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3 unusual facts about Peter Francisco


Peter Francisco

In a petition Francisco wrote 11 November 1820 to the Virginia Legislature in his own words, he said that at Camden, he had shot a grenadier who had tried to shoot his Colonel (Mayo); he escaped by bayoneting one of Banastre Tarleton's cavalrymen and fled on the horse making cries to make the British think he was a Loyalist, and gave the horse to Mayo.

Peter Francisco (c. 1760 – January 16, 1831), known variously as the "Virginia Giant" or the "Giant of the Revolution" (and occasionally as the "Virginia Hercules"), was an American patriot and soldier in the American Revolutionary War.

The Year of the Hangman

Peter's character is based on Peter Francisco, a private in the American army during the Revolution who was sixteen and stood six and a third feet tall.


Shockoe Hill Cemetery

The cemetery holds the graves of U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall, attorney John Wickham, Revolutionary War hero Peter Francisco, famed Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew, Virginia Governors William H. Cabell, John Munford Gregory (acting), and John M. Patton (General George S. Patton's great-grandfather), Judge Dabney Carr, United States Senators Powhatan Ellis and Benjamin W. Leigh, and dozens of Confederate soldiers.


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