You Say You Want a Revolution: The Eight Tours of Duty of Shadrick Alley

This article is part of the 52 Ancestor Challenge. Each week in 2023, I will attempt to spotlight one ancestor from my family tree and provide some details about his or her life.

Week One

You Say You Want a Revolution: The Eight Tours of Duty of Shadrick Alley
By Clint Alley

Papa Was a Rolling Stone

In his application for a Revolutionary War pension, my 6x-great-grandfather Shadrick Alley said that he was "born and raised" in Brunswick County, Virginia. What little we know about the circumstances surrounding his birth comes from the vestry book which recorded his baptism (a book whose existence he actually made mention of in his pension application; when asked what proof he has of his age, he answers that his birth record is "in a church record near Petersburg"). He was christened into the Anglican Church in Bristol Parish, Virginia on May 12, 1751. His mother Winifred's name appears in the record. However, his father's name is conspicuously absent from the entry in this book.

Within two years, Winifred paid a fine of £2.10.0, presumably for giving birth to a child out of wedlock. Similar entries in the book indicate that £2.10.0 was a common bastardy fine amount paid by other women. Indeed, the fact that Shadrick carried his mother's last name has left the identity of Shadrick's father a mystery which is unlikely to ever be solved, although there is some speculation that his uncle Drury Alley may have known the identity of the father, as a later entry in the vestry book notes that, "Ordered That the Church Wardens Apply to Drury Alley for Winifred Alleys fine and on his Refuseing to bring Suit against him."

Entries in the vestry book show that Winifred's father Abraham Alley was still being paid for his services as sexton in 1753, indicating that he was still alive at the time of Shadrick's birth. 

By the eve of the American Revolution, Shadrick was about twenty-four years old, living among his kin in Brunswick County, near the northern border of North Carolina. Extant marriage records indicate that he was married to Mary Price in 1773. Family Bible records indicate that by the time he first went into militia service, he was the father of one child and Mary was probably beginning to show with their second.

A Rebel with a Cause

Shadrick served eight tours of duty as a patriot militiaman during the American Revolution, a period of time which totaled about about two years in active service. He probably first went into military service for the patriot cause in the fall of 1775. His pension application records that he was present at the Battle of Great Bridge, a lopsided Patriot victory near Norfolk, Virginia on December 9, 1775 (which Shadrick erroneously remembered as the "Battle of Long Bridge"). His second tour, which must have begun immediately following the first, was after the fight at Great Bridge, when Shadrick said that he was present at the burning of Norfolk, Virginia. The burning of Norfolk occurred during the first weeks of January 1776. 

Shadrick's third tour was a relatively uneventful march to Cabin Point, Virginia "in the Fall of 1777...where [the regiment] lay without anything material occurring." 

Battle of Great Bridge by Lord Rawdon
Drawing made shortly after the battle
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Substitute

The fourth--and longest--tour was a six-month period in the fall and winter of 1778-79, when Shadrick served as a substitute for his uncle Miles Alley of Northampton County, North Carolina (Miles's birth is recorded in the same vestry book which records Shadrick's baptism, listing Miles's date of birth as May 18, 1741). During this period of American history, if a man's militia regiment were activated, and he was unable to serve, he was allowed to hire a substitute. Shadrick's pension application does not tell us why his uncle Miles Alley was unable to serve, but it was apparently a one-time deal. The North Carolina archives contains a pay voucher for a Miles Alley who did serve in the militia in 1782, indicating that either Miles or a relative by the same name did eventually render active service to the patriot cause. 

Shadrick fought in the "Briar Creek defeat" during this fourth tour. Fought on March 3, 1779 in Screven County, Georgia, the Battle of Brier Creek was, indeed, a defeat for patriot forces. The British, who had destroyed a bridge over Brier Creek, ambushed the patriot forces encamped along the banks while the patriots attempted to repair the same bridge. The patriots fled in a confused rout. Consequently, the British were able to maintain a foothold in Georgia and launch their subsequent invasion of South Carolina.

A Change of Scenery

Shadrick recalled in his pension application that, "after the battle [the regiment] returned to McAlpine's Creek in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina where the troops lay for some time, from thence went to Salisbury, N.C. where we were discharged." He returned to Virginia in 1779 and "removed my family from thence to Rutherford County, North Carolina." 

Was Shadrick seeking an escape from war in the back-country of North Carolina? For most of the first years of the war, North Carolina had remained quiet, with few battles or skirmishes compared to the action Shadrick had seen in Virginia. The constant disruption of short-term military service would have made it difficult to maintain the rhythms of daily agricultural life. While we may never know for sure, what we do know is that, after four years of intermittent fighting, Shadrick uprooted his young family and traveled nearly 300 miles west to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. 

If Shadrick hoped to escape the war by going toward the mountains, he suffered a rude awakening in the fall of 1780, when he was drafted into military service again for a fifth tour, this time for a four-month term which turned out to last only three months. The militia company in Rutherford County, Shadrick explained, "was called out for the protection of the frontier against the Cherokee Indians," and was "kept generally in motion."

The Cherokee nation allied with the British during the American Revolution. The British government made several treaties with Native American tribes across North America in hopes that the rebels would be forced to allocate much-needed manpower toward protecting their towns and villages along the Appalachians from Indian raids. The plan was ultimately not successful, and the Native Americans paid a much steeper price than the British did for its failure. Shadrick's presence "generally in motion" to respond to Cherokee raids along the southern frontier is proof that the young state governments had little problem deploying men along two fronts.

In 1781, Shadrick was drafted for a sixth tour of militia service, during which he fought at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. On March 15, 1781, patriot forces under command of General Nathanael Greene attempted to stop the advance of the British commander Lord Cornwallis near what is today Greensboro in Guilford County, North Carolina. Although the British were left with possession of the field, Cornwallis lost around a quarter of his forces in the battle, forcing him to withdraw to his supply base at Wilmington and reevaluate his southern strategy.

Shadrick said in his pension application, "I knew General Green and other continental officers then, but whose names have now escaped my recollection." Did Shadrick know Nathanael Greene personally? Or did he mean that he simply knew who he was? This tantalizing clue has inspired me to one day conduct a more-thorough search in the papers of General Greene for any evidence that he corresponded with Shadrick.  

General Nathanel Greene
by Charles Wilson Peale
Source: National Parks Service

Going Home Again

Shadrick said that, after he returned from the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, he "removed back to Brunswick County in the state of Virginia." After little more than a year in North Carolina, with half of his time there spent serving in the militia, had Shadrick decided that he would be better off escaping the war by returning home? Or had his frequent absence made it impossible for his family to make a crop, forcing them to seek shelter with family back in Virginia? Shadrick doesn't say, but it's hard to imagine his young wife and small children (who, by 1781 included my 5x-great-grandfather Howell Lafayette Alley, who was born in 1779) successfully operating a farm so far from their extended family with the man of the house constantly away at war.  

As fate would have it, at about the time that Shadrick Alley decided to move his family back to Virginia, Lord Cornwallis also made the fateful decision to march into Virginia, ensuring that Shadrick's fighting days were not yet done. In fact, 1781 started out as one of the worst years of the Revolution for Virginia. In January, British soldiers commanded by the turncoat Benedict Arnold shattered patriot resistance and overran the state, culminating in Arnold's burning of Richmond. 

In June, the British raided Charlottesville with the aim of capturing Thomas Jefferson at his beloved Monticello. Jefferson escaped with only minutes to spare and spent the next few days on the run. It was probably at about this time that Shadrick, newly-arrived from North Carolina, was drafted back into active service. His militia unit spent three months at Petersburg, which was heavily occupied with patriot forces due to the presence of ammunition and supply stores there. In fact, it was the presence of so many militiamen like Shadrick that probably kept British raiding parties from looting the town and escaping with the vital military supplies needed to continue the fight.

Shadrick had returned to familiar territory at Petersburg. The vestry book he cited as proof of his age in his pension application was kept in Petersburg, probably at that time in the Old Blandford Church (known then as simply 'The Brick Church'), where his grandfather Abraham Alley was appointed sexton in 1742 and served for many years, and where Shadrick may have been baptized.

Old Blandford Church is still standing today, and it is near the top of my list of genealogical places to visit. 

Old Blandford Church in Petersburg, Virginia
Source: Library of Congress

Curtains for the Redcoats

Shadrick's eighth tour of duty began as the Continental Army--bolstered by French troops, French ships, and thousands of militia--encircled and trapped Lord Cornwallis in Yorktown, Virginia. Soon after Shadrick returned home from his time guarding Petersburg, he said, "After my return home I was again drafted for three months, in a company commanded by Captain Hartwell Raines, regiment commanded by Col. Bonner, and marched directly to York[town]." Shadrick arrived just in time to participate in the last great action of the Revolutionary War. As he said, he "was there at the surrender of Cornwallis." 

Lord Cornwallis's surrender to George Washington on October 19, 1781 was a monumental moment in American history. Cornwallis's defeat by the Franco-American force at Yorktown left most of America, with the exception of New York City, in the hands of the patriots. More importantly, it dealt a massive blow to British morale. Financially unable and unwilling to field yet another army in North America, the British government appealed for peace. The Treaty of Paris, signed two years later, recognized the independence of the United States and granted the new nation an extensive grant of land, setting its western boundary at the Mississippi River. 

According to his own statements, Shadrick was one of the soldiers in the field at Yorktown when Cornwallis surrendered. I certainly wish he had expounded on that moment a little. Did he see the redcoated officers surrendering their swords? Did he hear the British band playing The World Turned Upside Down? Did he celebrate with the French soldiers when the ceremonies ended? My ancestor was present at the British surrender and he paid for the birth of our republic with his blood, sweat, time, and toil. How I wish he had given the clerk just a couple of sentences about what he thought of that moment.

Beating the Sword into a Ploughshare

Shadrick's last tour, which was intended to be for three months, turned out to last only six weeks. After the British surrender, Shadrick made his way along the 125-mile path home to Brunswick County to resume a life which had so frequently been interrupted by war. 

Around 1785, Shadrick moved to North Carolina again, this time for good. Shadrick raised his family in central North Carolina, eventually settling in Iredell County around 1800. That final move from Virginia to North Carolina was eventful. When asked if he had a discharge paper to prove his service, Shadrick admitted to the clerk transcribing his pension application that he had probably been issued one, but that most of his personal papers had been "lost by the upsetting of my waggon [sic] in a river in North Carolina" during his final move from Virginia.

His neighbor and friend John Turbyfill had served with him during several of his tours of duty, and was the only eyewitness left living in 1832 who could vouch for Shadrick's service. The two men had been friends in Brunswick County as young men, and had moved to North Carolina around the same time. Their children and grandchildren most likely also intermarried, and Turbyfill is doubtless an ancestor of mine, as well. All I lack for proof is a document which I may never find.

Shadrick was an ordinary man who lived in exceptional times, and was allowed to witness some extraordinary historical events. According to a family Bible record which surfaced in Habersham County, Georgia sometime in the 20th century and which has the appearance of authenticity, he and Mary went on to have at least nine children. 

Habersham County, Georgia Bible Record
Source: Ancestry.com

Shadrick's pension application was approved, and he was allowed to draw until his death in 1835 at the age of 84. His passing warranted an obituary in the Raleigh Weekly Standard, which identified him simply as "a soldier of the Revolution."

Shadrick Alley's Obituary
The Weekly Standard (Raleigh, NC), p. 3.
29 May 1835

Works Cited

Alley, Shadrick Revolutionary War Pension Application [S6499]. NARA. Accessed 8 Jan 2023, Fold3.com. https://www.fold3.com/image/11127494?filmstrip=true&terms=alley,shadrick

“Died.” The Weekly Standard [Raleigh, NC]. May 29, 1835. p. 3.

“Guilford Courthouse.” American Battlefield Trust. Accessed January 8, 2023. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/battles/guilford-court-house.

Kranish, Michael. Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War. Oxford University Press, 2011.

“The Vestry Book and Register of Bristol Parish, Virginia, 1720-1789.” Google Books. Priv. print. [by W.E. Jones]. Accessed January 8, 2023. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Vestry_Book_and_Register_of_Bristol.html?id=b7GX427EbLAC.