Battle Of Petersburg, 25 April 1781--East Hill

QA-22

To the west stood East Hill (Bollingbrook), home of the widow Mary Marshall Tabb Bolling. After the 25 Apr. 1781 Battle of Petersburg, British Maj. Gen. William Phillips and Brig. Gen. Benedict Arnold located their headquarters at the house. The British reoccupied it on 9 May, after returning from Richmond. The following day, Maj. Gen. Lafayette shelled Petersburg, from the heights on the north bank of the Appomattox River. After becoming gravely ill, Phillips died there on 13 May. Lieut. Gen. Charles Cornwallis marched into town on 20 May, uniting his force with Arnold's and kept his headquarters at East Hill until he departed on 24 May.

Department of Historic Resources, 2005

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

John Banister, Lieutenant Colonel John Bannister to Theodorick Bland, 16 May 1781, Bland Papers, Collection of the Director of Tourism and Museums, The City of Petersburg, VA; Robert P. Davis, Where a Man Can Go: Major General William Phillips, British Royal Artillery, 1731-1781 (Westbrook, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1999); John Frederick Dorman, Virginia Revolutionary Pension Applications, Abstracted. 49 vols. (Washington and Falmouth, VA. 1958); Bryan Green, Calder Loth and William Rasmussen, Lost Virginia: Vanished Architecture of the Old Dominion (Charlottesville: Howell Press, 2001), 19; Benson Lossing, The Pictorial Field-Book of the American Revolution; or Illustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics and Traditions of the War for Independence (2 vols. New York: Harper and Bros, 1859); John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia: 1775–1783 (Williamsburg, VA: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1988); John Graves Simcoe, Simcoe’s Military Journal: A History of the Operations of a Partisan Corps, called The Queen’s Rangers (New York: Bartlett & Wellford, 1844); Edward A. Wyatt, IV, Along Petersburg Streets: Historic Sites and Buildings of Petersburg, Virginia (Richmond, Va.: Dietz Press, 1943).