Shortly after the revolutionary conventions held in the spring and summer of 1775, Culpeper County lieutenant James Barbour began organizing a 300-man battalion in the counties of Culpeper, Orange, and Fauquier. Yowell Meadow, then called Clayton's Old Field, was the first encampment Barbour used for mustering his troops, who gathered there in makeshift tents and plank huts. They wore similarly colored shirts emblazoned with Patrick Henry's phrase "Liberty or Death!" and hats festooned with bucks' tails, and they called themselves the Culpeper Minute Men. Their flag bore a coiled rattlesnake with the words "Don't Tread on Me!" beneath it, "Liberty or Death!" to either side, and "The Culpeper Minute Men" at the top. The rattlesnake image had been printed years earlier by Benjamin Franklin in a cartoon entitled "Join or Die" and in his newspapers, and it expressed the feelings of many Americans seeking relief from British rule. The Culpeper Minute Men soon marched to Williamsburg and in October 1775 took part in a defensive campaign to prevent a British landing there. One commander wrote to Thomas Jefferson that "the life and Soul of this Corps is Capt. Green's Company of Riflemen from Culpeper, who in three Reliefs of about 22 at a time, scour [sic] the Rivers, and have in various attempts, prevented a landing of the enemy." In December of the same year, the Minute Men fought the British again at the battle of Great Bridge near Norfolk. With help from reinforcements, they pushed British troops under Lord Dunmore out of Norfolk and helped liberate the city, but three weeks later Dunmore began an eleven-day bombardment of and assault on the city, during which the Minute Men lost their first two soldiers. Dunmore intended to destroy as much of the city as possible before retreating up the Chesapeake Bay, which he did successfully. On February 14, 1776, the Minute Men were disbanded because of a shortage of firearms, but their reputation lived on through the battle flag they created.
