Wilkes County Veterans History Project: William Harris

"No bribery of English lords could turn him from his purpose – no sense of danger could dismay his spirits, for he had resolved to sacrifice all for the priceless privileges of freedom."

This hero is one of us here in Wilkes County. His name is William Harris.

His story begins in January 1776. After answering the call of Gen. George Washington and Virginia Gov. Patrick Henry, William Harris said in his Revolutionary War pension applications that he enlisted in Washington's Continental Army at the old Culpeper County courthouse in Virginia. You may visit the site today, on Main Street in Culpeper. Look for Pepperberries gift shop.

Culpeper had been a hotbed of Patriot fervor, ever since the Stamp Act. William Harris joined the crusade for liberty.

“As soon as the unjust oppression of British tyranny was felt by the honest yeomanry of our Colonies, his patriotism was aroused,” said William Harris' newspaper obituary, in the Jan. 11, 1849, edition of The Carolina Watchman in Salisbury. Seventy-five years after the fact, the obituary reflected Patriot sentiments in Culpeper at the time.

“And he joined an almost hopeless band of Americans to secure the common liberties of his country,” the obituary said.

“He was truly a soldier in 'the times which tried men’s souls,' ” the newspaper said.

After enlisting, William Harris and his fellows marched through the dead of winter 500 miles to Boston.

In his sworn affidavit William Harris said that upon arriving he was “immediately” transferred to Washington's Life Guards. The guard corps is considered the forerunner of the U.S. Secret Service. On March 11, 1776, Washington issued an order for all Continental regiments to submit four volunteer nominees to become charter members of his guard corps.

It is with Washington's order that we meet William Harris.

Washington was very specific about who he would have in his guard corps. His guards would be from 5'8” to 5'10”, not too short and yet not tall enough to rival Washington himself at 6'2”. Washington's guards were to be “handsomely and well made,” as he put it. He commanded that his soldiers display “sobriety, honesty and good behavior.” They were to be “clean and spruce.” Washington would tolerate no unkempt hillbilly in his guard corps. He ordered that “there is nothing in his eyes more desirable than cleanliness in a soldier” and insisted that his guards “would only be the elite” of the Continental Army. Historians have described the guard corps as: “In an army made up of mostly untrained neophytes, hayseeds and former criminals, the Life Guards are supposed to be a beacon of excellence and the pride of the service.”

At high noon the next day Washington would choose three out of the four nominees. Imagine Washington's eyes brightening when he came to the men from Culpeper.

Washington fervently wanted Virginians in his new Continental Army, not only for balance with New Englanders, but also because Washington felt at ease with the men from Virginia, men that he felt he knew and could trust.

Washington knew Culpeper. It was next door to his home Fairfax County. Washington's first job was a land surveyor in Culpeper at age 17.

Imagine Washington knowing William Harris' family back in Culpeper. Perhaps he knew William's father and mother, asked about them.

Five days after being selected, William Harris and the guard corps escorted Washington into Boston following its liberation from the British. When captured British canon from Ft. Ticonderoga arrived and were implanted overnight on the hills above Boston, the British hastily withdrew to Canada. The people of Boston lined the one road leading into the city and cheered the guards and Washington. A high time for William Harris and the rest of the Continental Army.

But following the high of Boston came the low of New York City. As Washington anticipated, the British came back with a vengeance, invaded New York with a huge naval fleet, its army overrunning Long Island and starting toward Manhattan.

William Harris and the rest of the guards, stationed on Manhattan at headquarters during the battle, had to evacuate with all of the important documents, not knowing whether the Redcoats would be rounding the corner in the next instant, bayonets fixed.

The guards stood between Washington and the pursuing British, protecting the general.

When Washington crossed the Delaware – if you remember the famous portrait of Washington standing heroically in a flatboat – William Harris and the guards were in the flatboats in the background.

The guards weren't toy soldiers. They were fighting men.

They are credited with playing a major role in the Battle of Trenton, in which British Hessians were captured with minimal loss. The captain of the guard corps, Caleb Gibbs, was promoted by Washington to major as a result of the corps' valor at Trenton.

Following the high of Trenton came the low of the defense of Philadelphia, called the Battle of Brandywine. The British invaded the Mid-Atlantic coast and headed up Chesapeake Bay toward the colonial capital. The battle did not go well. Washington and the army could not hold their positions.

During Brandywine, William Harris said in his sworn affidavit that he guarded Washington's “baggage waggons.” (sic) So I like to joke that William Harris saved Washington's long johns from the British.

Following Brandywine came the lowest of the lows, the freezing misery of Valley Forge, Pa.

But it was at Valley Forge that William Harris and the rest of the guard corps won the Revolutionary War.

An out-of-work Prussian military officer, Baron von Steuben, made his way to Paris and found Continental ambassador Benjamin Franklin, who gave him a letter of recommendation to the Continental Congress. The Congress sent the baron on to Washington at Valley Forge.

The two devised a plan: the baron would train Washington's army in professional European battlefield tactics, maneuvers, marching, communications and such. This took not a small bit of humility on the part of Washington, who had trained these soldiers for two years, and now to allow an European to come in and retrain them.

The plan was for the baron to start with the guard corps. If William Harris and the rest of the guards had dismissed the funny little European who could speak no English except a couple of cuss words, if they had ridiculed him, not followed his instructions, his orders, if they had belittled him in front of the regular troops, if they had dismissed the baron and his training, we could very well have lost the Revolutionary War.

But history tells us that the guards embraced the baron, followed his instructions, loved his training, went ahead and faithfully trained the rest of the Continental Army.

And in the very next battle after Valley Forge, the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in New Jersey, the British were shocked at the new and improved Continental Army. The British high-tailed it back to New York City and never engaged the Continental Army again, preferring instead to take on lesser-trained militia in the South.

With the fighting over in the North, William Harris was discharged from the Continental Army after three years of faithful service to Washington and the rest of the army. But that's not the end of the story.

Two years later, when Washington came up with a daring plan to move the entire Continental Army clandestinely from New Jersey to meet the British army in Virginia, along the march Washington called up the Maryland and the Virginia militias, and that included William Harris, who reunited with his old army commander.

The combined force caught the British at “Little York;” that's what William Harris called Yorktown in his papers. And when the British surrendered – remember the famous painting in which French soldiers were lined up on the left, Continental soldiers on the right, British soldiers laying down their arms in the center, - the militiamen including William Harris were off to the side, out of the picture, behind the Continental line.

William Harris' obituary said that when the British laid down their arms, the men cried out, “they've surrendered.”

And was there any voice that quivered with more emotion on the battlefield that day than William Harris'? For who had seen more of that bloody, wrenching Revolutionary War than William Harris, other than Washington himself. Very few, I dare say. Very few.

But that still is not the end of the story. Two years after Yorktown, William Harris came to Wilkes County, to the upper Yadkin Valley, and started a new life. He settled on Sandy Creek at Stone Mountain. When I'm at the state park's campground there, I look out from the bridge over Sandy Creek and I can imagine his log cabin, his children running and playing, his corn in the field and his stock in their pens.

Later in life William Harris came to Big Elkin Creek. One of his daughters, Lucy, built a farm along with her husband, Daniel. They reared a grandson, Preacher Fields, namesake of the road today that leads to the old Fields Farm.

William Harris was buried in a Fields family cemetery overlooking historic Carter Falls, where a Wilkes County park began in 2017. The refurbished cemetery will become a point of interest on the N.C. Mountains-To-Sea Trail after the Elkin Valley Trails Association builds its Bridge of Dreams over Big Elkin Creek in the park and the trail is rerouted through the park and past the William Harris grave.

“We earnestly trust,” William Harris' obituary said, “that his long life (of 96 years), devoted to his Country and to God, has but ended to commence another brighter and happier existence in that world where the happy spirits sing the song of Moses and the Lamb.”

William Harris left “a glorious inheritance to after ages,” his obituary said. And that's us. We are that inheritance. We enjoy an inheritance of freedom and liberty, thanks to William Harris and the other Patriots.