Where To Next?: Guilford Courthouse

Monday, September 16, 2024

Guilford Courthouse

It's amazing the places we've visited as we try to see the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Case in point - Guilford Courthouse in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The National Military Park commemorates the Battle of Guildford Courthouse, fought on March 15, 1781. This battle opened the campaign that led to American victory in the Revolutionary War. A 2,100-man British force, under the command of Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis, defeated Major General Nathanael Greene's 4,500 Americans. The British Army, however, suffered considerable casualties, with estimates as high as 27% of their total force. The casualties suffered by the British contributed to their surrender in Yorktown seven months later.

The First Maryland Regiment

Charging the British Guards

Painted by Frank E. Buffmire from illustration by F.C. Yohn

There was a small Visitor Center.

Many beautiful paintings to see.

John Penn (1740-1788)

Signer of the Declaration of Independence from North Carolina

Joseph Hewes (1730-1779)

Signer of the Declaration of Independence from North Carolina

William Hooper (1742-1790)

Signer of the Declaration of Independence from North Carolina

And some interesting artifacts.

Book of Common Prayer. Many of the dying men and caretakers took solace in their religion following the battle.

Soap trough from the McLean farm in eastern Guilford County. Family tradition holds that in 1781 Cornwallis' men used this trough to wash their muddy uniforms.

We followed the path across the street to see the graves and monument honoring the Declaration of Independence signers.

William Hooper (1742-1790) was a Founding Father, lawyer, and politician. As a member of the Continental Congress representing North Carolina, Hooper signed the Continental Association and the Declaration of Independence.

After the Revolution Hooper returned to his career in law, but he lost favor with the public because of his political stance. He was again called to public service in 1786, when he was appointed a federal judge in a border dispute between New York and Massachusetts, though the case was settled out of court. In 1787 and 1788, Hooper campaigned heavily for North Carolina to ratify the new United States Constitution, but by this time he had become quite ill and died in 1790.

He was laid to rest in the the Presbyterian Churchyard in Hillsborough, North Carolina and his remains were reinterred at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in 1894. Many historians believe that much of his remains are still in the original grave.

John Penn (1741-1788) was an American Founding Father who served multiple terms in the Continental Congress and who signed both the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation as a delegate of North Carolina.

In 1780, Penn left Congress to return to his law practice at home in Stovall, North Carolina where he died in 1788. He was originally buried at his homesite, but was re-interred at Guildford Country National Military Park in 1894.

Starting in 1887, the Guilford Battleground Company began commemorating the battle to bring awareness to this pivotal conflict. The Company felt that the best way to commemorate and bring awareness to the battlefield, the encounter itself, and the American Revolution was to place a variety of monuments and re-inter graves of key historical figures to the Revolutionary War. The key monument was the General Greene Monument, dedicated on July 3, 1915.

Nathanael Greene's statue, the largest in the park, looks like the monument of a victor. But by the end of the day the British had forced him from the field.

The fighting did not go according to plan for either side. After an orderly retreat, Greene expressed disappointment in the results of the battle. As reports trickled in, however, it became clear that the British army had suffered severed casualties. Cornwallis and his weakened army retired to the North Carolina coast.

After resigning his commission and facing a large amount of debt, Greene relocated to the South to focus on the slave plantations he had been awarded during the war. He made his home at the Mulberry Grove Plantation outside of Savannah. In 1784, Greene declined appointment to a commission tasked with negotiating treaties with Native Americans, but he agreed to attend the first meeting of the Society of the Cincinnati. He then became an original member with the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati.

Greene fell ill and died at Mulberry Grove on June 19, 1786, at the age of 43. The official cause of death was sunstroke. For over a century, his remains were interred at the Graham Vault in Colonial Park Cemetery in Savannah alongside John Maitland, his arch-rival. In 1902, his remains were moved to a monument in Johnson Square in Savannah.

Photo taken in Savannah, 2022

Back to Guilford Courthouse and the base of the memorial.

We stopped at a few of the monuments on Monument Row.

Jethro Exum Sumner (c. 1733-c. 1785)

Jethro Sumner was a senior officer of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. After the conclusion of the French and Indian War, Sumner moved to Bute County, North Carolina, where he acquired a substantial area of land and operated a tavern.

Sumner was named the commanding officer of the 3rd North Carolina Regiment of the North Carolina Line, a formation of the Continental Army in 1776, and served in both the Southern theater and Philadelphia campaign. He was one of the five brigadier generals from North Carolina in the Continental Army, in which capacity he served between 1779 and 1783.

Gillies
Light Horse Harry Lee's Bugler-Boy

James Gillies was a bugler for Richard Henry (Light Horse Harry) Lee, and as a musician had risen from a private to the commissioned officer rank of cornet at the time of his death. Cornet was likely a brevet rank awarded to those who performed the signal function that officers used to redirect their troops with drums, fifes, and bugles. His exact age is unknown but during the Revolutionary War it was not uncommon to enlist boys, some as young as 11-13 years old. His commander Light Horse Harry Lee, in his memoirs described him as "that beardless youth" and he had already been in Lee's region for almost three years. In a footnote, Lee expressed that "this ill-fated boy was one of the band of music, and exclusively devoted in the field to his bugle used in conveying orders."

On February 12, 1781, Gillies accompanied a small posse of Revolutionaries from a camp near present-day Summerfield (Guilford County) to verify reports of nearby Loyalists to the west. They were spotted, chased, and Gillies was caught and killed by the sword during the retreat to warn Lee of the advancement. He is buried in the Charles Bruce family cemetery in Summerfield.

The monument below states:

On this spot

Brig. Gen Edward Stevens

Was wounded while making a gallant stand with his Virginia troops

From Guilford Courthouse we moved on to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Founded in 1835, the university received its name from the original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh. The Reynolda Campus, the university's main campus, has been located north of downtown Winston-Salem since the university moved there in 1956. Wake Forest also maintains other academic campuses in Charlotte, Washington D.C., Vienna, and London.

The main campus houses undergraduate colleges, three of the four graduate schools, and half the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The core of the campus is the two interlinked quads, separated by the main administrative building and dining facility, Reynolda Hall, into North and South campus.

Reynolda Hall

North Campus consists of Hearn Plaza, better known as "the quad", which holds six upperclassmen residential buildings, a Subway restaurant, a book/office supply store, a clothing/athletic store, and Wait Chapel.