Editor’s Note: This column originally appeared in The Fayetteville Observer on January 30, 1997.
He was barely 15 years old when the young soldier spent the unforgettable winter of 1777-78 with the battered Continental Army in its winter quarters near the small village of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
And like everyone else who experienced that winter, Isaac Hammond, a “free man of color,” undoubtedly remembered it as a defining moment in his life.
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The light-skinned young man, who probably grew up in the Roanoke River Valley of North Carolina, served only a year in the Continental Line. But that year and his subsequent service as a militia whistler earned him a unique place in Fayetteville’s military history.
To this day, he remains the only Fayetteville resident to have a monument honoring 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 federal census was taken three years later in 1790, Hammond was listed as a free black householder with four “other free” persons in his household.
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Hammond was one of 32 free black men listed as “head of household” in the 1790 Fayetteville census.
In those years, free black people made up about 10 percent of the village’s 2,000 to 3,000 residents.
He joins the Fayetteville militia
Although subject to restrictions not imposed on whites, free black men were free to manage their own families and professions, and could vote for president and members of state legislatures.
They could also serve as citizen soldiers in militia companies.
When the white gentry of Fayetteville organized a unit known as the Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry Company in 1793, Hammond volunteered to serve as the company’s leader.
For nearly 30 years thereafter, Hammond’s music would be heard at drills, balls, Fourth of July parades, and funerals. When the company’s first captain, Robert Adam, died in 1801, the company “met on six consecutive Sundays, with music consisting of drums and fifes.” Hammond was undoubtedly the flautist for this elaborate memorial.
His example would be followed by other young black men.
Among them was Nelson Henderson (1791-1874). He was a slave barber, bought his own freedom in 1813, and played the bugle and drum 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 age 83, he was buried “with full military honors” at a funeral attended by black Civil War veterans dressed in Union blue and Confederate white, dressed in gray.
He raises critical voices
Although census reports and other documents make no mention of Hammond’s occupation, tradition holds that he was also a barber, a skill practiced exclusively by black men until long after the Civil War.
Hammond’s status as a veteran of the Revolutionary War and popular member of the FILI also made him a politically influential figure in the town.
In the annual, tense elections for the North Carolina legislature’s “cityman,” the votes of a few dozen free black men could be decisive.
In an 1849 affidavit applying for a Revolutionary War pension for Hammond’s descendants, a white petitioner argued that Hammond’s influence among free black voters in the early years of politics could “often influence the outcome” of municipal elections in Fayetteville.
A vivid picture of how Hammond operated is provided in affidavits describing a contested election in 1810.
To entice his voters, Henderson used a campaign tactic that was already well-established. He threw a barbecue. It must have been a great time. An affidavit said:
“There were plenty of provisions and spirits. They seemed cheerful and there were frequent Huzzas. … The food included two roasted and boiled shoats.”
Hammond’s good humor was not the only side of his character. The only mention of him in the Cumberland County public records is his conviction on March 16, 1809, for “assault and maltreatment of Lucretia Bass.” He was forced to post a bond of fifty pounds to keep the peace with her for the next year. Bass was a free black woman who lived near Hammond’s home, probably on what is now Old Wilmington Road.
His legend grows
When Hammond died in 1822, the legend was already established and continued to grow.
Apparently he requested to be buried at Cool Spring, a FILI gathering place (and Fourth of July party venue) next to Cross Creek, where the creek flows under a present-day bridge over Cool Spring Street.
Twenty years later, in the 1840s, a poem sang of his deathbed wishes and his burial in an unmarked grave.
It was written by Louola Miller, a young lady from the town, and contained lines such as: “And when thou restest by the well, At the dawn or in the darkness of evening, Fire a volley over the spot and rejoice the silence of the grave.”
More than a century later, after World War II, the FILI honored his old fifer by placing a small engraved stone at the traditional site of his grave. This now stands alongside a newer and much more elaborate monument to the FILI himself.
Hammond’s wife, Dicey, survived him by many years. 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 wrote that he was the son of a barber and that his parents were both “mulattos or moustaches and had no African blood in them.”
She said that he served in the 10th North Carolina Regiment during the Revolutionary War and that he served there for 12 months.
The 10th Regiment was recruited in the northeastern part of the state in the summer of 1777. Plagued by poor leadership, disease, and desertion, it numbered only a few dozen soldiers when it arrived in Philadelphia that winter to join the main body of the Continental forces.
During the Valley Forge winter, the survivors were absorbed into other North Carolina regiments. It 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 estate to her last surviving descendant, her daughter Rachel Lomack (b. 1794), whose father-in-law, William Lomack of Robeson County, was also a veteran of the Revolutionary War.
Other free black men from the Cape Fear area who served with Isaac Hammond in the Revolutionary War and who later received pensions for their service were Philip Pettiford (1754-1825), who raised a family in Fayetteville that later included many craftsmen; Louie Revels, whose descendant, Hiram Revels, became U.S. senator from Louisiana after the Civil War, was among them. John Lomax, Thomas Bell, and Thomas Hood were others.
Roy Parker Jr. (1930-2013) was a historian and an editor and writer for The Fayetteville Times and The Fayetteville Observer.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: July 4: Black Revolutionary War veteran makes an impact in Fayetteville
