The Virginia Giant
14. “When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting
against him. Then the Spirit of the Lord came mightily
upon him; and the ropes that were on his arms became like
flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose
from his hands.
15. He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his
hand and took it, and killed a thousand men with it.”
Judges 15 : 14-15 NKJV
At the very heart of the fundamental right to life is a belief that every life is a gift and will make a contribution to society if given the chance. The old adage is as true today as it was at the beginning of our nation’s founding: God doesn’t make any mistakes. In all of our nation’s history, there is no better example of this old adage than that of the contribution made during the Revolutionary War to the future United States of America by a giant of a man who mysteriously appeared on a dock on the banks of the James River at City Point, Virginia, in 1765.
According to an eyewitness account, “a foreign ship sailed up the James River, dropped anchor opposite the dock, and lowered a longboat to the water with two sailors in it. Then a boy of about five years was handed down to the longboat and rowed to the wharf, where he was deposited and abandoned. The longboat quickly returned to its mother ship. The ship weighed anchor at once, sailed back down the James River, and was never heard from or seen again.”
The off-loaded boy passenger was very well dressed, with silver buckles on his shoes. One of these buckles formed the initial “P” and the other initial “F”. The youth spoke a combination of European languages, and he was eventually able to communicate to bystanders that his name was Pedro Francisco. According to some accounts, a Portuguese nobleman named Francisco was being pursued by political enemies, and in consequence he orchestrated his son’s abduction to protect the boy’s life. Other stories concerning the boy were that he was kidnapped by sailors who intended to hold him for ransom or sell him as an indentured servant.
Pedro Francisco was shuffled around moving from and through many and varied seaside warehouses to finally ending up in the county poorhouse. His story and its many twists and turns intrigued a local judge named Anthony Winston, who, acting as a good samaritan, finally took him into his own household. The judge treated Francisco well and offered the boy all of the advantages of someone growing up in a well-to-do household. And grow he did! At a time when the average height of a man was five feet four inches, Francisco towered over everyone else at the impressive height of six feet six inches. The young man was remarkably strong and weighed about 260 pounds.
In 1774 Judge Winston became one of the first Patriot leaders to defy royal authority by participating in illegal legislative sessions. Later he decided to bring fourteen year-old Peter with him to one of these so-called illegal meetings. Virginia’s greatest Revolutionary voices, such as Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and Judge Winston’s soon-to-be-famous nephew, Patrick Henry, attended the meeting which was held at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia. The treasonous topic of discussion was the armed defiance of British authority, and there young Francisco witnessed Patrick Henry deliver his famous “Give me liberty, or give me death!” speech. Francisco’s patriotic fervor was ignited from that very moment.
Before the meeting adjourned, the convention authorized the formation of a Virginia militia, which young Francisco wished to join immediately. Judge Winston entreated him to wait for one more year of maturity, which he obediently did. As soon as the year was completed, Francisco, aged fifteen, eagerly joined the Tenth Virginia as a private. Soon after his enlistment into the militia he saw action as he was engaged in his first battle. During the battle he received a minor bullet wound at the battle of Brandywine Creek. He convalesced at a Quaker home with his new friend, the Marquis de Lafayette.
One month later, Francisco was back in action, defending Philadelphia at the Battle of Germantown and the siege of Fort Mifflin. He was one of the few who survived to spend the winter of 1777 at Valley Forge (in present day Pennsylvania near Philadelphia). The following summer he was severely wounded at the Battle of Monmouth in modern day New Jersey, and his injuries were so extensive that it took him a full year to heal and recover.
Undaunted, Francisco reenlisted and returned under the command of General George Washington, where he was one of the twenty skilled soldiers selected for the front lines of battle. This skilled group was known as the “forlorn hope,” so called because their chances for survival were so very slim. The group was to lead the light infantry assault on Stony Point on the Hudson River, just south of West Point. Peter Francisco was the second Patriot soldier to scale the fort’s wall, where he engaged in hand-to-hand combat, suffering a nine inch bayonet gash across his abdomen. He killed three British soldiers before capturing the British battle flag. Francisco was one of only four from the “forlorn hope” to survive the assault.
Francisco’s enlistment was up shortly after this battle, but he went back and enlisted a third time, then headed south to the next military offensive against the British. Accounts about Francisco’s legendary exploits at the Battle of Camden (New Jersey) vary somewhat in terms of chronology, but there is no dispute about his bravery on the battlefield.
As the battle intensified, the Patriot’s lines broke and American soldiers went into full retreat. Francisco and a few others tried to stem the tide, but eventually they too were caught up in the chaos. A British dragoon on horseback approached Francisco, his weapon poised to kill him. “Surrender or die!” he shouted.
Francisco responded, “My gun–it isn’t even loaded,” as he cautiously stood up and extended his musket toward the British soldier. Then, at the last second, Francisco swung the musket around, pointed it toward the British soldier, and impaled the trooper with its attached bayonet. Using his mighty physical strength, he lifted the skewered soldier off of his horse and thrashed the body to the ground. Francisco then mounted the horse and rode off back into the battle until he encountered more British cavalry. He then managed to make his way through the enemy lines by acting like a British sympathizer. Soon he spotted his regimental commander, Colonel Mayo, being led away by a British officer. He quickly killed the British officer and gave Colonel Mayo the horse he had captured so Col. Mayo could get away.
A second act of heroism at that same battle was recognized by the United States Post Office in 1975 with a special stamp commemorating Francisco’s incredible strength and valor. In the midst of the Patriots’ retreat in one battle, Francisco noticed a cannon carriage stuck in the mud. Realizing that it would be vulnerable to being captured by the British, he physically hoisted the 1,100-pound barrel onto his shoulders and carried it to safety.
Several accounts suggest that in recognition for Francisco’s outstanding military service, General George Washington personally had a five-foot-long broadsword especially made for him. Gen. Washington was quoted as saying about Peter Francisco, “Without him we would have lost two crucial battles, perhaps the War, and with it our freedom. He was truly a One Man Army.”
Francisco’s fourth enlistment landed him in a cavalry unit under the command of Colonel William Washington. Many stories about Francisco’s bravery surround his service in the cavalry, but the best known occurred at Guilford Courthouse in 1781. During a single charge, Francisco reportedly killed eleven British guards. An early-American historian named Benson Lossing wrote that later in the battle a British soldier “pinned Francisco’s leg to his horse with a bayonet….{Francisco} assisted the assailant to draw his bayonet forth, when, with terrible force, he brought his broadsword down and cleft the poor fellow’s head to his shoulders!”
Francisco continued the attack until he was wounded a second time–again by a bayonet in the leg, but this time it slashed him from his knee all the way to his hip. He held on to his horse until he was away from the battle site, and then he fainted from the pain and blood loss. He was left for dead, bleeding profusely, until a Quaker came to his aid and nursed him back to health. For his bravery Francisco was offered an officer’s commission by William Washington, but he refused it due to the fact that he was illiterate.
Having survived five wounds–two of them nearly fatal–Francisco decided that his fighting days were over. He enlisted as a scout in what turned out to be the final year of the War. While reconnoitering at loyalist’s tavern, he was captured by nine British dragoons. There are various accounts of what exactly happened, but most agree that he escaped, leaving several of the nine dragoons dead. Francisco finished his military career by witnessing the surrender of the British at Yorktown.
Finally finished with fighting, the man referred to as George Washington’s One-Man Regiment, the Virginia Giant, and the Hercules of the American States directed his passion towards a new pursuit. Her name was Susannah Anderson. Tradition tells us that Francisco and the Marquis de Lafayette were walking by the same church where Patrick Henry had given his famous “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech when a lovely girl came bouncing down the steps and tripped. The legendary war hero, Francisco, caught her in his strong and powerful arms and he promptly fell in love…at first sight. There was one glitch, however: Susannah’s father objected to him due to his illiteracy. But Francisco, the fighter that he was, was not about to let her be taken away from him. As one historian put it, the offer of a commission in William Washington’s cavalry hadn’t inspired him to try to learn to read and write; but the lure of Susannah Anderson proved a more potent stimulant. After setting up several businesses and putting his nose to the books, Francisco was married to Susannah in 1785,
Peter Francisco’s last service to our country was in the Virginia House of Delegates as sergeant-at-arms, a position he held from 1825 until his death in 1831. Every year on March 15, Peter Francisco Day is celebrated in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island to honor Francisco, the mighty defender of life.
Now You Know More Of What Really Happened…………….