After the Williamsburg Powder Alarm, several of the town’s boys organized themselves into a company of volunteers. They elected Henry Nicholson, who was about 14 years old, their captain. Eager to arm themselves, they broke into the powder magazine on June 3, 1775 and triggered a shotgun rigged to fire on intruders. Three of the boys were injured, and the outrage prompted Lord Dunmore to finally flee the capital.

The Williamsburg Boys’ Company returned to the magazine, retrieved about 50 blue-painted Indian trade muskets, and began training in their use. Robert Greenhow remembered in 1833 that they dressed themselves “in military garb—that is to say with hunting shirts, trousers, bucktails, cockades and ‘Liberty or Death’ suspended to their breasts as their motto.”

With war brewing and Williamsburg under threat, volunteer companies from all over Virginia began to converge on the town, making camp near the College of William & Mary. Greenhow bragged “that they could and did perform all the evolutions of manual exercise far better than the soldiers who were daily arriving from the adjacent counties.”

“Captain Nicholson” later received a real commission in Major John Nelson’s Regiment of Virginia State Cavalry, which served on the state establishment from 1779 to 1782. According to Greenhow, when Cornwallis moved to Yorktown, Nicholson was among the American officers who “were in the habit of occasionally visiting their female acquaintances” there and “that they would frequently stay until the sound of Tarleton's bugle – a little before day, told them it was necessary to be off.”

GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.

Art: Trade rifle image courtesy of Clay Smith.

William Peachey, a captain, major, and lieutenant colonel in the French & Indian War, was the 5th Virginia Regiment's first colonel. He resigned shortly after the regiment entered service, perhaps to avoid service in the Continental Army.

Peachey lived at Milden Hall in Sharps, Richmond County, about ten miles down the Rappahannock River from Tappahannock. He was a captain in Colonel Washington’s 1st Virginia Regiment during the French & Indian War from 1755 to 1757 and major of the 2nd Virginia Regiment in 1758. He was remembered by several veterans of that war as commander of a “battalion of regulars” in frontier service in 1759, evidently with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

When the Fourth Virginia Convention authorized the 3rd through 9th regiments, he was appointed colonel of the 5th Virginia Regiment with Charles Scott as his lieutenant colonel and Josiah Parker as his major. That appointment was made on February 13, 1776. Company officers then recruited and received their commissions in Williamsburg in March, then proceeded to their rendezvous at Richmond Court House. Paired with the 3rd Virginia Regiment, they were tasked with protecting the Northern Neck, between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers.

When Maj. Gen. Charles Lee arrived in Williamsburg to take command of the Southern Department (Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia), he was appalled that the Committee of Safety had dispersed the colony’s nine regiments along the coast. He ordered them consolidated on the Virginia Peninsula, judging Williamsburg the most likely target of a British attack. The regiment’s companies began marching back to the provincial capital on April 5 and were there by April 12. 

Colonel Peachy then abruptly resigned. Health does not seem to be the issue, since he lived to 1802. There is no record of the reason, but it was at about this time that the 5th Virginia was taken into Continental service. Some officers refused the new commissions, and Peachey may have been one of them. Lt. Col. Charles Scott was promoted to replace him on May 7. Scott served well, bravely holding the bridge over Assunpink Creek at Trenton on January 2 and leading Virginia troops during the winter Forage War that followed. Scott became a brigadier general on April 2, 1777, and Josiah Parker, now a lieutenant colonel, took command.

Had Peachey continued on with a Continental commission, he would almost certainly have become a brigadier general and quite possibly a major general, as Col. Adam Stephen of the 4th Virginia did.

GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.

Capt. Harry Fauntleroy returned to Valley Forge from winter furlough carrying a pair of ornate pistols for General Washington. They were a gift from an admirer. Three months later, he was dead. 

Coincidentally, a very young Washington had once tried to court Fauntleroy’s eldest sister, but that was before the captain was born. Fauntleroy, who was from Richmond County, began his service as a lieutenant in the Lancaster District Minute Battalion. (The district included Lancaster, Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Richmond counties.) He resigned from that post to seek out a Continental commission. He received one, apparently as a lieutenant in Capt. Burgess Ball’s Lancaster-Richmond company of the 5th Virginia Regiment. Captain Richard Bernard of the Westmoreland company resigned before the regiment left Williamsburg, and Fauntleroy took over his command. That happened at Trenton as they marched north to support Washington in New Jersey, just a few weeks before the important battle there. Fauntleroy was promoted the following September. 

In June 1778, the army left Valley Forge to pursue the British as it evacuated Philadelphia and marched toward New York. A hard-fought battle occurred on a blisteringly hot day at Monmouth Court House. Fauntleroy was killed by a cannonball while waiting for his turn to drink from a well, deferring repeatedly to let the enlisted men drink first. The ball knocked him from his horse and killed him instantly. He is buried at Tennent Meeting House near the Monmouth battlefield.

"A Gift for General Washington" (Jeff Dacus, JAR)

Henry Fauntleroy bounty land warrant petition

James Omohundro pension application (S5860)

​GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.

When Virginia fully committed to war in late 1775, it authorized 7 new regiments. This is how they were organized and how they went to war. Gabriel Neville presenting at Mount Vernon to the Virginia Revolutionary War Roundtable of DC.

GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.

The career of Peter Muhlenberg’s 8th Virginia Regiment through the eyes of two companies from Shenandoah County. Gabriel Neville presents during Shenandoah County's 250th celebration.

GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.

Why a Pennsylvania Lutheran named Peter Muhlenberg took a job in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley as an Anglican priest and what that meant for Virginia and the new nation that was about to be founded.

GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.

How the Revolutionary War began in Virginia's Shenandoah County began. (Shenandoah County was Dunmore County until 1777.) The first of three presentations on Shenandoah County in the Revolution.

GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.

Lower Shenandoah Valley Virginia heroes of the American Revolution include Daniel Morgan, Thomas Berry, Charles Mynn Thruston, Morgan Alexander, John Kercheval and others. A presentation before the Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society.

GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.

George Rogers Clark, Jonathan Clark, and William Croghan all played important roles in the Revolutionary War before moving to Kentucky. A November 2025 presentation at Historic Locust Grove, the home of Croghan and the last home of his brother-in-law, George Rogers Clark.

GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.

Pennsylvania Dutch (German) settlement extended southwest into the Shenandoah Valley, changing Virginia and producing many soldiers for the Revolutionary War. Peter Muhlenberg, Abraham Bowman, and Isaac Hite were among the Germans who served with distinction in the Virginia Continental Line.

GABRIEL NEVILLE is the author of The Last Men Standing: The 8th Virginia Regiment in the American Revolution.