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GOOD NEWS: As reported in the comment below by Gary Tunget, the Findagrave.com images that formed the basis for this post were are inaccurate. "The Muhlenburg County History group visited the Craig Cemetery This afternoon March 27th with the property owners and two members of the SAR the photo above is not the Craig Cemetery Capt. Craig's grave stone is still standing. and not trampled by cattle . The group is going to clean the cemetery and fence the property and afterwards the Local DAR and SAR will host a Patriot Grave marking ceremony." Apologies are due, particularly to the property owner, for repeating bad information. The Findagrave.com page appears to have been corrected. --Gabe Neville
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A 2015 photograph shows the Craig Cemetery in deplorable condition. (Jon Craig, Find-a-Grave)

​James Craig deserves better. He was a Continental officer who signed on early for the Revolutionary cause and took part in its first major victory. Despite this important service to his country his grave site is now a shambles.
 
Even before there were any Virginia Continental regiments, Craig signed on to help lead one of the Old Dominion’s independent frontier companies. He was a lieutenant under Capt. William Russell in a company that ranged the southwest Virginia frontier from 1775 to 1776. In 1776 he joined Capt. James Knox in forming a Fincastle County company assigned to the 8th Virginia Regiment. After a year serving in the south, he and Knox were selected to lead a company in Daniel Morgan’s elite rifle battalion. With Morgan and Knox, he played a key role in the defeat of Gen. John Burgoyne at Saratoga—the first major American victory and the event that persuaded the French to openly support the cause.
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An undated image, evidently clipped from a newspaper, shows Craig's headstone upright and intact. (Liz Gossett, Find-a-Grave)

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Craig is listed on a state historical marker in front of the Muhlenberg County court house. Josiah Arnold is also an 8th Va. veteran. (E. C. Russell Chapter, DAR)

After the war Craig settled in Kentucky like thousands of other veterans. He was appointed by the Commonwealth to be one of the first justices of Muhlenberg County, when it was created in 1799. The county, of course, was named in honor of Peter Muhlenberg, under whom Craig had served in the war.
Though never famous on the national stage, Craig led a consequential and locally important life. He died in 1816 at the age of 81 after marrying twice and having many children. He is buried in Craig Cemetery in Rosewood, a rural Muhlenberg County community about forty miles west of Bowling Green. According to a Find-a-Grave page maintained by Liz Gossett, Craig’s headstone is in “very bad shape.” The featured image of it appears to be an old one taken from a newspaper. Three pictures of the Cemetery show a progressive decline. The first image, said to be from the late 19th century, shows a tidy, well-kept site. The second, from 2004, shows fallen headstones interspersed with clumps of weeds. A third photo (the first one shown above) shows cattle roaming among the fallen markers, the dirt churned up by their hooves.
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An old photograph shows the cemetery in good condition. It was maintained by Luther Craig until he died in 1960. (Courtesy Liz Gossett, Find-a-Grave)

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A 2004 photograph shows fallen headstones and unrestrained weeds, 44 years after maintenance ceased. (Liz Gossett, Find-a-Grave)

Ms. Gossett indicates that the cemetery was maintained by descendant Luther Craig until his death in 1960 and has since been abandoned. Someone—the DAR, the SAR, the property owner, or descendants—should restore this cemetery and see to it that James Craig and those buried around him can rest with the dignity they deserve.

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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.
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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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When the American Revolution began, the Virginia Colony faced not one military-territorial contest, but four. Its ousted Royal governor, Lord Dunmore, was in the Chesapeake actively plotting a forcible return to power. A longstanding dispute with Pennsylvania over the headwaters of the Ohio had turned violent. A formal peace with the Shawnee on the northwest frontier was still pending after Col. Andrew Lewis’s October 1774 victory at Point Pleasant. A new war was brewing with the Cherokee to the southwest. Virginia’s early military preparations had to account for all of these threats.

​In July 1775, Virginia created two full-time provincial regiments and a network of regional minute battalions to supplement the militia system. Seven more regiments were authorized in December. These regiments were intended for service in the east opposing the Crown and were taken into the Continental Army in 1776.
The pre-history of Virginia's
​8th, 12th, and 13th regiments.
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Vast Fincastle County covered what are now southwest Virginia, southern West Virginia, and all of Kentucky. It was protected by Capt. William Russell’s company. (Author)

Largely forgotten are the colony’s independent provincial companies that were created at the same time to handle the western threats. They are often misidentified as militia and are glossed over in most histories, which reflects their short existence and the limited information in the surviving record. Just three of the companies are listed in E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra’s A Guide to Virginia Military Organizations in the American Revolution, 1774-1783. Another standard reference, Robert K. Wright’s The Continental Army, correctly notes that there were actually five original companies but provides little additional detail.
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The frontier companies formed in 1775 were posted along the Ohio River at Fort Pitt, Fort Henry, and Fort Randolph and where needed in Fincastle County.

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Anatomy of a Massacre: The Destruction Gnadenhutten, 1782
Eric Sterner (Yardley, Pa: Westholme, 2020)
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In his first book, Anatomy of a Massacre: The Destruction of Gnadenhutten, 1782, Eric Sterner has taken on a difficult subject. Racial violence is something many writers would shy away from while others might delight in the chance to condemn the perpetrators. Mr. Sterner, laudably, does neither. Instead, he seeks to understand what happened.
​
It is worth noting that the first known massacre of Indians by white men in what is now the United States occurred long before the events in the book. It happened near Jamestown, Virginia in 1610 when Virginia’s governor, Thomas West, 3rd Baron de la Warr, ordered an attack on the Paspahegh Band of Powhatans. Seventy men attacked the village, killing between 65 and 75 Paspaheghs and kidnapping the village leader’s wife and children. Rowing away, the colonists decided to kill the children, “w[hi]ch was effected by Throweinge them overboard and shoteinge owtt their Braynes in the water.” Three centuries of violence ensued.
Lord de la Warr’s name appears frequently in Mr. Sterner’s story. His name was given to the Delaware River, which in turn lent its name to the Lenape people who have long been known to English speakers as the Delaware Tribe. Mr. Sterner has provided the definitive account of the worst atrocity of the Revolutionary War. In 1782 more than eighty white settlers clubbed, killed, and scalped ninety-six peaceful, Christian Indians as they prayed and sang hymns. The attack on the Moravian mission town of Gnadenhutten (Ohio) was intended as both a punitive and preemptive strike, conducted by settlers whose families and farms had been targeted by other Indians acting as proxies of the British. It is a horrific story that has defied understanding until now.

​...continue to Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

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A sign for store windows printed before the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968. (Library of Congress)

Are we really celebrating Millard Fillmore and Warren Harding today? Not according to federal law. Today’s national holiday is “George Washington’s Birthday.”  That’s the simple answer. The full answer is complicated: It’s not actually his birthday today. The holiday actually never falls on Washington’s real birthday. Moreover, we use a different calendar today than we did when he was born. Yet another complication is that in several states it is also “Presidents’ Day.” ​
Washington was born on February 11, 1731…under the Julian Calendar. This was the old calendar established under Julius Caesar. Pope Gregory moved the Catholic world to a more accurate calendar in 1582, but Protestant England, under Queen Elizabeth, wasn’t bound by the change. Leap year differences put Britain and the America colonies eleven days behind the rest of the western world. Moreover, New Year’s Day was March 25 under the old calendar, not January 1. Consequently, when the British Empire finally changed to the Gregorian Calendar in 1752, Washington’s birthday changed from February 11, 1731 to February 22, 1732. Both dates are correct, but the proper way to note the Julian date is “February 11, 1731 (O.S.).” The abbreviation stand for “old style.”

Washington’s Birthday was declared a holiday by Congress in 1879. Many people don’t realize that Congress has no authority to declare holidays (days off) for anyone other than federal employees and residents of the District of Columbia. States, however, followed the federal government’s lead and Washington’s Birthday was celebrated for decades on February 22. Abraham Lincoln’s birthday was never a federal holiday, but was celebrated by many states on February 12—just ten days before Washington’s birthday. In the 1950s, there was an effort to establish a third holiday, President’s Day, to honor “the office of the presidency” on March 4 – the original day of quadrennial inaugurations. Though some states adopted the new holiday, Congress declined to in the belief that three holidays in rapid succession were too many.
In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, guaranteeing three-day weekends for Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day. A proposal to also replace Washington’s Birthday with a generic “President’s Day” was specifically rejected. However, because the holiday was set to be celebrated on the third Monday in February, it was guaranteed to always fall between Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays yet never on either. This invited use of the generic term “President’s Day (with the apostrophe sometimes after the “s.”) Advertisers are usually blamed for popularizing the term.

Though the federal holiday is Washington’s Birthday, it is state law that determines days off for most Americans.  Only seven states celebrate Washington alone on the third Monday in February. Virginia calls it “George Washington Day.”Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Louisiana, and New York call it “Washington’s Birthday.” Twenty-two states celebrate “President’s Day” (with varying punctuation). The rest of the states name the holiday after Washington and someone else, most often Lincoln, but also Jefferson (Alabama), civil rights activist Daisy Bates (Arkansas), and all presidents (Maine and Arizona).
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The grave of 8th Virginia captain and major Jonathan Clark indicates that he was born under the Julian calendar. (author)

Under our present Constitution, the United States has had forty-five presidents. Some have been great and some have not. Reputations have waxed and waned as attitudes change and new biographies are written. Celebrating “President’s Day” seems to make no more sense that celebrating “Congress Day” or “Supreme Court Day.” In the fact, the notion of a “President’s Day” has vaguely monarchist overtones. Surely, we can all think of several presidents who don’t deserve the honor. Washington, however, stands high above the rest. He is rightly known as the father of the country. He effectuated a great break with the past, establishing durable and free government in part by repeatedly declining to cling to power. Only one other president rivals his claim to greatness.
 
Holidays have always been the subject of civic activism. Veterans Day was moved back to November 11 in 1975 to align with the World War I armistice. Columbus Day has been replaced by “Indigenous People’s Day” in Florida, Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont, South Dakota, New Mexico, and Maine. If you live in a place (such as, believe it or not, Washington State) that celebrates “President’s Day,” you might want to call your state legislator and point out that Chester Arthur doesn’t belong on the same holiday stage as George Washington.

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To the End of the World: Nathanael Green, Charles Cornwallis and the Race to the Dan
Andrew Waters (Yardley, Pa: Westholme, 2020)
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“In a place like Salisbury,” writes Andrew Waters of the North Carolina town that witnessed the 1781 Race to the Dan, “you can live among its ghosts and still not know it’s there.” Enthusiasts know that this is true of many Revolutionary War sites, including some of real importance. Mr. Waters complains in his book To the End of the World: Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dan of the simplified understanding most Americans have of the Revolutionary War. “For most of us, the story of the American Revolution is of George Washington and the minutemen, Valley Forge and Yorktown.” In our Cliffs Notes version of history, many places, heroes, and even whole campaigns are left out.

Like most of the war in the south, the Race to the Dan is overshadowed by Yorktown. The mere fact that George Washington was not a participant relegates the story to a second-tier status. The Race, however, holds unique challenges for the historian and the storyteller. It occurred over more than two hundred miles, depending on how you count it, rather than at one identifiable spot. Nathanael Greene’s genius is to be found in his mastery of logistics and strategy, which are subjects that make many people’s eyes glaze over. Though heroic and difficult, it was still a retreat and retreats don’t lend themselves to celebration. Its significance is not so much in what it achieved but rather in what it made possible, which requires detailed explanation.

Consequently, the Race to the Dan has been given short shrift for more than two centuries. It is mentioned in the war’s histories, but almost never in detail. In writing this book, Mr. Waters was determined to correct that and he has succeeded. One can’t resist noting the appropriateness his name: the waterways of the Carolinas play a central role in the story. He makes plain from the beginning that the story is personal to him. He is a conservationist and doctoral candidate in South Carolina who has made a career of conserving the Palmetto State’s watersheds. “Rivers are my business,” he says at the very beginning of the book. He also plainly declares, “We all need heroes, and . . . Greene has become one of mine.”

...Continue to The Journal of the American Revolution.

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Death came often for the soldiers of the 8th Virginia. Some died in battle, but most often it came in the form of diseases that were still poorly understood and for which there were no cures. Malaria was the number-one killer. All told, 121 8th Virginia soldiers are known to have died while in service--a number almost equal to two entire companies. The real number is higher than that. 
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The cemetery in Sunbury, Georgia. The 8th Virginia was overwhelmed by malaria in the summer of 1776 and a great many of them died here. There are no markers or monuments for them. (Author)

There is no roster of Capt. John Stephenson's company, so we have no way of knowing who most of those men were or what happened to them. Fifteen men were left behind in the Carolinas, too sick to return home. Another seventy were discharged early or dropped from the rolls, usually for unspecified reasons.  What percentage of these men died is unknowable, though we know the most senior of them was Maj. Peter Helphenstine. Three men were listed as missing. Thirty men were captured by the enemy, mostly at Germantown. Though some survived and some even escaped, we know that others died in miserable British prisons. At least one man died of smallpox, possibly induced by inoculation.

The 8th Virginia saw hard service. It is hard to imagine that the mostly young men who first signed up in the winter of 1775-1776 had any idea what was really in store for them. All of the numbers above add up to about 240 men. Another 90 deserted--many of them when the still technically Provincial regiment was taken out of the province by Maj. Gen. Charles Lee in May of 1776. When the terms of the regiment's original two-year men neared their ends as the snow melted at Valley Forge there were only about fifty of them left. Heroes to be sure. Like all war survivors, though, they would no doubt have ascribed greater heroism to their fallen comrades.

Listed below are the names of the 121 men known to have died while in service.
Casualty Statistics
Because new enlistees came on board at various times during the regiment's existence, calculating precise casualty statistics is complicated. Nearly all (but not all) of the events connected with data below occurred during the 2-year original enlistment period. There are no records for Capt. John Stephenson's one-year company. Captain Knox's company was not fully recruited. Percentages are based on nine theoretically full companies and assume all men are original enlistees. Percentages should therefore be taken as estimates and may be refined in the future.

1% wounded/discharged (6)
5% captured (35)
14% deserted (85)
20% died (120)
21.5% sick/discharged early (132)
48% casualty rate (no desertions)
62% total attrition rate

Capt. Thomas Berry's Company:
 
1st Lieut. John Jolliffe, April 6, 1777
Ens. William Mead, Nov. 20, 1776
Sgt. Reese Bowen, Sept. 6, 1776
Pvt. William Buckley, Sept. 16, 1776
Pvt. Hugh Burns, Oct. 21, 1776
Pvt. Jesse Chamblin, Oct. 31, 1776
Pvt. Peter Fletcher, Nov. 10, 1776
Pvt. Thomas Hankins, Nov. 29, 1776
Pvt. Joseph Hickman, May 18, 1777
Pvt. Luke Hines, Nov. 10, 1776
Pvt. Dennis Kingore, Sept. 8, 1776
Pvt. Neil McDade, Nov. 25, 1776
Pvt. Thomas McVay, Oct. 1, 1776
Pvt. Louis Routt, Nov. 10, 1776
Pvt. Garett Trotter, Oct. 19, 1776
Pvt. Peter Vandevourt, Dec. 31, 1776
 
Capt. Richard Campbell's Company:
 
Lt. Col. Richard Campbell, Sept. 8, 1781 (Eutaw Springs)
Sgt. John Bowman, Aug. 19, 1779
Pvt. William Davis, Sept. or Oct., 1777 (Brandywine or Germantown)
Pvt. Frederick Long, Sept. or Oct., 1777 (Brandywine or Germantown)
 
Capt. Jonathan Clark's Company
 
Sgt. Maj. John Hoy, Dec. 3, 1776
Sgt. George Parrott, Nov. 6, 1776
Sgt. Humphrey Price, Nov. 24, 1776
Cpl. William Brown, March 30, 1777
Cpl. Mathew Toomey, Dec. 20, 1776
Pvt. Nicholas Bowder, June 13, 1776
Pvt. Nathan Brittain, Oct 17, 1776
Pvt. Thomas Brittain, Sept. 29, 1776
Pvt. Isaac Dent, Nov. 3, 1776
Pvt. Mathias Funk, Dec. 20, 1776
Pvt. Martin Honey, Sept. 20, 1776
Pvt. John Maxwell, Dec. 25, 1776
Pvt. Henry Moore, Sept. or Oct., 1777 (Brandywine or Germantown)
Pvt. Isaac Pemberton, Jan. 12, 1778
Pvt. Meredith Price, Jan. 3, 1777
Pvt. Simon Siron, unknown date (left in Georgia)
Pvt. Michael Wall, unknown date (before June 13, 1777)
Pt. Walter Warner, Oct. 4, 1776
 
Capt. William Croghan's Company
 
Sgt. John McDoran, Jan. 30, 1777
Cpl. Michael Kelly, Sept. 11, 1777 (Brandywine)
Cpl. William Penny, before May 18, 1777
Cpl. James Tucker, Dec. 27, 1776
Drummer Francis Prush, before May 18, 1777
Fifer Gabriel Christy, before April 1777
Pvt. John Brock, March 18 or 25, 1776
Pvt. John Brown, before April 1777
Pvt. William Cochran, before April 1777
Pvt. Robert Cochran, Sept. 1776
Pvt. Philip Cole, Jan. 30, 1777
Pvt. John Donnally, April 14, 1777
Pvt. Nicholas Doran, April 13, 1777
Pvt. William Gaddis March 15, 1777
Pvt. Patrick Garry, Nov. 11, 1776
Pvt. Joseph Gonsley, Feb. 1777
Pvt. William Goodman, before April 1777
Pvt. James Gorwin, Feb. 8, 1777
Pvt. Patrick Hall, ca. Jan. 1, 1777
Pvt. David Hanson, before April 1777
Pvt. Lewis Henry, Nov. 1776
Pvt. John Hinds, Aug. 14, 1776
Pvt. Nathaniel Hosier, before April 1777
Pvt. John James, ca. March 1, 1777
Pvt. Jesse Job, before April 1777
Pvt. Able Levesque, March 17, 1777
Pvt. George Martin, Feb. 1777
Pvt. Michael Martin, Feb. 1777
Pvt. Moses Martin, Feb. 1777
Pvt. Thomas Owens, Sept. 11, 1777 (Brandywine)
Pvt. Thomas Ryan, before May 18, 1777
Pvt. Henry Saltsman, Oct. 4, 1777 (Germantown)
Pvt. James Smyth, Oct. 19, 1776
Pvt. John Tuck, before April 1777
Pvt. Daniel Viers, March 3, 1777
 
Capt. William Darke's Company
 
Pvt. Daniel Cameron, Jan. 15, 1777
Pvt. WilliamEngle, ca. March 1776
Pvt. Jonathan Herrin, Dec. 1776
Pvt. Jeremiah Humphreys, Oct. 27, 1776
Pvt. George Ketcher, Oct. 24, 1776
Pvt. William Pingle, Dec. 1, 1776
Pvt. John Polson, Oct. 26, 1776
Pvt. George Pritty, Dec. 1, 1776
Pvt. George Smith, Oct. 11, 1776
Pvt. Samuel Watson, Dec. 8, 1776
 
Captain Robert Higgins' Company

Pvt. Zachariah DeLong, Feb. 1778 (POW)

Capt. James Knox's Company
 
Pvt. James Carr, Nov. 20, 1776
Pvt. Charles Carter, Dec. 24, 1776
Pvt. John Vance, Sept. 16, 1776
Pvt. Henry Wallis, Dec. 1776
Pvt. John Wilson, Nov. 8, 1776
 
Capt. George Slaughter's Company
 
Lt. Philip Huffman, March 15, 1781 (Guilford Courthouse)
Sgt. James Newman, in Georgia, 1776
Cpl. Barnett McGinnis, Nov. 25, 1776
Cpl. Cornelius Mershon, Aug 4, 1776
Fifer Henry Clatterbuck, July or Aug. 1776
Pvt. Thomas Abbett, before Feb. 3, 1777
Pvt. William Abbett, before Feb. 3, 1777
Pvt. Edward Abbott, Oct. 19, 1776
Pvt. John Abbott, Oct. 29, 1776
Pvt. William Cabbage, Nov. 24, 1776
Pvt. William Corbin, Dec. 10, 1776
Pvt. Abraham Field, Aug. 6, 1776
Pvt. Bozel Freeman, Nov. 15, 1776
Pvt. Reuben Hollaway, Aug. 3, 1776
Pvt. Utey Jackson, Aug. 20, 1776
Pvt. John Jinkins, Jan. 13 or 15, 1777
Pvt. Joseph Jones, May 6, 1777
Pvt. Edward Kennedy, Dec. 3, 1776
Pvt. Thomas Newman, in Georgia, 1776
 
Captain David Stephenson

No fatalities recorded.

Captain John Stephenson

No data available.

Capt. Abel Westfall's Company
 
Fifer Patrick Callihan, Sept. 25, 1776
Pvt. Joseph Edwards, June 13, 1776
Pvt. James Galloway, Jan. 1777
Pvt. John Haggen, March 15, 1778
Pvt. John Huff, Sept. 15, 1776
Pvt. Moses Johns, May 20, 1778
Pvt. William Kynets, Sept. 26, 1776
Pvt. Hugh Lewis, Oct. 16, 1776
Pvt. William McCormick, Dec. 28, 1776
Pvt. Zachariah Pigman, Feb. 1778 (POW)
Pvt. Philip Sanders, March 9, 1777

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The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution
Edward G. Lengel, ed. (Washington, D.C: Regnery, 2020)
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Edward Lengel begins this book with a remarkable claim. He writes, “The American War for Independence remains—now, nearly 250 years since its onset—a relatively new field of study.” This will initially strike many readers as a wild assertion. How can this be true when, by one estimate, nine hundred books have been written about George Washington alone? Lengel explains, simply, that “Shocking as it may seem, many of the war’s campaigns and battles have become the subjects of book-length treatments only over the past several years.”

This is indisputably true. In important ways, recent books have also corrected and clarified our understanding of even the most famous campaigns, events, and personalities. It seems that historians were, for a long time, more interested in critiquing and analyzing the Founding Era than in nailing down the Revolution’s actual course of its events. 
Several histories have appeared in this century that have broken significant new ground in this regard. In The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution, Lengel pulls together a Dream Team of these writers to provide a fresh, top-level overview of the war. Each of the ten authors takes a chapter, providing an authoritative and readable account of a campaign.

​For those already steeped in the subject matter, the book offers an opportunity to step back from the trees and look again at the forest. For those who are new to the military history of the founding era, it is an excellent primer. Best of all, it is a book filled with good stories. Who doesn’t love the drama of the Ten Crucial Days and King’s Mountain? Admittedly, there is something odd about writers who know so much about their subjects writing so briefly on them. How on Earth, one must ask, did Michael Harris manage to tell the story of Brandywine and Germantown in a mere eighteen pages? Yet, each of them does it quite well: providing very readable narratives that feature new or recent insights and well-colored characters. Some of the contributors ask and answer difficult questions. Washington and Lafayette, two of the war’s great heroes, are brought down a peg. History has been kinder to Benedict Arnold for some time. Now Charles Lee and Philip Schuyler are also given more sympathetic treatments.

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Patrick Henry was a proponent of religious freedom in Virginia, but also proposed state support for churches.

The soldiers of the 8th Virginia regiment included Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, Reformed, Presbyterians, Baptists. Lieutenant Isaac Israel was probably Jewish. They helped turn Virginia from a religiously intolerant colony with an official, established church into a state that was at the vanguard of establishing religious freedom in America.
 
The Church of England was deeply integrated into the government and society of colonial Virginia. Property owners paid taxes to support it, and it performed important functions like recording vital statistics and caring for orphans. Non-Anglicans had to pay for marriage licenses, but county clerks were under no obligation to record their marriages.  Dissenting churches were not welcome and their clergy were sometimes imprisoned or physically assaulted. 
The Old Dominion’s most influential colonial governor, William Berkeley (1642-1652 and 1660-1677) was “bitterly hostile” to religious nonconformists, especially Puritans and Quakers. A law was enacted under his leadership to “preserve the Established Church’s Unity and purity of doctrine” by punishing any dissenting minister who attempted to preach in Virginia. During the reign of William and Mary, the Toleration Act of 1688 allowed non-Catholic ministers to preach under certain conditions, a change that applied to Virginia. When the Revolution broke out nearly a century later, however, religious dissenters in the colony still hadn’t gained much beyond being tolerated. ​
On the western side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, however, things were different. Unlike the tidewater and piedmont areas of Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley was largely settled by German and Anglo- or Scotch-Irish immigrants who came inland on the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania. This brought Presbyterian, Lutheran, German Reformed, Quaker, Baptist, and Mennonite congregations into the colony. Collectively they made a regional majority, but their members still had to tithe to the English church, couldn’t hold public office, and had to build their churches in the countryside or on the edge of town.

The government in Williamsburg allowed these dissenters to settle the Shenandoah Valley because they wanted to create a buffer between the older areas of Virginia and the dangers that existed in the wilderness: the Indians and the French. By the time the Revolution began, the valley was well-settled but culturally distinct from the areas east of the Blue Ridge.
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Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia (1642-1652, 1660-1677).

The selection of Peter Muhlenberg as colonel of the 8th Virginia was clearly an effort to gain the support of the valley’s Germans for the cause. So too was the selection of Abraham Bowman for lieutenant colonel: he was the grandson of Jost Hite, who had led one of the first groups of German settlers to Virginia from Pennsylvania. Major Peter Helphenstine, the oldest but most junior of the three field officers, had immigrated to the valley from Germany as an adult. As residents of Woodstock, Strasburg, and Winchester, respectively, the three men also covered the geography of the heavily German lower (northern) Shenandoah Valley. Settlers in the upper (southern) Shenandoah Valley; the New and Holston river valleys of southwest Virginia; and the region around Fort Pitt in what is now southwestern Pennsylvania were also recruited for the regiment. Scotch-Irish Presbyterians predominated in these areas and were, at least by reputation, already willing to fight.
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Patrick Henry's 1775 resolution. (Library of Congress)

For the first time, Virginia’s coastal elite needed to proactively accommodate and attract the Old Dominion’s western settlers. These western Virginians were typically good marksmen and many of them were experienced warriors with fresh experience from Lord Dunmore’s 1774 war against the Shawnee. The creation of a “German” regiment (which was probably about half Scotch-Irish) was only one way that the revolutionary Virginia Convention accommodated and wooed the colony’s religious minorities.
On August 16, 1775, several months before the 8th Virginia was authorized, the Third Virginia Convention adopted a resolution offered by Patrick Henry to grant the Baptists’ request to have their own military chaplains and excuse Baptist soldiers from attending Anglican services. The following summer, while the 8th was serving in the Carolinas, the Fifth Virginia Convention adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights. This precursor to both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights proclaimed that “all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.”
It would take some time for Virginia’s actions and practices to match the Convention’s words. That fall, ten thousand Virginians signed a petition circulated by the Baptists requesting religious equality and the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Virginia. The document was 125 pages long, sewn together, and joined with wax seals.
 
Virginia was not alone in the colonial period in practicing religious (or religiously-based) discrimination. Massachusetts in the 1600s was a virtual theocracy. Four people on three occasions were hanged to death for being Quakers. Many others were flogged and expelled from the colony. Conversely, in Pennsylvania (which had no established church), the Quaker Party—a political faction—clung to power until the Revolution by refusing to create new legislative districts in the colony’s growing western regions. ​

North Carolina and Maryland were the first to disestablish the Church of England, both in 1776. However, Virginia suspended tithes for support of the church the same year and was at the forefront of articulating the importance of religious freedom during and after the Revolution. 
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A signature page from the Ten Thousand Name Petition. (Library of Congress)

The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted in 1777 by Thomas Jefferson and enacted into law in 1786, formally disestablishing the Church of England (known thereafter as the Episcopal Church). Massachusetts was the last state to disestablish its state church, a predecessor of today’s United Church of Christ, in 1833.
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
[Drafted 1777, Enacted 1786]
 
Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;
 
That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,

That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;
 
That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions, which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;
 
That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;
 
That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry,
 
That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right,
 
That it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it;
 
That though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;
 
That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;
 
That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;
 
And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:
 
Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

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General Peter Muhlenberg: A Virginia Officer of the Continental Line
by Michael Cecere (Yardley, Pa: Westholme, 2020)
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“The General, mounted upon a white horse, tall and commanding in his figure, was very conspicuous at the head of his men…many of the [enemy] soldiers (German enlistments being for life,) remembered their former comrade, and the cry ran along their astonished ranks, ‘Heir kommt teufel Piet!’”
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This tale about Gen. Peter Muhlenberg at Brandywine appears in the 1849 biography written by his great nephew (and congressman) Henry Augustus Muhlenberg. “Here comes Devil Pete!” was shouted by members of a German dragoon company to which the writer says Muhlenberg had belonged as a young man. The story is nonsense, and just one example of why Michael Cecere’s new biography of the general is desperately needed.

Peter Muhlenberg was a Pennsylvania-born German who was the son of the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America.
He is best-known as the rector of a Shenandoah Valley (Anglican) parish and colonel of the 8th Virginia Regiment, which was raised on the frontier and initially intended to be a “German” regiment. The famous but poorly-documented farewell sermon he delivered in Woodstock, Virginia, in the spring of 1776 has been the subject of epic poetry and modern political debate. After a tour of the southern theater under Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, he was made a brigadier general. His brigade of Virginians was in Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene’s division at Brandywine and Germantown. He was at Monmouth and remained in the army to the end of the war. He played an important role in the Virginia campaign leading up to Yorktown.

​...continue to The Journal of the American Revolution.

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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.

© 2015-2025 Gabriel Neville