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10 minute stories of exceptional Americans doing extraordinary things. Fast-paced, entertaining, binge-worthy and historically accurate.
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Stories of American Legends
Episode: Peter Francisco
The British dragoon was looking down at the strangest prisoner they had ever taken, a giant of a man, six and a half feet tall, standing in the courtyard of a Virginia tavern in the blistering summer heat. The dragoon demanded the silver buckles on the giant's shoes. The giant calmly and gruffly replied, "Come get them yourself."
The British soldier dismounted, tucked his sword under his arm, and bent down to grab the buckles. Suddenly, the giant stole his sword, struck him with it, and wounded several others before stealing their horses and riding away. This is the story of an American legend. This is the story of Peter Francisco.
Hello there. I'm your host, Jacob, and you're listening to Stories of American Legends.
In June of 1765, a Portuguese-speaking boy was found abandoned and crying on a dock at City Point, Virginia. He was about five years old. He was well-dressed, but he had no parents, no papers, and he couldn't even speak English. The locals could only understand two words he kept repeating, Pedro Francisco. We still don't know for certain where he came from.
Whatever truly happened, that boy was now an orphan on an American dock. He was taken in by Judge Anthony Winston, who happened to be Patrick Henry's uncle.
Winston put him to work in the fields, then in the blacksmith shop, and Pedro, who now went by Peter, did not stop growing. By the time he was fifteen years old, he stood six and a half feet tall. He could pound iron all day in the blazing heat of a forge. In March of 1775, Judge Winston was a delegate to the Second Virginia Convention in Richmond.
He brought his giant ward along.
And according to tradition, fifteen year old Peter Francisco stood outside the windows of St. John's Church and listened as Patrick Henry shouted his famous and fiery speech. The following year, Peter Francisco enlisted in the 10th Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army.
He was only sixteen years old. He was already bigger than most full-grown men, and he was ready to go to war.
Peter Francisco fought at Brandywine. He fought at Germantown, suffering defeat with the Continental Army. He spent the winter of 1777 at Valley Forge, freezing in the snow with the rest of George Washington's army, watching men die of cold, hunger, and disease. He fought at Monmouth, where a British musket ball tore through his right thigh.
After a brief recovery, he rejoined the army. In July of 1779, George Washington picked twenty men for what the army called a forlorn hope, a suicide mission. Out of the twenty men, only three survived. They led the assault on the British fortress at Stony Point on the Hudson River. They chopped through the outer defenses with axes while the Redcoats rained down hell on them from above.
The Americans broke through the defenses, and Peter Francisco was the second man into the fort. A British bayonet opened a nine inch gash across his stomach. He killed the man who did it. Then he killed two more grenadiers. Then he grabbed the British flag from its staff, and he held it all night. By clutching the British flag through the long night as he bled, Francisco ensured the enemy could not reclaim their colors and turned his agony into a powerful symbol of American victory and unbreakable resolve.
In the morning, he personally handed the flag to his commanding officer.
A year later, at the Battle of Camden in South Carolina, the American army collapsed. The militia threw down their muskets and ran. General Gates cowardly galloped off the field on the fastest horse he could find. As the retreat escalated, Francisco saw a cannon sitting abandoned in the field.
The horses that had pulled it were dead. The British were closing in fast. Peter picked up the cannon by himself. He hoisted it onto his shoulder and carried it off the battlefield so the Redcoats couldn't take it. Some accounts put the gun at six hundred pounds. Skeptics say it was closer to three hundred pounds.
The exact weight has been argued over for two centuries. But every account agrees on one thing. He really did it. He set the cannon down behind American lines, and then he turned around and headed back toward the fight. That's when he saw a British grenadier raising a bayonet over his commanding officer, Colonel John Mayo.
Peter shot the British grenadier dead. A green-coated British cavalryman spotted them and charged. Mayo ran, but Francisco stood his ground. The cavalryman raised his sword and ordered Peter to surrender his musket. Peter held it out as if to hand it over. But when the man drew near, Peter drove the bayonet straight through his chest and climbed onto the dying soldier's horse.
He galloped off into the British lines shouting, Huzzah, my brave boys, we've conquered the rebels. He said this so the British would think he was a loyalist and let him ride through. It worked. He found Colonel Mayo, gave him the horse, and told him to ride. By the time Francisco returned to Virginia, the story of the giant who had saved Mayo had already gotten back to General George Washington.
Washington also heard that this enormous private was complaining that the standard issue cavalry sword felt like a toothpick in his hand. So Washington ordered a custom sword made for him. The massive broadsword had a five-foot blade.
March 15th, 1781. Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. Lord Cornwallis and the British Army had marched there to crush the southern portion of the rebellion once and for all. American General Nathanael Greene was waiting for him with three lines of defense across a rolling wooded slope. The British smashed through the first line.
They plowed through the second. But when they hit the third line, an American bugler sounded the charge, and the colonial cavalry came down the hill. Peter Francisco was at the front. Imagine this, a six-and-a-half-foot man on horseback swinging that giant sword that was forged just for him. It may seem comical to us now, but to the British, this was the stuff of nightmares.
Think of the terror that spread through the ranks. The cavalry crashed into the British infantry like an axe cutting into a log. The accounts vary on the exact number Francisco killed during the charge. The monument at Guilford Courthouse says eleven. Many think it was more. Francisco himself claimed that he was, quote, seen to kill two men besides making many other pains which were doubtless fatal to others.
Very modest from a man who had no reason to be modest. But here is what is not disputed. A British grenadier thrust his bayonet up through Peter Francisco's leg, which pinned his thigh into the side of his horse. But Peter didn't strike back. Not immediately. First, he reached down and helped the soldier pull the bayonet back out of his own leg.
Then he brought his broadsword down and split the man's skull down to his shoulders. A few minutes later, while Francisco charged a British infantry square, another bayonet caught him. The whole length of the blade went through his right thigh.
Peter Francisco finally fell. His comrades retreated and with all of the chaos did not notice him laying there. The American army pulled back and Cornwallis held the field. A Quaker named Robinson found Peter laying in the dirt, barely alive, and took him home. It took six weeks to recover. But as soon as he was able-bodied, Peter Francisco once again went back to the war.
It is now the summer of 1781, just months after Guilford. Francisco was traveling through Virginia, scouting for the militia to keep tabs on the movements of a British raiding column led by Lieutenant Colonel Tarleton. This was the same Tarleton whose dragoons had butchered surrendering Americans at the Waxhaws, the most feared cavalry commander in the British Army.
If you have seen Mel Gibson's movie The Patriot, the main villain is based loosely off of Tarleton. Francisco stopped at Ward's Tavern for a meal. He was alone. Nine of Tarleton's dragoons rode up. They disarmed him and took him prisoner. Eight of them went inside the tavern to drink and plunder. One stayed in the courtyard to guard the giant.
The dragoon noticed the silver buckles on Francisco's shoes. He demanded them. Francisco stared and told him, Come get them yourself. The British soldier dismounted, tucked his sword under one arm, bent down to grab the buckles himself. Francisco snatched the sword out from under his arm and brought it down on the dragoon's head.
Francisco himself, decades later, described the blow in this way. The cut took off five inches of skull and many of his brains flew out. The mortally wounded dragoon drew a pistol with his free hand.
Francisco cut the hand nearly off as the pistol fired. The ball grazed his side. The other eight dragoons heard the commotion and came pouring out of the tavern. Peter Francisco, alone, wounded, and holding a stolen British sword, turned to face them. He killed the first to approach him. He mortally wounded the next.
He wounded several more, disarmed another. But even Peter Francisco had his limits. He heard hoofbeats in the distance. It was Tarleton's main column of four hundred cavalry coming up the road. In a flash, Francisco had an idea. He turned toward the woods and shouted orders to a phantom company of American cavalry, pretending he had a hundred men with him in the trees.
The surviving British dragoons, bloodied and spooked, believing reinforcements were about to charge out of the woods, broke and ran for their commander, leaving their horses behind. By the time Tarleton got there, Peter Francisco was gone, and so were the eight British cavalry horses. He kept the best one for himself and named it Tarleton.
He rode Tarleton for years.
Peter Francisco fought in six major battles of the American Revolution. He served under three of the greatest generals of the war. He was at Yorktown on Lafayette's staff when Cornwallis surrendered, effectively ending the war. George Washington reportedly said that without Peter Francisco, quote, "We would have lost two crucial battles, perhaps the war, and with it, our freedom."
After the war, he came home. He couldn't read or write, so he turned down an officer's commission. Instead, he opened a tavern. He did eventually learn his letters and became the sergeant-at-arms of the Virginia House of Delegates. Even in peacetime, he was a hero. In 1811, he pulled people out of a burning theater in Richmond and saved their lives.
He died in January of 1831, seventy years old and in his own bed. He was buried in Shockoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond. There is a monument to him at Guilford Courthouse Battlefield in North Carolina. The inscription reads, "To Peter Francisco, a giant in stature, might, and courage, who slew in this engagement eleven of the enemy with his own broadsword, rendering himself thereby perhaps the most famous private soldier of the Revolutionary War."
Four states celebrate Peter Francisco Day on March fifteenth, the anniversary of Guilford Courthouse, recognizing that Peter Francisco wasn't just a giant. He wasn't just an accomplished soldier. He was an American legend.
Thanks for listening to Stories of American Legends. If you like this story, please leave a five-star rating and share the podcast with your friends, and come follow me on X at History with Jacob. My handle is historywjacob. I post stories from American history every day. Next episode, we will cover Samuel Adams, a name most people have heard of, but did you know he was the man who turned the Boston Massacre into a rallying cry for freedom?
Or that he was the mind behind the Boston Tea Party? He built a shadowy band of revolutionaries called the Sons of Liberty. Don't miss it, but until then, stay legendary.