Historic Fredericksburg: The Story of an Old TownGoolrick, John T. (John Tackett)
History
Historic Fredericksburg: The Story of an Old Town
Goolrick, John T. (John Tackett)
Fredericksburg (Va.) -- History
A woman guided the Continental army on that night march. A detachment of
two hundred men, under Mercer, was sent to seize a bridge at Worth's Mill.
The night had been dreary; the morning was severely cold. Mercer's
presence was revealed at daybreak. General Mahood counter-marched his
regiment and crossed the bridge at Worth's Mill before Mercer could reach
it. The British troops charged. The Colonials were driven back. General
Mercer dismounted and tried vainly to rally his men. While he was doing
this, he was attacked by a group of British troops, who, with the butts of
muskets, beat him down and demanded that he surrender. He refused. He was
then bayoneted and left for dead on the battlefield. Stabbed in seven
different places, he did not expire until January 12, 1777.
Washington finally won the Battle of Princeton, but Mercer was a part of
the price he paid. The battles of Trenton and Princeton were the most
brilliant victories in the War of the Revolution.
At Fredericksburg a monument perpetuates Mercer's fame. At the funeral in
Philadelphia 30,000 people were present, and there his remains rest in
Laurel Hill Cemetery.
The St. Andrew's Society, which he joined in 1757, erected a monument to
his memory and in the historical painting of the Battle of Princeton, by
Peale Mercer is given a prominent place. The states of Pennsylvania,
Kentucky, Virginia and New Jersey have, by an act of Legislature, named a
county "Mercer," and on October 1, 1897, a bronze tablet to his memory was
unveiled at Princeton, N. J. We have not the space to relate all of his
illustrious life, but somewhere there is a poem, the last lines of which
voice the sentiment of his countrymen.
"But he, himself, is canonized,
If saintly deeds such fame can give;
As long as liberty is prized,
Hugh Mercer's name shall surely live."
SIR LEWIS LITTLEPAGE
In the possession of a well-known man of Richmond, Va., is a large gold
key.
It is vastly different from the keys one sees these days, and inquiry
develops that it was once the property of one of the most picturesque
characters in America--a man who began his life in the cornfields of
Hanover County, Va., in 1753, and was swept by the wave of circumstance
into the palace of a King.
The atmosphere of old William and Mary College, where Lewis Littlepage was
graduated, after the death of his father, gave a mysteriously romantic
note to the beckoning song of adventure, which finally became a definite
urge, when the youth, after residing in Fredericksburg, listened to the
advice of his guardian, Benjamin Lewis, of Spotsylvania County, who placed
him with John Jay, the American Minister at Madrid.
Six months later, Jay, in a letter to Benjamin Lewis, said of the
seventeen-year-old lad:
"I am much pleased with your nephew, Lewis Littlepage, whom I regard as a
man of undoubted genius, and a person of unusual culture."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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