Francis Day: A Patriot of the Piedmont

One of the trickiest kinds of writing to do is the kind involving soldiers in any type of conflict. We rarely have records that are detailed enough to tell us exactly what our ancestor did in the midst of a battle. If we're lucky, they recorded it in some sort of diary or letters or in a pension report, but we often aren't. And that's what happened to John when he wanted to write the story of his Revolutionary War soldier for America's 250th. John uses all the records that he held to tell a factual story about his ancestor, Francis Day, without ever making up emotions or facts that don't exist.

One affidavit, sworn by a neighbor before a Virginia magistrate sixty-two years after the battle, places Francis Day at Guilford Courthouse in March 1781 and that was enough. The chronicle below is written by his 3x great-grandson, John Bryan Day.

"long, obstinate, and bloody" — General Nathanael Greene on the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, letter to Joseph Reed, March 18, 1781

From the chronicle

The excerpt below is the opening of John's chronicle. The full chronicle, with his complete citations and images of the original will and inventory, is available as a PDF at the end of this post.

The morning of March 15, 1781, broke clear and cold across the Piedmont of Guilford County. A light frost lay on the rail fences and the plowed fields along the Great Salisbury Wagon Road, burning off slowly as the sun cleared the tree line to the east. The ground was soft from weeks of winter rain, yielding under boot and hoof, but it held firm enough for men to take their positions without difficulty.

General Nathanael Greene had arranged his force in three lines strung back through the woods and clearings west of the courthouse building. The first line, roughly eight hundred men of the North Carolina militia, stood along a zig-zag rail fence at the far edge of an open field, facing west down the road. Two six-pound cannon sat in the road itself, their crews waiting. The men on that fence line were, for the most part, short-term volunteers from the Piedmont counties, armed with long rifles and muskets, ordered to fire two volleys when the British came into range and then give way to the Continentals behind them.

Among those Piedmont volunteers was a man from the regiment raised months earlier at Granville Court House under Colonel Thomas Farmer. His name was Francis Day. John Fitts, who would later swear an oath before a Virginia magistrate in 1843, stated plainly that he had seen Francis Day in the army both before and after the battle that followed on that cold March morning. Where precisely Francis stood on that fence line, or in which company's file, the record does not say. He was there. What the ground looked like under his feet, and what he saw coming toward him across that field, the record of the day does provide.

Finally the long still hours of the morning gave way to movement just past noon. The pipes of the British column reached the American line before the men themselves came into view. Then the red formations of Cornwallis's force appeared at the far tree line and moved out into the open field at a walk. American and British cannon began an exchange that lasted roughly thirty minutes, pushing smoke across the field and obscuring the advance. The British crossed the open ground in approximately five minutes at that pace. They halted at close range. For a moment the two lines stood facing each other.

Then command to fire came down the North Carolina militia line. Hundreds of rifles and muskets answered at once.… Francis Day walked away from Guilford Court House. John Fitts saw him.

Read the full chronicle

Written using the STORI Method, with Claude and revised extensively by the author. John gathered eyewitness account of the battle and used the affidavit to place his ancestor in the battle that day. He was clear on what the records supported and what they did not. And now his family has something special to celebrate America's 250th.

Write yours

Learn the method at Chronicle Makers on Skool or read another finished chronicle from the community.