The Culpepper Minutemen

By Bob Gariano

In 1745 Philip Clayton came to the beautiful rolling hills between the Rappahannock River to the north and the Rapidan River to the south in the Virginia Colony. The country backs up to the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west. Situated in the rolling hills of Piedmont Virginia, the country was and still is wild and beautiful. Its moderate climate and good rainfall along with fertile soil made the county a garden for settlers who were willing to tame the frontier.

The land was originally called Culpepper after Lord Thomas Culpepper, who had been the colonial governor of Virginia from 1680 until 1683. The land that King Charles had never seen with his own eyes included five million acres in the Virginia Colony. He made the royal grant to Culpepper in 1649.

Lord Thomas Culpepper came to the new world a decade later to become lord over his lands. But it was not until 1670 that the first Europeans began to explore the Piedmont. The Virginia Governor at that time was William Berkley and he sent a team of explorers under the command of German physician, John Lederer, to map the region.

Based on these maps, in 1714 a small band of tough German immigrants established a settlement at the confluence of the Rapidan and the Rappahannock. Their community became the small village of Germantown, Virginia. Only fifteen miles west of the Potomac, the town was still considered to be a rough frontier outpost in those days.

Lord Thomas Culpepper had a single child, a daughter, Catherine, who would later marry Lord Thomas Fairfax. Her inherited lands came to be owned by the Fairfax family. These lands included the five million Culpepper acres that backed up all the way to the Appalachian Mountains to the west.

Lord Fairfax’s Virginia estate would later be confiscated by the colonists when the Revolutionary War began.

George Washington knew this idyllic area well. When George was 16 years old, Lord Fairfax engaged him to survey much of the land that made up the estate. It was Washington’s first real job. Based on his experience and his thorough work on that first project, in 1749 Washington was commissioned by the College of William and Mary to survey the entire county of Culpepper.

In spite of these apparently civilized beginnings, the town of Fairfax and the county of Culpepper were on the wild edge of the colony’s frontier. When Philip Clayton arrived he had to clear the acres he purchased for himself. Using the felled trees, he built a small lean to provide some shelter from the chilly damp Virginia hill country winter. When his home spun cloth garments worn out, Clayton soon resorted to wearing deerskin clothes. His food was game that he shot and berries that he found on the slopes of the mountains. His attire and diet slowly began to resemble the Tegninateo Indians that the Europeans had chased away from the land a decade earlier.

Clayton brought a reminder of his more comfortable life in the east when he settled on his land in Culpepper county. The catalpa tree that he brought from the tidewater area was no more than four feet tall when he planted it near his cabin. Clayton was not sure that the little tree would survive but it slowly took root and began to flourish, just like Clayton himself. Soon, the catalpa tree began to bloom each spring and its showy flowers and large leaves attracted a myriad of birds and smaller mammals. These local creatures became Clayton’s companions as his farm blossomed and grew. Clayton named his farm the Catalpa Estate.

Soon, the brawny farmer had another companion. In 1755 he met young Ann Coleman at a town meeting and was quickly smitten. Ann’s brother was Robert Coleman another frontier settler who had sold the town their property. It was on this small plot of land that the town’s first streets were laid out and where the municipality built their first modest courthouse. The town of Fairfax was established in 1759 and named as the Culpepper County seat. By that time Clayton had married the beautiful young Ann. When the town set up their first local government with five trustees, Clayton was unanimously elected to be one of the five trustees.

By July 1775 the primitive and idyllic life on the Virginia frontier was changing. The peaceful and pastoral life that Clayton had imaged was changing all about him. The British government in London felt that it was time to bring discipline and order to their colonists in North America. The colonists would have none of it. The colonists’ firey rhetoric of independence soon boiled over into armed insurrection.

On July 17, 1776 150 Virginia frontiersmen gathered under an ancient oak in Clayton’s field on his Catalpa estate near what is today the town of Culpepper’s Yowell Meadow Park. They talked about the confrontations at Concord and Lexington in the Massachusetts Bay colony. The Virginia volunteers called themselves the Culpepper Minutemen, so named because they were ready to fight at a minute’s notice. What they lacked in proper uniforms and military training they made up for in determination and marksmanship.

They adopted a singular banner with the words Don’t Tread on Me and Liberty or Death written around a coiled rattle snake on a white linen field. Colonists in the tidewater did not know about rattlesnakes, those deadly woodland serpents who lived in the Appalachians. But the frontiersmen knew the creatures well enough. The Culpepper Minutemen, like their mascot, were ready for a fight. It came soon enough.

In October, General Washington asked the Culpepper Minutemen to march 150 miles east to meet a group of British troops who were attempting to land at Hampton, Virginia. The frontiersmen got to the tidewater first and quickly dug themselves into the sandy beach.

When first British ships advanced towards the landing zone and prepared to unload their troops onto landing boats, the frontiersmen took careful aim and ravaged the troops and the crew men with deadly musket fire. After years of practice hunting game in the wilderness, these human targets were easy prey. When the British gun crews began to ready their cannons to bombard the beach, the minutemen carefully picked off the gunners on the decks of the warships. The British relented and sailed away to find a less contested place to land their troops. Word of the Culpepper Minutemen’s marksmanship spread through both colonist and British ranks.

The Minutemen returned home but only until called again to return to Norfolk to help fight another British advance. This time the battle was more vicious and determined. Lord Dunsmore, the newly appointed British governor of Virginia, was determined that Virginia would not be a push over to the rebels. Dunsmore had seen the rebels disrupt trade and scare the British authorities in Massachusetts. Dunsmore was ready to teach the rebel Minutemen a lesson in British supremacy.

It took the Culpeper Minutemen three days to march to Norfolk and along the way their campfire conversations took on a somber tone. These were British regulars that they would be facing at Norfolk, not green sailors on board ships. Dunsmore had also enlisted a group of African slaves and these men were fighting for their freedom just like the Minutemen. Several Minutemen talked openly about the battle that was to come and wondered outloud whether they would ever see their families and their beloved valley again.

William Woolford commanded the second Virginia militia regiment. By December 8 the militia force had grown to almost 900 men of which 100 were Culpepper Minutemen. Dunsmore was concerned about his position as the rebel force grew. He was informed that the rebels had cannons that could be used to attack the British garrison at Fort Murray. Dunsmore decided that the best defense was an aggressive offense. He ordered his Ethiopian brigade and a company of 60 British grenadiers across the newly repaired bridge just south of Norfolk. To this day, the village is still called Great Bridge.

Captain James Fordyce, commanding the British regulars, decided to attack the rebels with a frontal assault, bayonets fixed. The rebels held their fire until the British regulars were within 50 yards and then unleashed a hail of musket fire. Fordyce was killed instantly and what remained of the British assault force retreated back across the bridge. Dunsmore was incensed.

He ordered the British naval gunners who had set up emplacements opposite the bridge to start an artillery barrage. Meanwhile, Woolford’s rebels arranged in a classic battle formation faced the British regulars on the field of honor. It was the first time that American soldiers faced the enemy in a face to face conflict. As the two lines fired at each other to little effect, Woolsford ordered the 100 Culpepper Minutemen to the left to attack the British right flank. It was a brilliant and effective maneuver. About 100 frontiersmen opened a withering fire on the British flank.

Philip Clayton would later write in his diary that the British were courageous soldiers but that the Culpepper Minutemen were deadly accurate with their long rifles. The frontiersmen fired into the British lines with devastating accuracy. Even though they were being attacked from two sides, they kept good order and retreated once again. The British soldiers’ courage impressed their American foe.

Dunsmore, hearing a report of the carnage, ordered his troops back to safety across the bridge. He would later take his forces to safety on the Royal Navy ships. In redrawing his forces from Norfolk, he gave up the town to the victorious rebels. General Washington still worried about the bellicose Dunsmore, but news of the rebel victory at Norfolk spread through the colonies. Maybe the rough, raw rebel troops could be victorious against the might of the British empire.

As his militia returned to their homes, the real scale of the victory became apparent. Not only was Norfolk, a Tory stronghold, now occupied by the rebels, but more than 100 British regulars lay dead. The rebels suffered only one wounded. Not one rebel was killed.

On December 15, 1776, Colonel William Woolford, wrote a letter to the Virginia Gazette, describing the battle of Great Bridge. He reported that over 100 British soldiers were lost but that “we kept to our posts and only lost one man wounded. This was indeed a second Bunker Hill.”

In August 1777, Governor Dunsmore, after conducting several other campaigns and raids against the colonies, left for New York city and the British garrison there. He never set foot in Virginia again.

In 1934, the State of Virginia erected a small bronze plaque at the site of the battle and that historical marker stands there to this day. It is the only official reminder of the first American battle where frontiersmen and militia faced the British army and won a decisive victory. Maybe that small plaque is all that the Culpepper Minutemen would have wanted to commemorate their victory.