Early Life
Flora’s birth date is not recorded. He may have been related to “Peater Flura, ye Spanard” who appears in a Norfolk County tax list for 1753, near Batchaldors (or Batcheldors) Mill at the head of Deep Creek. (Norfolk County was incorporated into the City of Chesapeake in 1963.) Will Florow is listed in the household of John Fentress in St. Bride’s Parish in the tax list for 1771. In 1773, he was in the household of William Bressie.
Battle of Great Bridge
Flora chose to support the Patriots in the Revolutionary War, although his reasoning for doing so is unknown. Accounts differ as to whether he enlisted in Colonel William Woodford’s 2nd Virginia Regiment or the Princess Anne County militia. (Princess Anne County, like Norfolk County, no longer exists; it became part of the city of Virginia Beach in 1963.) According to the 1757 law regulating Virginia’s militias, free Blacks and Indigenous people were eligible to join their local militias. They could serve as bandsmen or laborers but were not supposed to be armed. This stipulation evidently was ignored in Flora’s case.
In the fall of 1775, Norfolk was held by the British under John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, Virginia’s last royal governor. The hamlet of Great Bridge guarded the southern approach to Norfolk. The village was named for a plank bridge that spanned the southern branch of the Elizabeth River. On the south side of the river, the bridge connected to a causeway over marshy ground. In December 1775, British, Loyalist, and Black units under Captain Samuel Leslie held a log stockade north of the river, named Fort Murray for Dunmore’s family in Scotland. On the south side, Woodford’s Patriots held the village, breastworks across the causeway, and additional breastworks flanking the causeway to the west.
On December 8, Dunmore held a war council aboard his flagship, the Dunmore, in Norfolk harbor. The British had received a report that the Patriots were expecting reinforcements from North Carolina. Worried that the reinforced Patriots could overwhelm Fort Murray, Dunmore ordered a preemptive attack on the rebel fortifications.
On the morning of December 9, Flora was on guard duty when the British stepped out of the fort, formed in tight ranks six men wide, and began their march down the bridge and causeway. According to an account that appeared in Pinkney’s Virginia Gazette on December 20, one of the sentinels, who was later identified as Flora, “who was posted behind some shingles, kept his ground till he had fired eight times; and after receiving [fire from] a whole platoon, made his escape of the causeway into our breast work.” Flora’s actions slowed the British advance and gave the Patriots time to assemble. The British regulars advanced into ferocious volleys until Captain Charles Fordyce fell within fifteen feet of the breastworks, his corpse riddled with lead. The Patriots kept up a steady fire as the British retreated. That evening, the survivors abandoned the fort and returned to Norfolk. The victory at Great Bridge helped the Patriots tighten the noose around Norfolk.
Flora was identified as the courageous sentinel in the mid-nineteenth century by James Jarvis, a boatbuilder and member of the Portsmouth militia, who heard the story from Thomas Nash, who was wounded in the hand at the Battle of Great Bridge. According to Nash, “at the battle of the Great Bridge Billy Flora was the last sentinel that came in to the breastwork, that he did not leave his post until he had fired eight times. Billy had to cross over some loose plank[s] to get to the breastwork and had got some distance over when the Idea struck him that it would be well to go back and pull the plank over on his side which indeed he did, thereby stopping the headway of the enemy. And this he did amidst a shower of bullets.”
Jarvis continued, “Billy Flora was a coloured man he was respected by the Inhabitants of Portsmouth for his Good Conduct during the revolution, and for his civility generally.”
After Great Bridge
Great Bridge was just the beginning of Flora’s wartime service. In September 1776, Congress established the size of the Continental Army. Virginia’s allotment was fifteen regiments. George Washington initially opposed the recruitment of Black soldiers, but as the need for manpower grew acute, he changed his mind. Between 5,000 and 10,000 Black soldiers and seamen, both enslaved and free, served on the Patriot side; many more served in the British ranks.
According to pay and muster records in the National Archives, William Flora enlisted on November 22, 1776, for a term of three years. Records place him in the 15th Virginia Regiment of Foot from March 1777 through May 1778. In the spring of 1778 he was at Valley Forge. From June to November 1778 he was in the combined 11th and 15th Regiments. From December 1778 to April 1779 he was in the 11th Virginia Regiment of Foot, and from May to November 1779 in the combined 5th and 11th. He was discharged from the 5th and 11th on November 22, 1779.
He evidently re-enlisted, according to land bounty records in the Library of Virginia. Following a 1779 act, the state offered land as a reward for Revolutionary War service. To qualify, a Virginia soldier or sailor had to serve at least three years in Continental or state forces. On July 16, 1806, Thomas Mathews made a statement in support of Flora’s petition for a land grant: “during the late war I served as a Colo. in the Artillery of Virginia that I was well acquainted with William Florey who belonged to the 15th Virginia Regm’t and was from Norfolk County that he served in the Continental Line until the seige of York[town] or the close of the war to the best of my recollection, and was held in high esteem as a Soldier.” Flora received 100 acres of land in what is now Ohio for his service.
After the War
According to Luther P. Jackson’s Virginia Negro Soldiers and Seamen in the Revolutionary War, Flora purchased two half lots on King Street in Portsmouth within a year or two of his return from the war, making him “one of the first free Negroes in Virginia to buy town property.” In a 1787 tax list for Norfolk County, Flora’s household includes one Black male under age 16 and one horse or mule.
The Revolution wasn’t the end of Flora’s military service. When the militiamen of Norfolk and Portsmouth were alerted in 1807 on account of the British attack on the frigate USS Chesapeake, Flora “made his appearance armed and equipped,” Jarvis wrote. “He observed that he had brought with him, the same musket which he fought with at the Great Bridge, and that he would ‘be buttered’ (the only oath he swore) if he could not use his ‘Old Betty’ (the name of his musket) again.”
The 1810 census shows him as a head of household in Portsmouth with six additional non-white, non-Indian household members. According to Jackson, Flora ran a successful livery stable and freight-hauling business and in 1810 owned six horses, several wagons, and three two-wheeled riding carriages.
On April 21, 1818, Flora made another petition for a land grant, declaring that he was “a private in Capt. Grimes compy 15 Cont. Regt. for three years & was honbly. dischd.”
Flora’s will was recorded in Norfolk County on November 5, 1818. His assets included two houses and one enslaved person. To his grandson, also named William Flora, he left “the lot whereon I now live with the appurtenances thereto belonging…He is to be put out to such trade as he or the guardian might approve, taking care that he be sent to school. He is also to received (sic) the residue of the estate after my debts and repairs are paid.” To his daughter, Grace, he left a feather bed and mahogany table. “All the perishable part of my estate and my Negro woman Milly to be sold immediately after my death with the money used to pay my just debts,” he instructed. The will was proved on January 18, 1819.
In 2010, Portsmouth’s Olde Towne Foundation erected a plaque in memory of William Flora at the corner of Middle and London streets. It states that Flora “was a hero of the American Revolution, a wealthy businessman and a respected member of the community. He will long be remembered for his good character and bravery.”
