Pvt. Shadrach Battles (ca. 1746-ca. 1824)

G-6

Shadrach Battles, a free person of color born probably in Albemarle County, was a Revolutionary War soldier. By June 1775 he had joined the Albemarle Independent Company, a local militia unit. In Dec. 1776 he enlisted in the 10th Virginia Regiment (later renumbered the 6th). He fought at Brandywine, PA, Germantown, PA, and Monmouth, NJ, spent the winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge, and participated in the Southern Campaign. Battles was one of at least 5,000 black soldiers who served in the Continental Line. By 1778, Black men were a substantial presence in nearly every brigade. A carpenter, Battles lived in this vicinity after the war.

Department of Historic Resources, 2019

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Shadrach Battles Pension Application, NARA Shadrach Battles, Muster and Pay Rolls A Size Roll of Noncomissioned Officers and Privates of Virginia George Gilmer, “Diary and Revolutionary Memoranda” Alexander Scammel’s Report on Negroes in the Continental Army, 24 Aug. 1778. Shadrach Battles marriage record, 25 July 1780, Goochland County Noel B. Poirier, “Brave and Gallant Soldiers: African Americans and the Continental Army,” Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter, vol. 22, no. 4 (Winter 2001/2): 42-49. Edgar Woods, Albemarle County in Virginia (1901). Robert A. Selig, “The Revolution’s Black Soldiers,” www.AmericanRevolution.org Valley Forge Legacy Muster Roll Project: http://valleyforgemusterroll.org/muster.asp Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina, vol. 1 (Clearfield, 2001). Kirt von Daacke, Freedom Has a Face: Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson’s Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012). Mary Rawlings, ed., Early Charlottesville: Recollections of James Alexander, 1828-1874 (1942). Jack Darrell Crowder, African Americans and American Indians in the Revolutionary War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2019).