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The Annual Washington’s Birthday Celebration, sponsored by the Colson’s Mill Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, will be at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 22 at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, 17236 Frog Pond Road, Oakboro.

The event will feature a welcome from the Colson’s Mill Chapter, a posting of the color by the West Stanly JROTC color guard, a buffet of southern foods prepared by a Colson’s Mill member and his crew, and a presentation by featured speaker Ray Maxson on the life of George Washington.

The SAR is the leading male lineage society that perpetuates the ideals of the war for independence.

Battle of Colson’s Mill

In the spring of 1780 Gen. Cornwallis’ victories in South Carolina had created enough excitement in North Carolina to inspire a loyalist force to emerge in the Yadkin River Valley under the leadership of Col. Samuel Bryan.

About June 30 Bryan and nearly 800 men began marching south down the Yadkin-Pee Dee River Valley toward Cheraw, there to join up with British forces.

American Gen. Griffith Rutherford ordered his adjutant, Col. William Lee Davidson, and about 200 men to pursue the Tories, and a race ensued down the Yadkin River Valley.
Believing themselves to be out of harm’s way and close enough to Cornwallis’ headquarters to prevent attack, Bryan’s Tories pitched camp near an inn and a mill on the Cheraw Road called Colson’s.

However, Davidson had no intention of letting the loyalists escape and on the morning of July 21 he surprised the enemy and drove the loyalists into the woods — and back to their homes. Davidson thus denied Cornwallis an addition of nearly 1,000 troops and effectively broke any remaining loyalist sympathies along the Yadkin River Valley.