On this day 250 years ago, citizens of Spotsylvania County, Virginia met at the Town House (i.e., city hall) of Fredericksburg to adopt resolutions in support of Boston and to elect delegates to the Virginia Convention set to meet in August. The Spotsylvania Resolves declared that “we owe no Obedience to any Act of the British Parliament that is, or shall be made, respecting the internal Police of this Colony, and that we will oppose any such Acts with our Lives and Fortunes.”

The meeting in Fredericksburg was conducted by the Committee of Correspondence chaired by George Washington’s brother-in-law Fielding Lewis and included his brother Charles Washington. The other members of the Committee were Charles Dick, Charles Yates, James Mercer, George Thornton, William Woodford, Charles Mortimer, James Duncanson, and William Porter, with Benjamin Johnston as clerk of the Committee. The Committee had been formed in a meeting at the beginning of the month when the town of Fredericksburg adopted the Fredericksburg Resolution to boycott tea [see my June 1, 1774 blog post] The meeting on June 24 elected Mann Page Jr. and George Stubblefield to serve as Delegates to the First Virginia Convention.

In addition to their service on the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania Committee of Correspondence, most of these men served the Patriot cause throughout the Revolution in other capacities. Fielding Lewis, Charles Washington, Charles Dick and Charles Yates operated warehouses and arms factories in Fredericksburg that supplied the Continental Army. James Mercer, George Thornton and Mann Page were all Delegates to Virginia Conventions that governed the Commonwealth in the War. William Woodford became a General and George Stubblefield a Colonel in the Continental Army. We should remember the contributions of these men today.

We should also remember that, as noted in a letter published in Clementina Rind’s Virginia Gazette earlier in the month:

Credit is due to the Ladies [of Fredericksburg] for the Part they took in our Association, and it does Honour to their Sex; for no sooner were they made acquainted with the Resolution to prohibit the use of TEA, after the first of June, but before the Day came, they sealed up the Stock that they had on Hand, and vowed never more to use it till the oppressive Act imposing a Duty thereon should be repealed. May their Example be followed by all the Ladies on this Continent!

Source: Felder, Paula S., Fielding Lewis and the Washington Family, A Chronicle of 18th Century Fredericksburg at pp. 196-97.