Spencer's Ordinary

During the spring of 1781, outnumbered American troops under the Marquis de Lafayette monitored Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis's British forces as they raided central Virginia. In mid-June, Cornwallis turned toward Williamsburg. Lafayette, reinforced, sent a detachment under Col. Richard Butler to attack British Lt. Col. John G. Simcoe, who had left Cornwallis’s main column to conduct a raid along the Chickahominy River. On 26 June, Butler’s men found Simcoe’s rangers resting at Spencer’s Ordinary, just west of here. After a sharp but inconclusive skirmish, the two sides disengaged rather than risk a larger battle.