Virginia's Independent Frontier Companies, Part Two: 1776-1778

Fort Randolph, named for Virginia’s Edmund Randolph, guarded the confluence of the Great Kanawha and Ohio rivers at Point Pleasant. (Wikimedia Commons)

The little-remembered Western Front of the Revolutionary War

The Fifth Virginia Convention convened in Williamsburg in May 1776 with a weighty agenda before it. The 169-year-old colony declared its independence from Britain and proposed that Congress do the same. It adopted a new constitution and a Declaration of Rights that would immediately be the model for the Declaration of Independence and later provide the foundation for the Bill of Rights. Patrick Henry became the Commonwealth of Virginia’s first governor.

The Old Dominion’s leaders remained anxious about the frontier as Indian tensions persisted. John Connolly, once the leading political and military figure at Fort Pitt, had been exposed as a scheming Loyalist. The dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania faded when the two states’ Congressional delegations sent a joint letter to local leaders urging that “for the defence of the liberties of America” the territorial dispute be put on hold. Among the signers were Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. The appeal was heeded, though imperfectly.

Since the 1775 independent companies’ one-year enlistments were coming to an end in September, the Convention ordered (in language indicative of the transition of government) that “four hundred men be employed for the defense of the north and north-western frontiers . . . two hundred at Point Pleasant, fifty at the mouth of Little Kanawha, fifty at the mouth of Wheeling, and one hundred at Fort Pitt, for so long as the committee of safety, or others having the executive powers of government during the recess of the legislature, shall judge them necessary.” The five new companies formed in the fall. Before long they were reassigned to Continental service, but not everyone was willing to go.

...click here to read part one of this series.

The frontier companies formed in 1776 were ordered to guard the Ohio River at Fort Pitt, Fort Henry, and Fort Randolph and the mouth of the Little Kanawha River.

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