Virginia Militia
1781 Siege of Yorktown
The approaching Season obliges me to recommend to you … to use your utmost Efforts for furnishing the Virginia Troops with Cloathing. You will therefore … adopt … Measures to send them down immediately – As their Troops are to take the Right of the whole Army you will judge how necessary it is that they be enabled to make a decent if not a respectable Figure ….
Governor Thomas Nelson, Jr. to Colonel William Davies, Commissioner of the War Office, September 27, 1781
Nearly 40 percent of the American forces at Yorktown were Virginia Militia troops. Brigadier General Thomas Nelson, Jr., who was also Virginia’s governor, commanded the militia while also coordinating the state’s efforts to supply food and military supplies to the American and French armies.
Militia units, the forerunner of the National Guard, were organized by their home counties, and served for short durations under state orders to meet immediate threats to their state. Over 3,500 men served with the Virginia Militia during the siege, providing labor to build fortifications, helping to man the siege lines, herding cattle to the encampments, and after the siege, escorting Cornwallis’s army to prison camps.
After the siege, the units were demobilized. Despite the importance of their service, some of these men did not qualify for a pension based on their military service until 1832, over 50 years after the victory at Yorktown.
Marker is on Historical Tour Road, on the right when traveling west.
Courtesy hmdb.org
