On this day in Port Royal, Virginia, James Madison, Jr. (the future President) and a delegation from the Orange County, Virginia Committee delivered to Patrick Henry this letter:
We, the committee for the county of Orange, having been fully informed of your seasonable and spirited proceedings in procuring a compensation for the powder fraudulently taken from the country magazine, by command of Lord Dunmore, and which it evidently appears his Lordship, notwithstanding his assurances, had no intention to restore, entreat you to accept their cordial thanks for this testimony of your zeal for the honour and interest of your country. We take this occasion also to give it as our opinion, that the blow struck in the Massachusetts government is a hostile attack on this and every other colony, and a sufficient warrant to use violence and reprisal, in all cases where it may be expedient for our security and welfare.
The letter was signed by James Madison (the future President’s father, who was chairman of the Orange County Committee), James Taylor, Thomas Barbour, Zachariah Burnley, Rowland Thomas, James Madison, Jr., William Moore, James Walker, Lawrence Taliaferro, Johnny Scott, and Thomas Bell
All the men who signed this letter would go on to serve in the Revolution. Thomas Barbour was a member of the Virginia Conventions and would serve in the Virginia Militia as a lieutenant colonel by the end of the War Zachariah Burnley would serve as a justice of the peace and later sheriff of Orange County and delegate in the General Assembly during the War. Rowland Thomas would also be a justice of the peace and sheriff in the War. William Moore serve as a Major in the militia and as a state assemblyman during the Revolution. James Walker was a delegate to the Virginia Convention of March 1775, and would be a state senator during the War. Lawrence Taliaferro would command the “Culpeper Minute-Men” at the Battle of Great Bridge in December 1775 and would later be appointed lieutenant colonel of the Orange County militia. Johnny Scott would be a militia captain and commissary, and a delegate to the General Assembly. Thomas Bell would serve as a justice of the peace in Orange County.
Source: “Address to Captain Patrick Henry and the Gentlemen Independents of Hanover, 9 May 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-01-02-0045. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, vol. 1, 16 March 1751 – 16 December 1779, ed. William T. Hutchinson and William M. E. Rachal. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962, pp. 146–148.]
On this day 250 years ago in Savannah, Georgia, after receiving the news of Lexington and Concord the day before, the Sons of Liberty led by the immigrant Noble Wimberly Jones and including Joseph Habersham, immigrant Joseph Clay, Scottish immigrant Edward Telfair, John Milledge, Jr., Huguenot immigrant Peter Tondee, Mordecai Sheftall, Levi Sheftall, and Jacob Oates raided the public powder magazine and seized more than 500 pounds gunpowder. All of these men would have distinguished service in the Revolutionary War.
Sources: Weeks, Carl Solana, Savannah In the Time of Peter Tondee, Columbia, South Carolina: Summerhouse Press, 1997 at 185; https://250andcounting.com/; https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=5364; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Wimberly_Jones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Habersham; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Telfair; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibbons_(American_politician); https://nmajmh.org/education/individual-profiles/mordecai-sheftall/; https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=6571; https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=63810; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milledge;
Today May 11, 2025, the Lake George Battlefield reenacted the capture 250 years ago of Fort George by Captain Bernard Romans of the Connecticut Militia and sixteen volunteers. The sixteen volunteers included Daniel Parks and a dozen men from communities in New York near Fort George. Parks would claim that his men captured the fort although Romans filed a detailed report claiming credit for leading the capture of Fort George, fifty miles south of Ticonderoga. Fort George was essentially a mothballed fort and its only defenders were a sixty-five year old retired British Army captain and his aide who surrendered without a fight. Bernard Romans was an immigrant from the Netherlands who had a very interesting career before the War and would serve in multiple, albeit sometimes controversial, capacities in the Continental Army and militia throughout the War. His commitment to American liberty, however, is beyond question and he would die on board a British ship returning to America after his release from imprisonment following the Treaty of Paris.
Sources: https://allthingsliberty.com/2019/11/bernard-romans-and-the-first-attempt-at-fortifying-the-hudson-river/; https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2025/05/capture-of-fort-george-may-11-1775/
On This Day In The Revolution 