Hello cousins, I just received 2 articles written by Mr. Roy Parker about our ancestor Captain Johua Hadley. I copy below the first article and will forward the next installmenst tomorrow. These were sent to me by fellow researcher Dan Goehring. There are some additional correspondences. I have recently sent Dan some of the NC militia records sent to me by Vickye White. I also just wrote to Mr. Parker and shared some of the HS writings about Captain Joshua Hadley and also my writings about his father Captain Thomas Hadley. I also forwarded the portrait of Joshua Hadley, as I thought these gentlemen would appreciate our works on our families Revolutionary War hero. I think there is some great material here and hope to get an even better picture of these people and times in our future correspondences. I encourage you all to enjoy participating and sharing any thoughts. John Hadley Thursday, January 17, 2002 Military History Cumberland County patriot fought hard By Roy Parker Jr. Correspondent For combat experience in the American War of Independence, Joshua Hadley ranks among Cumberland County's top soldiers. As an officer in the Continental Army, Hadley fought under George Washington at the Battle of Germantown, Pa., in 1777, and under Nathanael Greene at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., in 1781. Hadley paid a price in both of these fierce engagements. He was listed among the wounded at Germantown and Eutaw Springs. Hadley was no sunshine patriot. He was in on the beginning of the War of Independence in 1775. And he was still in uniform months after most others had gone home as the war wound down in 1782. Hadley is among the 58 signers of "the association," the defiant anti-British statement circulated in the village of Cross Creek in the summer of 1775, soon after the war had erupted in New England. As such, his name appears on the stone listing those early patriots. The stone stands in a little park at the intersection of Old and Person streets in downtown Fayetteville. Hadley is one of two signers of the document who held commissions in the Continental Line. The other, Arthur Council, was a captain by 1776, who apparently died while in service in 1777. A volunteer first Hadley apparently saw military action first in a volunteer company of patriots raised by Robert Rowan, who circulated "the association," and commanded by Arthur Council. The unit may have been at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge in February 1776, when a Patriot force smashed an "army" of Loyalists. Hadley was paid for 25 days service in the unit, and the Patriot government of North Carolina also reimbursed him "for one rifle taken by a party of Tories (Loyalists)." He was paid for 25 days service in Council's company. In addition, he was paid for guarding a Loyalist prisoner, James Hepburn, and "escorting" him first to Wilmington and then to the Patriot prisioner-of-war camp in Halifax. No other Cumberland County soldier of the War of Independence can match the scope and breadth of Joshua Hadley's record as a Continental officer. Yet, tracing more than the bare bones of a North Carolina military career in the War of Independence is always difficult because of the scarcity of records and conflicts in some records. Just the facts Despite his evident service over time and space in the long conflict, Joshua Hadley is no exception. We know the dates of his commissions in which North Carolina regiments of the Continental Line. We know he was wounded at Germantown and Eutaw Springs. He enlisted in the 6th North Carolina Regiment of the Continental Line on April 1, 1777, as a member of "Taylor's company" with a commission as lieutenant. In June 1788, he was transferred to the 1st North Carolina Regiment. He was commissioned captain in the 10th Regiment on June 13, 1779. This was a "shadowy unit" that never really existed as a coherent fighting force. Some facts missing But other questions must go unanswered. Was he at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78, when Washington's little army survived the hellish winter that followed the autumn campaign in New Jersey and Pennsylvania? Further, was Hadley among the North Carolina Continent- als who surrendered when British forces captured the South Carolina port of Charleston in 1780? What was he doing in the 46 months between his service with Gen. Washington and his role in the battle in the Southern theater of the war? The skimpy evidence seems to be that Hadley was not at Charleston, that he was back in Cumberland County for much of the time between the battles at Germantown, which took place on Oct. 11, 1777, and Eutaw Springs, which took place in September 1781. In 1779, for instance, Hadley appears in Cumberland County governmental records as captain of a tax district. By then, his father, Thomas Hadley, was Patriot sheriff of Cumberland County, in charge of tax-collecting. In 1780, he acquires property, including lots in Cross Creek, future Fayetteville, and near the Hadley family's principal seat of residence, between the Lower and Upper Little rivers near Carvers Creek in northeastern Cumberland County. The property is somewhat of a reward for the stalwart patriot. It is sold by the "commissioners of confiscated property," a group charged with disposing of lands and goods of Loyalists, those who refused to join the Patriot cause, who had fled or been banished from Cumberland County. Among the "commissioners" is Pat Travers, Hadley's brother- in-law. Bitter feelings Then, in January 1781, Hadley displays his Patriot credentials by going before a meeting of the Patriot county government where he "makes information against Farquhard Campbell for speaking words injurious against the state." Campbell, a wealthy and influential prewar neighbor of the Hadleys, was branded a Tory as early as 1775, but supposedly has been "rehabilitated" by the time Hadley makes his charge. That Hadley was moved to take such a step at the time reflects the bitter feelings that both Patriots and Loyalists harbored in a county where so many were not joining in the struggle for independence, while others struggled to provide succor for the war effort. The county government put off the case until a later court, issuing subpoenas for Thomas Green and Archibald Smith to testify. But then, however, county government was being overwhelmed by new events. When he was in military action, Joshua Hadley was apparently in the thick of it. At Germantown, where George Washington's Con- tinental Army was winning until his troops began firing on each other in a fog- shrouded Pennsylvania countryside, the North Carolina brigade saw its first action. The confusion among the Continentals set off a panic in which Gen. Francis Nash's North Carolina brigade found itself assailed from all sides by British troops as it tried to fall back in some order. Nash himself was mortally wounded and Joshua Hadley was listed among the lieutenants wounded in the fight. Washington was able to rally the scattered soldiers of his command and take his dwindling army into winter quarters outside Philadelphia at a village called Valley Forge. The 6th North Carolina Regiment was "reduced to a cadre," its survivors absorbed into other regiments of the tiny brigade. Next week: Another battle. Another wound. Roy Parker Jr. can be reached at roypark2@aol.com