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.


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