WOMEN IN WARTIME: BETSY DOWDY’S RIDE by Yvonne Saxon

December 6, 1775: The awful news comes to the Dowdy’s from a neighbor who’d just returned from Virginia: Lord Dunmore is burning homes and slaughtering the colonists’ livestock and horses. He’s now threatening the Great Bridge, the only trade route and post road the Dowdy’s and their neighbors have from their home in Corolla, on the Outer Banks of  North Carolina. Their livelihood is at stake. Sixteen year old Betsy Dowdy fears for her family, the farm animals, and even the Banker ponies, the wild horses that roam the Outer Banks. Betsy knows that there is a militia strong enough to help stop Dunmore in Perquimans County. But it’s fifty miles away.

Thirty miles to the north, Lord Dunmore, who's captured Norfolk, Portsmouth, and just defeated the Patriots at Kemp's Landing, (in Virginia Beach) burns six or seven houses in Great Bridge before barricading the North Carolina side of the bridge. He orders his soldiers to take planks off the bridge to keep the colonials from crossing, sets up two canons, and builds Fort Murray on the Norfolk side.

The winter wind cuts like a knife through Betsy Dowdy as she makes her way to the barn. Unbeknownst to her family, Betsy slips out of her home late that night, saddles Black Bess, her Banker pony, and sets out alone to warn the militia.

In Great Bridge, Lord Dunmore plans a diversionary attack for December 9th. He knows taking the bridge effectively cuts off the North Carolina shore and provides the British with access to a strategic harbor.

Betsy rides through the marsh and the Currituck Sound during the night: sometimes wading, sometimes swimming Black Bess. She travels through the Great Dismal Swamp as fast as she can and then Elizabeth City.

On December 8th, Dunmore's forces start putting the wooden bridge planks back so they can advance over it. Gunfire is exchanged with the Patriots. 

Betsy gallops for hours and hours inland to finally reach the outskirts of Hertford, where General William Skinner and his militia are encamped. After hearing Betsy's warning, He and his men immediately march north to Virginia.

At the Battle of Great Bridge on December 9, 1775 Lord Dunmore is routed. Over a hundred of his forces are wounded or killed. One militiaman on the Patriot side sustains an injured thumb. The one hundred reinforcements General Skinner brought with him from Hertford convince Dunmore that the rebel forces are too strong. He retreats to ships in the Norfolk harbor.

It's reported that sixteen year old Betsy Dowdy was thanked by General George Washington himself. Her courageous ride of over fifty miles helped halt Dunmore's invasion of North Carolina and secured a passage between the colonies of Virginia and North Carolina.

 

 

 like a knife through the sixteen year old girl saddling her horse in the middle of a cold December night. Unbeknownst to her sleeping family, she sets off alone from Corolla on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, determined to ride to the nearest militia to warn them. It’s 1775, and the British are coming.

Thirty miles to the north, Lord Dunmore, who has already captured Portsmouth and Norfolk, Virginia, is burning houses and fields in Kemps Landing (in Virginia Beach) after defeating the Patriots there. Lord Dunmore, who will be Virginia’s last royal governor, is on a campaign to invade northeastern North Carolina. The only crossing into Eastern North Carolina is over the “Great Bridge” and the post road in the town named for it. If Dunmore takes Great Bridge, he effectively cuts off the North Carolina shore from the Patriots and provides the British with access to a strategic harbor.