Culpeper Minute Men

Virginia’s third Revolutionary Convention, which met in the summer of 1775 as royal authority was collapsing in the colony, passed an ordinance establishing 16 units of minute men for the colony’s defense. Recruits from Culpeper, Fauquier, and Orange Counties—known as the Culpeper Minute Men—assembled in a field half a mile south of here in Sept. Among them was Lt. John Marshall, later chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The battalion arrived in Williamsburg in Oct., and five companies helped defeat the British at the Battle of Great Bridge south of Norfolk on 9 Dec. Relieved by regular troops and released from active duty by the spring of 1776, many Minute Men joined the Continental Army.