An irony of history is the people the Shenandoah Valley sending food and relief to Boston in the mid-1770s, yet it was New Englanders who financed and armed the fanatic John Brown to commit treason against Virginia in 1859. New England was later instrumental in laying waste to that valley in an effort to starve Virginians; the Yankees rewrote American history to their taste.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.circa1865.org
First Battle of the Revolution Was in Virginia
“The first battle of the Revolution was not in New England but at Point Pleasant, Virginia. There seems to be no doubt but that [Royal] Governor Dunmore in this war sought to hamstring the colonies and win the Indians to the side of Great Britain in the oncoming maelstrom.
The battle was fought October 10, 1774, and the battle of Lexington, considered the opening conflict of the struggle, was fought less than six months thereafter, on April 19, 1775. General Andrew Lewis of the Shenandoah Valley commanded the patriots, all of whom were Virginians, at the Point, the junction of the Kanawha with the Ohio. The majority of them perhaps were from the Shenandoah Valley. The men of one Valley company were all over six feet tall.
These soldiers reached home in November and they found their fellow citizens assembling food to send to the relief of Boston which port had been closed by the British government. Things were happening fast . . . on July 2nd, Washington arrived in Boston; on August 7th, Morgan with his squirrel tails arrived, the first to arrive from the South. This gladdened the heart of Washington for he knew these men could be trusted and could shoot straight. He lived with and fought with them in the French and Indian wars.
They left Winchester July 14, 1775, and in three weeks arrived in Boston. These were Shenandoah Valley men wearing hunting coats and bucktails. Some one has said: “The war may have been lost had it not been for the men behind the Blue Ridge.” The history of Morgan reads like a fairy tale. He was the Stonewall Jackson of the Revolution.”
(A Short History of Page County, Virginia, Harry M. Strickler, C.J. Carrier, 1974, page 11)