… Great Bridge (And in Your Liquor Cabinet)
"Early in the morning on December 9, 1775, one of the earliest and least known actions of the American Revolution took place in Virginia. The Battle of Great Bridge was one of the most important actions of the war — and one of its main combatants left a legacy much closer than you think…it might even be hiding in your liquor cabinet!
Months earlier as tensions escalated between colonial governor Lord Dunmore's loyalists and patriots in southeast Virginia, the Virginia Assembly authorized Colonel William Woodford to muster his 2nd Virginia Regiment, along with the Culpeper Minute Battalion, and march to confront Dunmore. Woodford's forces arrived at Great Bridge on December 2 but surveying the situation, Woodford chose not to immediately engage.
This was far from Woodford's first military rendezvous. Born in Caroline County, Va., on October 6, 1734, young Woodford distinguished himself during the French and Indian War. Upon his return home he married the daughter of George Washington's cousin and nestled into a life typifying that of Virginia's well-placed gentry elite. Woodford busied himself with politics and the patriot cause before the Virginia Assembly granted him command over the 2nd Virginia Regiment in August 1775, in a move that prepared Virginia to take up arms against their colonial governor…"
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Armand
paints brigs for the British fleet.
