Gen. William Woodford led Caroline soldiers of 2nd VA Regt.
Part One
By Ed Simmons, Jr.
cpreporter@lcs.net
With the passing of yet another Independence Day, the unmarked grave of a great American patriot, who left his home and family in Caroline County in 1775 to take up his young nation's cause, has gone still another year with no tombstone honoring his life, service and sacrifice. It's been 230 years since the British soldiers in scarlet coats buried him, one of their most effective battlefield opponents, and a rebel to their king. Yet they buried him with full military honors.
He was Brigadier General William Woodford of "Windsor" in Caroline, the commander of the 2nd Virginia Regiment, and later the 3rd Virginia Brigade of the Continental Line. He was General Washington's close friend and trusted lieutenant. The British had their reasons, apart from regal dictates, for rites of honor in burying the 46-year-old American general in the cemetery of Trinity Church in New York City in November of 1780, the war's end still three years distant.
The honor they paid to the American general from Caroline had to do with British military tradition going back to the days of chivalry when knights, though they battled, held firm to a Code Of Honor. General Woodford was raised in that tradition, his father, also named William, a major in the British Army at the Battle of Blenheim, fought in Bavaria on August 13, 1704.
One of his father's comrades-in-arms in that European war was the future lieutenant governor of Virginia, Lord Alexander Spotswood. A lieutenant-colonel of Earl of Bath's Regiment of Foot, Lord Alexander was wounded at Blenheim, but recovered and came to Virginia as lieutenant governor in 1710, bringing with him his friend and fellow Army officer, the senior Woodford. Settling in what would become Caroline County and naming his new plantation "Windsor," the elder Woodford hosted Lord Spotswood's Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition in 1716 on their way to the Blue Ridge, and again on their return. In 1732, the veteran of Blenheim married Anne Cocke, and their son, destined to become a Revolutionary War general, was born October 6, 1734.
Growing up at "Windsor," now a part of Fort A.P. Hill, young William would serve in the French and Indian War as an ensign in Colonel George Washington's Virginia Regiment, and was promoted to lieutenant in 1761. That same year he served in the Cherokee expedition under William Byrd. Fourteen years later, when the American Revolution ignited, he would lead the 2nd Virginia Regiment fighting British redcoats at the Battle of Great Bridge on December 9, 1775. It was to be the first major battle of the American Revolutionary War fought on Virginia soil, and William Woodford's actions after that bloody clash were the reason the British, five years later, buried the American patriot, and rebel against the Crown, with full military honors.
Next week, "The Battle of Great Bridge"