name Born of Tragedy

Introductions to the Revolutionary War

  • Michael Cecere, March to Independence: the Revolutionary War in the Southern Colonies, 1775-1776 (Yardley: Westholme, 2021). This is an important corrective to the traditional Boston- and Philadelphia-centric narrative of the war's early days, providing overviews of events in each of the southern colonies including East Florida, which did not join the rebellion.
  • Edward G. Lengel (ed.), The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2020). Though not a history of the whole war, this is an excellent introduction for anyone who wants to get right to the good parts of the story. This is a ten-chapter book featuring ten short accounts of the ten most important campaigns of the war written by ten of the best Revolutionary War historians writing today. It is good history and a fun read.
  • Joseph Plumb Martin, Diary of a Revolutionary War Soldier (various editions). This is the only book on the list that has nothing to do with Virginia, but it is so good and so valuable it needs to be recommended anyway. It is the only full-length, well-written autobiography written by an enlisted soldier. It is a delightful book that should be required reading in every high school. Used editions may be titled Private Yankee Doodle.
  • Robert K. Wright, Jr., The Continental Army, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1983). This is a well-researched, matter-of-fact study of the evolution of the Continental Army with attention to unit origination, state-level contributions, training, and changes over time. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to really understand the Continental Army. It was produced by the U.S. Army's Center for Military History after the Bicentennial. It is still available from the Government Printing Office but may be easier to find used.
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Late Colonial Virginia

  • Glenn F. Williams, Dunmore’s War: The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era (Yardley, Pa: Westholme, 2012). Dunmore's War was the last colonial Indian war and was personally led by Virginia's last royal governor. A large number of 8th Virginia soldiers saw their first large-scale combat experience in this conflict and it explains a lot about their mindset and attitudes. This well-researched book, along with James Rife's master's thesis on the same subject, are important background for Virginia - especially western Virginia - in the Revolution.
  • Warren R. Hofstra, The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004). This is the best history of the settlement, economy, and culture of the Shenandoah Valley in the 18th century. Seven of the 8th Virginia's ten companies came from the Shenandoah Valley for contiguous counties.
  • Richard MacMaster, "Ulster-Scots in Virginia," Discover Ulster-Scots.  There does not seem to be a recent book-length study of the Scotch-Irish in Virginia, but this essay gives a good overview. The term "Scotch-Irish" refers to Protestant Irish, and was not used in the Colonial and Revolutionary periods because Catholics were not allowed to immigrate. They were simply called "Irish." The distinction didn't become important until later.
  • David Preston, Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of Monongahela and the Road to Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). This is the most recent study of the event that reverberated for decades in the west and deeply impacted the lives of many 8th Virginia soldiers even though few if any were there for it.
  • Parke Rouse, Jr., The Great Wagon Road: from Philadelphia to the South (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973). The vast majority of Shenandoah Valley and south-Appalachian settlers came down the Great Wagon Road from Philadelphia after immigrating from Ireland and Germany. The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road extended all the way to Georgia and the Wilderness Road Branched off of it through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. That makes it at least as important as the Oregon Trail. It is also important here because it ran right through most of the counties that raised companies for the 8th Virginia.
  • George M. Smith: “The Reverend Peter Muhlenberg: A Symbiotic Adventure in Virginia, 1772-1783,” The Report  (Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland). This is the best published account "the fighting parson's" arrival and early career in the Shenandoah Valley prior to becoming colonel of the 8th Virginia.
  • Patrick Spero, Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West (New York: W.W. Norton, 2018). This might be the best work to date when it comes to correcting the Boston-centric history of the war we all learned in school. If armed resistance to the King's soldiers constitutes rebellion, the Revolution arguably started in western Pennsylvania in 1769. Two of the 8th Virginia's companies were raised in Western Pennsylvania, which was claimed by Virginia at the time.
  • Klaus Wust, The Virginia Germans (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1969). Like the Scotch-Irish, large numbers of Germans emigrated down the Wagon Road from Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley and many of their sons became soldiers in the 8th Virginia Regiment. This is their story.
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Virginia in the Revolution

  • W.F. Dunaway, Jr., ‘The Virginia Conventions of the Revolution,’ Virginia Law Register, 10:7 (1904), pp.568-586. The role of the five revolutionary Virginia Conventions gets glossed over in most histories, despite their very important contributions. The Continental Association, the Association's boycott of British goods, the 1st Continental Congress, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence all had their origins in or were made possible by the conventions' actions.
  • Jim Glanville, "The Fincastle Resolutions," The Smithfield Review, 14 (2010), pp.69-119. The sentiments of Virginia in 1774 and 1775 are best understood from the various resolves and resolutions written by county committees of safety. Despite its title, Glanville's essay surveys all of the surviving country resolutions.
  • John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775-1783 (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg, 1988). Selby's book is still regarded as the standard history of Virginia in the Revolutionary War.
  • Eric Sterner, "The Connolly Plot," Journal of the American Revolution, October 28, 2020. One-fifth of the 8th Virginia's recruits came from the West Augusta District around Pittsburgh, which was then claimed by Virginia. Eric Sterner provides a look at the political intrigue around the frontier's most important fort in 1775.
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The War in 1776

  • Michael Cecere, “The Fighting Parson’s Farewell Sermon,” Journal of the American Revolution, April 15, 2020. 8th Virginia colonel Peter Muhlenberg's farewell sermon drifted over the decades from history to patriotic romance. While the mythology is not far from the facts, this essay provides an important, objective corrective.
  • Edwin C. Bearss, The Battle of Sullivan's Island and the Capture of Fort Moultrie (National Park Service, 1968). This is an older work, authored by the legendary National Park Service historian Ed Bearss for the Park Service. Though perhaps dated in some ways, it still provides a good narrative. Readers may want to pair it with Mark Maloy's book on Charleston listed below.
  • Doug MacIntyre, “Danger at the Breach,” Journal of the American Revolution, May 11, 2023. The 8th Virginia's first serious action was in Charleston in 1776 at the Battle of Sullivan's Island. Though this excellent essay does not deal with the specifics of the 8th Virginia's participation, it is the first fully-researched account of the combat on the north end of the island and an important corrective to two centuries of incomplete and sometimes incorrect history.
  • William L. Kidder, Ten Crucial Days: Washington’s Vision for Victory Unfolds (Lawrence Twp., NJ: Knox Press, 2018). Published 14 years after David Hackett Fischer's Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington's Crossing, Kidder's book has the benefit not only of Fischer's research but also of the remarkable work done by the Battle of Princeton Mapping Project. It is, therefore, the most accurate book-length account of the Ten Crucial Days.
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The War in 1777

  • Adam Zielinski, "A Phanton at Middle Brook: Washington in the New Jersey Short Hills," Journal of the American Revolution, April 11, 2018. The Battle of Short Hills was fought soon after all active companies of the 8th Virginia finally united in New Jersey in the spring of 1777.
  • Gabriel Neville, “The Last Vestige of the Clove Road,” Journal of the American Revolution, July 16, 2019. When the British sailed away from New Jersey in the summer of 1777, the Americans had no idea where they were headed.
  • Gabriel Neville, “The ‘B Team’ of 1777: Maxwell’s Light Infantry," Journal of the American Revolution, April 10, 2018. About 40 8th Virginia men were detached under Capt. William Darke to this provisional corps of skirmishers for one critical month that included the Battle of Cooch's Bridge, the Battle of the Clouds, and the Battle of Brandywine.
  • Michael C. Harris, Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia but Saved America, September 11, 1777 (El Dorado Hills, Ca.: Savas Beatie, 2014). Building on important earlier works by Tom McGuire and others, this is the most recent full treatment of the Battle of Brandywine.
  • ​Michael C. Harris, Germantown: A Military History of the Battle for Philadelphia, October 4, 1777 (El Dorado Hills, Ca.: Savas Beatie, 2020). Like his book on Brandywine, Michael Harris's book on Germantown is the latest full treatment and includes some important corrections to our understanding of what happened there.
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The War in 1778

  • Gary Ecelbarger, “The First Four Days at Valley Forge,” Journal of the American Revolution, December 8, 2022. Most of us have a romantic and two-dimensional view of the Valley Forge encampment. Gary Ecelberger tells us what really happened during the first days of the Army's time there.
  • Mark Edward Lender and Gary Wheeler Stone, Fatal Sunday: George Washington, the Monmouth Campaign, and the Politics of Battle (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017). The Battle of Monmouth was the 8th Virginia's last engagement before being folded into the 4th Virginia and ceasing to exist.
  • Eric Sterner, "The Treaty of Fort Pitt, 1778: The First U.S.-American Indian Treaty," Journal of the American Revolution, December 18, 2018. Many 8th Virginia soldiers returned home to Pittsburgh in time to witness the first of many treaties between Indian tribes and the United States. This treaty with the Delaware was short-lived, but the signatories were good allies while it lasted.
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The Later War and the Western Theater

  • Colin G. Calloway, The Shawnees and the War for America (New York: Penguin, 2007). The Shawnee were for decades the primary nemeses of settlers living on Virginia's northwest frontier.
  • Hammon, Neal and Richard Taylor, Virginia’s Western War, 1775-1786 (Mechanicsburg, Pa: Stackpole Books, 2002). The war in the west did not end in 1783. Though it has been criticized for some small inaccuracies, this book provides an overview of Kentucky County settlement and the war in the west through 1786.
  • Gabriel Neville, “Virginia’s Independent Frontier Companies, Part 1,” Journal of the American Revolution, March 17, 2021. Virginia created five companies of state regulars to protect the frontier in 1775. Many of these men continued on into the 8th Virginia.
  • Gabriel Neville, “Virginia’s Independent Frontier Companies, Part 2,” Journal of the American Revolution​, March 18, 2021. Virginia's second authorization of independent companies for the frontier. Some of these men continued on into the 12th and 13th Virginia regiments.
  • Thomas Thorleifur Sobol, “Virginia Looking Westward: From Lord Dunmore’s War Through the Revolution,” Journal of the American Revolution, February 17, 2016. An overview of war warfare in the west, with a focus on Fort Pitt.
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Officer Biographies

  • Michael Cecere, A Brave, Active and Intrepid Soldier: Lieutenant Colonel Richard Campbell of the Virginia Continental Line (Berwyn Heights, MD: Heritage Books, 2020). 8th Virginia captain Richard Campbell continued on in service, promoted twice, until he died in battle in 1781. He was Virginia's second-highest-ranking officer to die in combat.
  • Michael Cecere, Peter Muhlenberg, A Virginia Officer of the Continental Line (Yardley, Pa: Westholme Publishing, 2020). The most recent biography of the 8th Virginia's first colonel celebrates his real achievements and corrects some mythology.
  • Michael Cecere, Second to No Man But the Commander in Chief, Hugh Mercer (Berwyn Heights, Md: Heritage Books, 2015). From his immigration from Scotland to the French and Indian War and his final service at Princeton, Gen. Hugh Mercer's career parallels the lives of several 8th Virginia men. Mercer was a leading martyr in the American cause and should be better remembered.
  • Gabriel Neville, “A Forty Year Bond: William Darke and George Washington in Politics, Business, and War,” The Magazine of the Jefferson County Historical Society, 84 (2018) pp.23-38. 8th Virginia captain and major William Darke served in four different conflicts, rising from private to General.
  • Gabriel Neville, “Shenandoah Martyr: Richard Campbell at War,” Journal of the American Revolution, December 3, 2019. A shorter account of the life of Richard Campbell.
  • Harry M. Ward, Adam Stephen and the Cause of American Liberty (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989). Not only did Adam Stephen command the 8th Virginia as a major general at Brandywine and Germantown, he was also a neighbor to many of its men in the Shenandoah Valley.
  • Harry M. Ward, Charles Scott and the ‘Spirit of ’76’ (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1988). Another Virginian who rose from private to general, and then to governor of Kentucky, Scott was the 8th Virginia's brigadier general in 1777 and 1778.
  • John W. Wayland, The Bowmans: A Pioneering Family of Virginia, Kentucky, and the Northwest Territory (1943; repr. Harrisonburg: C.J. Carrier, 1974). 8th Virginia lieutenant colonel and lieutenant colonel Abraham Bowman is remembered in this book about his service and that of his three equally notable brothers. (Out of print.)
  • Albert Louis Zambone, Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life (Yardley: Westholme, 2018). Several 8th Virginia men were detached to serve in Morgan's Rifles in 1777. Like Adam Stephen, Morgan lived in the Shenandoah Valley and many 8th Virginia men knew him very well as a neighbor.
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After the War

  • Brady Cryzter, “How the (First) West Was Won, Federalist Treaties That Reshaped the Frontier,” Journal of the American Revolution, December 29, 2022. Many 8th Virginia soldiers were far more interested in western settlement than trans-Atlantic politics. The Indian wars and the treaties that followed created the opportunities in the west they really cared about.
  • Gwynne Tuell Potts, George Rogers Clark and William Croghan (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2020). 8th Virginia captain William Croghan married the sister of George Rogers Clark and they lived and worked closely together in Kentucky after the war.
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Battlefield Guides

  • Phillip S. Greenwalt, The Winter That Won the War: The Winter Encampment at Valley Forge, 1777-1778 (El Dorado Hills, Ca.: Savas Beatie, 2021). The enlistments of the 8th Virginia's original volunteers expired near the end of the Valley Forge encampment. New recruits and those who reenlisted continued on. Part of the Emerging Revolutionary War series.
  • William R. Griffith IV, A Handsome Flogging: The Battle Monmouth, June 28, 1778 (El Dorado Hills, Ca.: Savas Beatie, 2020). Monmouth was the last engagement for the original 8th Virginia regiment. Part of the Emerging Revolutionary War series.
  • Mark Maloy, To the Last Extremity: The Battles for Charleston, 1776-1782​ (El Dorado Hills, Ca.: Savas Beatie, 2023). Charleston was the site of many 8th Virginia soldiers' first and last major engagements: the Battle of Sullivan's Island in 1776 and the Siege of Charleston in 1780. Part of the Emerging Revolutionary War series.
  • Mark Maloy: Victory or Death, the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, December 25, 1776-January 3, 1777 (El Dorado Hills, Ca.: Savas Beatie, 2018). About 100 men from the 8th Virginia participated in the Ten Crucial Days as part of detachment serving with the 1st Virginia Regiment. Part of the Emerging Revolutionary War series.​
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Reference

  • John H. Gwathmey, Historical Register of Virginians in the Revolution (Richmond: Dietz Press, 1938). This book does the best possible job of creating a comprehensive list of all Virginians known to have fought in the Revolution. It wisely makes no attempt to reconcile duplicate or similar names, necessarily resulting in individual men being listed repeatedly. It gives only very basic information: names, ranks, units and dates. The book is best for Continental and State soldiers for whom rosters were kept and for whom postwar benefits were available. Minute and militia service are spotty at best. The work is most easily available as a two-volume reprint, but is not worth the expense for researchers interested in individual soldiers. Genealogists should look for it in a library.
  • E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra, Guide to Virginia Military Organizations in the Revolution, 1774-1787 (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1978). Though it contains some errors and omissions, this book produced during the Bicentennial remains the best reference for Virginia military units in the war, covering Continental, State, minute, volunteer, and militia. It includes lists of offers (captains and above) and very brief unit histories.
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8th Virginia Houses

7/5/2023

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The homes of several 8th Virginia veterans survive in Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Indiana. Some were the houses they grew up in and others were built in their final years of life.  Some survive only in photographs. If you know of others, please let us know so we an include them here.
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The home of Surgeon Cornelius Baldwin on South Loudoun Street in Winchester, built in the 1790s. Baldwin was from New Jersey and joined the regiment in 1777, continuing in service to the end of the war. Among his civilian patients was Thomas Fairfax, Sixth Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who lived near Winchester until his death in 1781. There is a tradition that Lord Fairfax died in Dr. Baldwin's home after going their for treatment. That house would have been a precursor to this one. This house was used as a tavern and significantly altered, but restored in 1777. Much of its internal woodwork is still original.

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Berry Plain, built about 1720, was the childhood home of Capt. Thomas Berry. The house was built by his father or grandfather and survives in King George County, Virginia. It overlooks the Rappahanock River, though the land has been subdivided and a new house now sits between it and the river. Much of the interior is original and the current owners are taking great care of it. Berry was the younger brother of Benjamin Berry, the founder of Berryville and the proprietor of the famous Battletown tavern where Daniel Morgan, William Darke, and John Stephenson engaged in frequent fistfights or wrestling matches in the years before the Revolution. Thomas and Benjamin both bought land on the Shenandoah River in what is now Clarke County.

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A photo of the home of Benjamin Biggs near West Liberty, W.V. before it was torn down about 1960. Biggs was a private soldier in Capt. John Stephenson's independent frontier company in 1775, a company that was then attached to the 8th Virginia. He was later an officer in the 13th Virginia (redesigned the 9th and then the 7th later in the war) and a brigadier general in the Virginia militia in the 1790s. He was a prominent figure in the early history of Ohio County, W.V.

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The Shenandoah County home of Lt. Col. Abraham Bowman, built by his father in the early 1770s. The house was long believed to date to the 1750s but dendrochronology has disproven that. It was preceded by a log house which was used as a fort ("Fort Bowman") in the 1750s and 1760s. Bowman was promoted to colonel in 1777 and moved to Kentucky in 1779 after being released in a consolidation of the Virginia line.

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Colonel Abraham Bowman led several families to Kentucky in 1779 and settled at first with his brother John at Bowman's Station at present Burgin, Mercer County. He was an early settler near Lexington, where he built this unique log house. It has a basement and second floor with an exterior staircase. It was expertly restored at the turn of the century.

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Cedar Hall near Lexington, Ky. may have been the last home of Col. Abraham Bowman. It was built no earlier than 1834 across the road from his log house.  Colonel Bowman died in 1837. It is more plausible that the house was built by his son, George H. Bowman, but the evidence is mixed. It is a true plantation house and shows how the Bowman prospered in Kentucky, owning both slaves and quite a bit of land. The house was renamed Helm Place by later owners.

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Major William Croghan leveraged his position as a Virginia veteran bounty land agent into substantial wealth. His restored plantation house near Louisville, Locust Grove, is a frequent destination for school field trips. The connected museum is a key site for 8th Virginia history.
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Lt. Col. Jonathan Clark moved to Louisville to join his extended family in the 1790s. Though later additions mask its original appearance, his home survives in Louisville.

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Now the rear part of later residence, this one-story house on Main Street in Woodstock is believed to have been built by 8th Va. veteran George Clower and to have been his residence until he died in 1822.

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Major William Darke's home in present Jefferson County, West Virginia does not survive, What became of it is not remembered, but he may have lived in what was later used as a slave quarters. That building, and a family graveyard, do survive.

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Major Peter Helphenstine returned to Winchester in August 1776 infected with malaria. As his condition deteriorated, he oversaw the construction of a house for his wife and children. He died in 1778 or 1779. This house, which belonged to his descendants, is often said to have been his. William Greenway Russell, writing in 1876, said it was not. It was torn down in the 1950s. (WFCHS)

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Captain Robert Higgins grew up in what is now Hardy County, West Virginia. The town of Moorefield was chartered during the war and he returned there after the war. He built this log house there and resided in it until he moved to Ohio. The house is in good condition. There are plans to turn it into a museum.

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Sgt. James Lamb of David Stephenson's Augusta County company moved to Indiana after the war, reportedly because of his objections to slavery. His home, made of fieldstone survives near the town of Richmond. Two additions have been added, but the original structure is intact.

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A local history book reports that this photograph depicts veteran Christopher Moyers' log house in White Pine, Jefferson County, Tennessee. Please reach out if you know more about this house.

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Originally the home of his father, Gen. Peter Muhlenberg inherited this house in Trappe, Pennsylvania and lived his final years in it. He served as vice president of Pennsylvania, a member of the U.S. House and the member of the U.S. Senate during his time here. He is buried at his father's church down the street.

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Corporal Philip Fine lived in this house in St. Louis, Missouri in 1804, twenty years before the Louisiana Purchase. It was built in 1774 by a French colonist. Other notable people, including Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (at different times) lived in it. The house was torn down shortly after this daguerrotype image was made in 1850. The place where it stood is just a few hundred feet from the south leg of the Gateway Arch on the grounds of Gateway Arch National Park. (Missouri Historical Society)

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The home of Lt. Jacob Rinker still stands in western Shenandoah County. The house, build in a German style, straddles spring and was built by the officer's father when the family settled here. Rinker rose to prominence in the Shenandoah Valley as a militia leader and much-trusted surveyor.

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The home Col. John Stephenson in Harrison County, Kentucky. A date on the attic timbers says either 1793 or 1798. The house had fallen into disrepair by the time Charles Wilson Case bought the farm it sits on in  the 1920s. It was used for many years as a barn. Case's granddaughter Cathy Case Muntz inherited this part of the farm, but gave the house to her sister Reba Case Fuller so she could restore it, which she and her husband Donny did in 1996 and 1997. Much of the interior is still original, despite the house's history.

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The altered home of Chaplain Christian Streit still stands in Winchester. Streit was a childhood friend of Peter Muhlenberg and also trained for the ministry with him. After the war, Streit settled in Winchester and served as pastor of the town's Lutheran congregation. The structure's 19th century appearance is the result of an expansion of the attic/half story. Though hard to discern in the photograph, the original roof line can be seen in the stonework of the side wall.
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Root Hog or Die!

4/17/2023

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The Battle of Musgrove's Mill, 1780
John Buchanan (Westholme, 2022)
British victory in the Revolution required one thing above all: the ability of American Loyalists to retake and hold the civil and military functions of government. Then as now, occupying armies are expensive and cannot stay forever. In this light, a battle between Tories and Patriots involving no Redcoats, Hessians, or even Continentals, towers in importance — not because of casualty counts or territory gained or lost, but as a test of the basic requirement for ultimate British success. By 1780, the British had basically given up on holding the North. With a negotiated settlement increasingly likely, what mattered now was demonstrating civil and military control of the southern colonies. The British knew that holding two or three coastal cities wasn’t going to cut it. They had to control the backcountry.
Though still insufficiently covered in classrooms, the Battle of Kings Mountain is recognized as the key event in the demonstration of popular southern refusal to submit to Loyalist rule. Even less well-remembered is the smaller Battle of Musgrove’s Mill, without which there may have been no Kings Mountain. It was a little encounter in which just 200 Patriot militiamen faced off against 264 Loyalist regulars and militia. Though small, it sent a strong signal that backcountry Americans simply would not be ruled any longer by a foreign king.

Giving such small battles their due is the purpose of Westholme Publishing’s “Small Battles” series. The Battle of Musgrove’s Mill, 1780 comes from the pen of John Buchanan, the undisputed dean of southern Revolutionary War history. Now in his 90s, Buchanan writes as well as ever. In fewer than a hundred pages, he puts the story in context; explains the British, Tory, Indian, and Patriot perspectives; tells us about the key commanders on both sides; narrates the battle; and tells us why it matters. That is a lot to put into eighty-eight pages of text, but he has done it masterfully.
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A Little Help for Lt. Jacob Parrot

4/5/2023

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Fallen gravestones in a Rockingham County cemetery.
​General Washington approved several judgements of a court martial at Morristown, New Jersey on May 7, 1777. Among the orders: Lt. Jacob Parrot of the 8th Virginia was “to be discharged from the service, and his pay stop’d from the time he left his detachment, until he did duty in his regiment again.” In modern terms, he had been AWOL and was fired for it. Today his broken gravestone sits off to the side of a Rockingham County, Virginia cemetery in a collection of about fifteen stones that have also succumbed to age.
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."
​Jacob’s first Revolutionary service was in the Dunmore Independent Company of volunteers in 1775. In the period before open war, Virginia’s leaders were not yet ready to raise regular troops or engage the militia against the Crown. County committees of safety, however, were encouraged to organize volunteer companies to support the committees’ work and to enforce the Articles of Association. Dunmore County is now Shenandoah County and parts of Page and Warren counties. The Dunmore Independents were called out in April of 1775 to respond to Gov. Lord Dunmore’s seizure of gunpowder from the magazine in Williamsburg, but returned home when word was received of a peaceful resolution.

​When the 8th Virginia was formed early in 1776, Jacob earned a commission as an ensign in Jonathan Clark’s Company. His brother Joseph signed on as a sergeant. George Parrot enlisted as a private soldier. They traveled to Suffolk, Virginia where they countered efforts by slaves, servants, and Tories to aid and reenforce Lord Dunmore ‘floating city’ of soldiers and Tory refugees in Hampton Roads. They were then taken south to oppose the British attack on Sullivan’s Island and then a futile effort to attack St. Augustine, Florida. Malaria took many lives and resulted in the scattering of the 8th Virginia’s men as large numbers of sick men were left behind in various places. The survivors hobbled back to Virginia in the winter, marched to Philadelphia for smallpox inoculations, and then reunited in New Jersey in April and May.
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The grave of Lt. Jacob Parrot has a broke base and has been removed from the ground. The 200-year-old marker appears to have been made by an amateur craftsman and is now barely legible.
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.
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Angled into the light of a low sun, the inscription on Parrot's headstone is legible.
The very first Civil War Medal of Honor recipient was Jacob's namesake and great-great nephew. The later Jacob Parrott (1843-1908) was the grandson of John Parrot, an elder brother of the 8th Virginia veteran. He enlisted as a private in the Union Army from Ohio in 1861 and volunteered to participate in the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862. He was captured but exchanged and awarded the Medal of Honor by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton on March 25, 1863. He was taken to meet President Abraham Lincoln and promoted from private to lieutenant. His exploits were the basis of Buster Keaton's most famous film, "The General," which is named for the train.
Pat Kelly lives on the east side of the Blue Ridge in Albemarle County, about thirty miles south of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and more than an hour southeast of Jacob Parrot’s resting place. He descends from Jacob’s brother John, making him a 7th great-nephew. He grew up in East Tennessee (where his ancestor founded Parrottsville), but moved to Virginia in 1978 when he retired from the Navy. He has several Revolutionary War ancestors and has been researching Henry to see if he also fought in the war. Henry is listed in the Capt. John Tipton's company of  activated Dunmore County Militia during Lord Dunmore’s War (1774), but he was not in the 8th Virginia and further service has not yet been demonstrated.
Pat traveled up to Singer’s Glen to look for Jacob’s grave and to see if he might find Henry’s there too. Neither could be found. Henry may or may not be buried there, but Jacob is definitely there and the absence of his marker was alarming. Of the more than 900 men who served at any time in the 8th Virginia, only 53 have identifiable marked graves. Of those, only twelve to fifteen still have their original headstones. Twelve or fifteen of 900 is a tiny fraction, but Jacob’s can be narrowed down to a category of just two. His and Capt. John Stephenson’s headstones both appear to be “home made” or "primitive" stones. A professionally-cut and engraved gravestone was beyond the economic reach of most veterans' families when they died and the majority of 8th Virginia men may have just had simple wooden crosses or planks to mark the spots where they were lowered into the ground. Though a few were given elegant and expensive markers, an unknown number were likely memorialized with hand-etched or scratched markers of varying quality. The marker put on Jacob Parrot’s grave appears to be a higher-end example of such a marker. Its disappearance would have been a terrible thing.
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Jacob Parrot (1843-1908) was the first Civil War-era recipient of the Medal of Honor.
Fortunately, a search of the cemetery found his marker leaning with more than a dozen others against a concrete riser off to the side of the cemetery and not visible from the other graves. It is severely eroded, but its inscription is intact. It is broken at its base and could not be placed back in the ground in its current state. The stone for Jacob’s wife, Rachel, is still in the ground and is of identical design.
 
Though intact, Jacob’s and Rachel’s inscriptions are too eroded to be easily legible. Only a few letters can be made out in photographs taken of them in 2013. Pouring water on Jacob’s stone made it only slightly more legible. The full inscription therefore seemed to be lost before a trick of nature revealed the full wording. Very carefully turning the stone to obliquely face the light of the late afternoon sun illuminated the edges of the letters and brought them back to almost full visibility.  It reads
TO THE
MEMORY
OF
JACOB PArrIT
Departed this Life
May th[e?] 12 1829 Age[d?]
[7?]2 Years 6 mo 19 d[ays?]
The letters are carefully and somewhat formally executed, the odd mix of capital letters, the variant spelling of "Parrit," the small capital “H” in the second word, and the off-center placement of the fourth and fifth lines indicate that the marker was not made by a professional stone carver. If anything, this makes the memorial even more valuable as a relic of Jacob Parrot’s life. Someone who dearly loved him and his wife appears to have worked the stones to honor them. What at first look like scratches near the top of Jacob’s marker seem on closer inspection to be a decoration of some kind, perhaps a flower.
Yet the stone is broken and removed from his actual grave. I made several recommendations for marking Revolutionary graves in a recent essay. Because they are free, almost all Revolutionary marker replacements are now of the modern, Arlington-style type issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs. I argued that original markers are in most cases the only tangible connection we have with the warriors in the ground, and should be left in place with new markers next to them. 8th Virginia veteran James Kay’s original marker, broken the same way Parrot’s is, was placed flat in the ground next to a new marker earlier this spring. I also argued that the pre-World War I type should be used if a government marker is to be acquired.
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The grave of Rachel Parrot remains firmly placed in the ground.
In Parrot’s case, it may be possible to craft a facsimile of the original stone. Then he and Rachel could continue to have matching stones as they have for two centuries. A repaired original could be reset upright at the correct angle to catch the rays of the late-day sun. Or it could be taken to the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society’s museum. At all costs, it should not disappear into someone’s garage.

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Grave Errors: Erroneous Burial Markings

2/16/2023

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Abraham Hornback was a marksman from Hampshire County picked from the 8th Virginia to serve in Morgan's Rifles. Gravestones have been installed for him in Indiana and Illinois, one of which is obviously in error. He isn't the only one.
Of the roughly nine hundred men who served at some point in the 8th Virginia Regiment in the Revolutionary War, only fifty-two have identified graves. Several of them are marked with wrong information that needs to be corrected. In some cases, the information is dramatically wrong. Sadly, this review of fifty-two grave markers from just one regiment may indicate a significant amount of bad information carved into stone in cemeteries across the eastern half of the United States.

​Leonard Cooper had one leg and he didn’t like to tell people why. When he applied for a veteran’s pension in 1818, he more than bent the truth in saying that he was in “a skirmish” at Paramus Meeting House, New Jersey where he “was wounded and lost his leg.” The truth? He lost his leg in a duel with another officer at Pompton Plains in October 1779. 
Cooper was the lieutenant commandant, or “captain lieutenant,” of Col. John Neville’s company of the 4th Virginia Regiment. This was a new rank for the Continental Army modeled on British practice that resulted from a cost-saving reduction in the number of officers. As the regiment’s senior lieutenant, Cooper led a company nominally under the direct command of the colonel. Perhaps Abraham Kirkpatrick, the man who shot him, thought Cooper was putting on airs.

Whatever his reason, Kirkpatrick was clearly the aggressor. He attacked Cooper with a stick. Cooper apparently had a more peaceful temperament and showed no “disposition to demand satisfaction.” The era’s code of honor, however, required him to make the challenge. His peers could not abide Cooper’s reluctance to stand up for himself and told him that “unless he did, he must leave the Regiment, as they were Determined he should not rank as an Officer.” Cooper reluctantly complied. He and Kirkpatrick faced off with pistols and the hapless lieutenant took a ball of lead to his leg. The limb was amputated and he was transferred to the Corps of Invalids. He was one of the very last men discharged from the army at the end of the war.
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Read More: "Veterans at Rest: Known Graves of the 8th Virginia"

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What Are Unalienable Rights?

1/23/2023

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Religious Liberty and the American Founding
Vincent Phillip Muñoz (University of Chicago Press, 2022)
We are told in the Declaration of Independence that certain rights are “unalienable.” Have you ever wondered what that means? Are other rights “alienable?” Notre Dame’s Professor Vincent Phillip Muñoz, author of Religious Liberty and the American Founding, wants you to ask that question.

​The importance of the First Amendment is universally understood. It is the most-discussed part of the Constitution and the courts have ruled on its meaning many times. 
Professor Muñoz argues persuasively, however, that scholars, lawyers, and judges have all done a consistently sloppy job of seeking to understand what the founders actually meant by the words they used. So much so, in fact, that the original meaning of the Establishment and Free Expression clauses has effectively been lost. The result is that the text has become an ideological Rorschach test. It can be made to mean almost anything. “The consensus that the Founders’ understanding should serve as a guide has produced neither agreement nor coherence in church-state jurisprudence,” Dr. Muñoz writes. “Indeed, it has produced the opposite; it seems that almost any and every church-state judicial position can invoke the Founders’ support.

​Many readers will be surprised to hear that the Founders themselves are largely to blame for this. The language of the First Amendment itself (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”) is not very precise. The reason for this is that “Many, if not most, of the individuals who drafted the First Amendment did not think it was necessary.”[2] Establishment was a state issue and the Federal constitution already banned religious tests in Article VI.[3] It was the Anti-Federalists who insisted on the Bill of Rights, but they were in the minority in the 1st Congress.
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The Stamp Act and Captain Berry

11/14/2022

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An imprecise 19th century map shows Berryville and the Shenandoah River. Buck Marsh Creek ran through Thomas Berry's property.
​When future captain Thomas Berry bid on two lots of Shenandoah Valley land in 1774, it was the end of a sad story that had begun with the Stamp Act a decade before. The seller, George Mercer, had been one of Virginia’s leading citizens. Now he was bankrupt and living in exile.
 
Mercer had served in important civil and military positions, often with George Washington. He was one of Washington’s lieutenants at Fort Necessity, where he was wounded, and commanded the short-lived 2nd Virginia Regiment in the French and Indian War. He was with Washington in the Forbes expedition to take Fort Du Quesne in 1758. In 1761 he and Washington successfully ran together for Frederick County’s two seats in the House of Burgesses.
At the peak of his career, Mercer was selected by the Ohio Company of land speculators to represent their interests in London. The hated 1765 Stamp Act was enacted by Parliament while he was traveling. Not fully aware of sentiments at home, he accepted an appointment as Stamp Master for Virginia. He was overtaken by a mob and forced to resign when he returned to Virginia. Though the cheering crowd carried him out of the capitol in Williamsburg in celebration, Mercer soon left the colony for good.
The financial consequences of his exile eventually resulted in his mortgaging and then remortgaging his properties until he was ruined. He wrote to Washington, his cousin George Mason, and John Tayloe asking them to oversee the sale of his properties for him. The task fell to Washington. A large tract in what is now Clarke County was divided into lots by Francis Peyton and auctioned by Washington in 1774. Benjamin and Thomas Berry were among the bidders. Benjamin, who had more resources, acquired some prime riverfront land. Thomas acquired an inland lot but made up for it with the addition of a 20-acre island lot.
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The auction notice in Purdie & Dixon's Virginia Gazette.
​Less than two years later, the Frederick Committee of Safety chose Thomas to lead a new company of Provincial soldiers, which was then assigned to the 8th Virginia Regiment. He continued to lead his men until their enlistments expired at Valley Forge in April of 1778 and then returned home to lead what appears to have been a quiet life. He died in 1818.
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A sketch of the George Mercer plat made by Ingrid Jewell Jones in 1974 based on county records. Thomas Berry purchased lot 10 and the 20 acre island in the river. (Clarke County Historical Assn.)
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A satellite image shows the clear outline of lot 10. Note especially it's V-shaped bottom. Berry's island appears to have grown considerably over 250 years.
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"

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    Gabriel Neville

    is researching the history of the Revolutionary War's 8th Virginia Regiment. Its ten companies formed near the frontier, from the Cumberland Gap to Pittsburgh.

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