Born in England in 1723 and trained as a physician in London, John Pyle brought his family to Alamance County, North Carolina, where he later emerged as a steadfast Loyalist colonel. In 1781, his misidentification of Patriot troops as British escorts led to the brutal clash known as Pyle’s Defeat, leaving him wounded and maimed—yet ultimately tending to the very Patriot soldiers who had struck down his force.

William Alexander, known as “Lord Stirling,” was a wealthy New Yorker who claimed a Scottish title and became a key Continental Army officer during the Revolutionary War, earning distinction at the Battle of Long Island and later serving in major campaigns like Princeton and Brandywine. Despite his aristocratic airs, he proved a loyal patriot and capable commander, ultimately dying of gout in 1783 just before the war’s end.

Regarded as the first martyr of the American Revolution, Crispus Attucks was the first to fall in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. Of African and Native American descent, he became a powerful symbol of the fight for liberty, later embraced by abolitionists as a hero of both American independence and the struggle for equality.

Drury Harris, a free Black man, served as a private in the 3rd South Carolina Regiment during the American Revolution, fighting in key battles like Savannah, Charleston, and Cowpens, where he was wounded; after the war, he settled in South Carolina, married, and was later granted a pension, living until 1834.