Freedom's Fortress

Hampton County · dedicated 1993 · Fort Monroe: Ruckman Road by the bridge over the moat

Fort Monroe was the site of Major General Benjamin F. Butler's decision in 1861 to accept escaping slaves as "contrabands of war." Thousands of former slaves who cast off their bondage and sought sanctuary here called this "The Freedom Fort." The First and Second Regiments of U.S. Colored Cavalry and Battery B, Second U.S. Colored Light Artillery, were raised here during the Civil War. In 1865 the Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees ("Freedmen's Bureau") established its state headquarters here.

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under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s

what this marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years here

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