Black Revolutionary War veteran made an impression in Fayetteville
Editor’s note: This column originally appeared in the Fayetteville Observer on January 30, 1997.
He was just 15 years old when the young five-soldier spent the unforgettable winter of 1777/78 with the ragged Continental Army in their winter quarters near the small village of Valley Forge in Pennsylvania.
And like everyone else who lived through that winter, Isaac Hammond, the “free colored man,” undoubtedly remembered it as a defining moment in his life.
More: Pitts: Barber, piper, little-known Valley Forge veteran
The light-skinned boy, who likely grew up in North Carolina’s Roanoke River Valley, served only one year in the Continental Line. But that year and his subsequent service as a militia fifer secured him a unique place in Fayetteville’s military history.
To this day, he remains the only resident of Fayetteville to be honored with a monument dedicated to his military service.
He moves to Fayetteville
When the Revolution was won, young Isaac Hammond became a citizen of the town of Cape Fear, which had recently changed its name from Cross Creek to Fayetteville.
In 1787, he married a local free black woman named Dicey. When the first census was taken three years later, in 1790, Hammond was listed as a free black householder with four “other free” persons in his household.
More: Fireworks in the Fayetteville area can be a heavy burden for some veterans and pets. What we can do.
Hammond was one of 32 free black men listed as “head of household” in the 1790 Fayetteville census.
In those years, free blacks made up up to 10 percent of the village’s 2,000 to 3,000 residents.
He joins the Fayetteville militia
Although free blacks were subject to restrictions that did not apply to whites, they could choose their families and occupations and they could vote for presidential electors and members of the state legislature.
They could also serve as citizen soldiers in militia companies.
When the white nobility of Fayetteville formed the unit called the “Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry Company” in 1793, Hammond offered to serve as the company’s piper.
For nearly 30 years, Hammond’s music was heard at drills, balls, Fourth of July parades, and funerals. When the company’s first captain, Robert Adam, died in 1801, the company assembled “on six consecutive Sundays with music consisting of drum and flute.” Hammond was undoubtedly the piper for this elaborate memorial.
Other young black people would follow their example.
Among them was Nelson Henderson (1791-1874). He was a slave barber who bought his freedom in 1813 and played bugles and drums for other militia units until the Civil War. The Marquis de Lafayette probably heard Henderson’s music when the famous Frenchman visited Fayetteville in 1825.
When Henderson died in 1874 at the age of 83, he was buried “with full military honors.” The funeral was attended by black Civil War veterans in the blue colors of the Union flag and white Confederates in gray.
He gives critical voices
While census reports and other records do not provide information about Hammond’s occupation, tradition says that he was also a barber, a profession that was exclusively held by blacks until long after the Civil War.
Hammond’s status as a Revolutionary War veteran and popular member of the FILI also made him something of a political force in the small town.
In the hotly contested annual elections for “city members” in the North Carolina legislature, the votes of the few dozen free blacks could be decisive.
In an 1849 affidavit requesting a Revolutionary War pension for Hammond’s descendants, a white petitioner said that in early politics, Hammond’s influence among free black voters “could frequently affect the result” of municipal elections in Fayetteville.
Hammond’s actions are vividly described in affidavits relating to a disputed election in 1810.
To woo his voters, Henderson used a tried and tested campaign tactic. He hosted a barbecue. It must have been a great time. In an affidavit he states:
“There was plenty of food and liquor. They seemed happy and there were frequent cheers. … The meal included two roasted and boiled pork fillets.”
Hammond’s good humor was not the only side of his character. The only mention of him in Cumberland County public records is his conviction on March 16, 1809, for “assault upon Lucretia Bass.” He was required to post a 50 pound bond to keep the peace with her for the coming year. Bass was a free black woman who lived near the Hammonds’ home, probably on what is now Old Wilmington Road.
His legend grows
When Hammond died in 1822, his legend was already well established and continued to grow.
He apparently asked to be buried near Cool Spring, at a FILI gathering place (and Fourth of July Independence Day party site), next to Cross Creek where it flows under what is now a bridge on Cool Spring Street.
Twenty years later, in the 1840s, a poem honored his final wish and his burial in an anonymous grave.
It was written by Louola Miller, a young lady from the town, and contained lines such as: “And when you rest beside the spring, at dawn or dusk, fire a volley over the spot and gladden the silence of the grave.”
More than a century later, after World War II, the FILI honored its old piper by placing a small engraved stone on the traditional site of his grave. This now stands next to a newer and much more elaborate monument honoring the FILI itself.
Hammond’s wife, Dicey, survived him by many years, and much of what we know about this early military hero comes from her 1849 application for a Revolutionary War pension for her and his descendants.
In the petition, she stated that he was the son of a barber and that both parents were “mulattos or mustees with no African blood in their veins.”
During the Revolutionary War, he served for 12 months with the 10th North Carolina Regiment, she said.
The 10th Regiment was recruited in the northeastern part of the state in the summer of 1777. Due to poor leadership, disease, and desertion, it could muster only a few twenty soldiers when it arrived in Philadelphia that winter to join the main army of the Continental Forces.
During the Valley Forge winter, the survivors were incorporated into other North Carolina regiments. The regiment was disbanded on June 1, 1778.
Free black men, soldiers
Dicey Hammond died in 1852 at the age of 80, a well-known figure in the town. She left her fortune to her last surviving descendant, her daughter Rachel Lomack (born 1794), whose father-in-law, William Lomack of Robeson County, was also a veteran of the Revolutionary War.
Other free blacks from the Cape Fear area who served with Isaac Hammond in the Revolutionary War and later received pensions for their service included Philip Pettiford (1754-1825), who raised a family in Fayetteville that later included many artisans; Louie Revels, whose descendant Hiram Revels would become a U.S. Senator from Louisiana after the Civil War, was one of them; John Lomax, Thomas Bell, and Thomas Hood were others.
Roy Parker Jr. (1930–2013) was a historian and editor and writer for The Fayetteville Times and The Fayetteville Observer.
Former Arizona Wildcats star Stanley Johnson signs with Turkish club Andalous Efes
UVM Medical Center nurses authorize strike as negotiations continue | Healthcare | Seven Days
2025 BMW 5 Series launched with diesel engine, is faster than the E34 M5
About The Author
