BONES OF SOLDIERS OF ’76

Evening Star, Issue 18807, 4 December 1924, Page 12

BONES OF SOLDIERS OF ’76

REMAINS OF REVOLUTIONARY GENERALS. The skeletons of three soldiers of General Washington’s revolutionary army, buried nearly a century and a-half ago, near his camp site, which now is a part of Berkeley, a Norfolk suburb, were unearthed in the yard of a citizen of that place. The bones were exhumed by laborers in digging for a sewer line. Buttons of copper or bronze ami other time-worn objects indicated two of the men had been officers, and the bones of one showed lie must have been well ovr 6ft in height. While to-day there is nothing to indicate th eplace, now part of a residential section, was once a military burying ground, the skeletons found the other day make a total of six dug up in the same place within the past two yeras. A citizen of the suburb, J. H. Jones, who is ninety years old, recalls that in his boyhood” days his father had pointed out the place as an old camp cemetery used bv the forces of Washington. Soldiers buried there, according to the story, fell in the battles of Great Bridge and Money Point. A monument long has marked the site of the battle of Great Bridge, and Money Point derives its name from an incident, that occurred there during the Revolutionary War. It is related that money had been provided for the payment of the troops, but before it could be distributed the. British made a sudden attack, and, fearing its capture, the Americans placed the money in a cannon, and dropped it overboard. After the battle, which continued for several clays with great fury, efforts to locate the' cannon proved futile, and the money to this day is supposed to lie lying ‘buried in the mud in the Elizabeth‘River. During his campaign in this section, then one of the principal ports of entry for the colonies, Washington selected a site almost entirely surround bv water, thus assuring him against attack excent by water. So much impressed was he with the strategic value of his position, according to the story handed down for generations here, that Washington selected his camp as the site for a°naI tional capital, even going so far as to I select a name for it.