On 11 June 1775, the Second Continental Congress authorized ten companies of riflemen in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to aid General George Washington at the British siege of Boston. The Berkeley County Committee of Safety chose Captain Hugh Stephenson to command and recruit one of Virginia's two companies, and within a week in the Shepherdstown area he had raised 98 men. These riflemen were the first continental or regular troops of the rebelling colonies. Mustered by 22 June but delayed while obtaining arms, they drilled and organized for their march. At his spring on 10 July, William Morgan gave the company a barbeque, and on 17 July Stephenson's men rallied at Morgan's Spring and began a 600-mile beeline march to Cambridge. They covered the distance in 25 days and arrived on 11 August. Before the Revolution ended in 1783, seven companies from the Shepherdstown area served in the war, and about 100 soldiers were from the town. Fifty years later, at a gala barbeque at Morgan's Spring, two of the five surviving men from Stephenson's company attended. The soldiers furnished their own homespun hunting shirts of linen, fringed around the neck and front, with leather leggings and mocassins; each wore a bucktail in his hat, carried a tomahawk and scalping knife in his belt, and bore Liberty or Death embroidered on the hunting shirt. Their rifles, noted for grooved barrels and great accuracy at long distance, were praised as making them the most accurate marksmen in the world. In later years, Morgan's Spring remained a local landmark, while the Sheetz Rifle Company on King Street and a nearby drill ground reflected the area's continuing connection to the Virginia riflemen.
