Rev. Thruston chuckled, “Well, payment was made in Spanish dollars from Isaac Zane, a Quaker; Major Angus McDonald, a Scot; a donation from my flock of fellow believers, and a loan from a British peer, Thomas, Lord Fairfax, at Greenway Court. He provided most of the funds to purchase unspecified militia supplies to defend the county. He said he would petition our once-beloved Royal Governor Dunmore to honor the debt. I doubt he will ever be repaid.”

By then, the sun was fully over the eastern ridgeline. I watched as Major McDonald and a crew of boys marked out a shooting range on the broad open field south of the tavern. My father taught my brothers and me to shoot accurately on a similar but much smaller range set out on the largest pasture of our farm.

We used a bow saw to cut nine one-inch thick discs from the trunk of a five-inch diameter pine sapling Father felled with an ax. We used small hand-made iron nails to fasten each wooden disc to hand-cut wooden stakes—two, three, and four feet long—and painted the discs with granulated lead white mixed with linseed oil. After the white paint dried, we tacked a thin, round, one-inch diameter lead “bull’s-eye” to the center of each target.

We then took the targets, three apiece, down range and drove the stakes into the ground at 200, 250, and 300-yard intervals from the firing line. Each boy was allowed three shots at each of our targets.

The winner was the brother who had the smallest cumulative total inches from the center of the target after firing nine shots. By the time I was fifteen, I won nearly every time.

The major difference today is the number of shooters. The rosters Captain Morgan ordered me to prepare has 160 names, alphabetically listed. That meant someone had to prepare at least 480 targets.

And sure enough, a wagon, filled to overflowing with hundreds of targets, pulled up in front of the tavern next to the supply wagon as a crowd of competitors began flooding into the area in front of the tavern. I wondered who did all the work to prepare for this day.

At 7:30 a.m. Captain Morgan climbed atop his supply wagon and bellowed, “All those who want to compete for the privilege of joining my Rifle Company, gather here and listen carefully!

“We are going to start in thirty minutes. Today’s evaluation consists of two events: how fast you can run a mile and then shoot three rounds at 200, 250, and 300 yards. Accuracy with your rifle counts the highest. But how long it takes you to run a mile and then shoot three rounds at each of your targets also matters. We are going to do this alphabetically in groups of ten.