Guilford Courthouse

The Southern Campaign of the American Revolution Junior Ranger Program features five units of the National Park Service! You can receive a Jr. Ranger book at either of the five sites or print the book from home or contact the park to have them mail you a copy. You can then complete the actvitities, and earn a Junior Ranger badge! Learn more about units related to the American Revolution.

Complete the Booklet by Visiting the Parks

You may complete this booklet by exploring the five sites in person. Before you visit make sure you know when each site is open. Once you have completed the booklet show it to one of the rangers at any of the parks to recieve your badge! 

Complete the Booklet at Home

Even if you can't visit all five sites or if you do not have time to complete the booklet during your visit, you can still complete this Junior Ranger booklet at home. Once you have completed the booklet you may email it or send it by mail to one of the five sites. A ranger from that site will mail you you Southern Campaign Junior Ranger badge!

Junior Ranger is a National Park Service wide program that allows your children to connect with each national park on a deeper level and experience the history and nature that is preserved for their future generations. 

The Guilford Courthouse Junior Ranger Program involves a tour of a portion of the battlefield and the entire Battlefield Visitors Center. One booklet is split into two age groups. Children will have the chance to read the exhibits, complete maps, listen to music, and learn about the monuments. 

Pick up your free activity book at the Battlefield Visitors Center, and once the activity is completed, return it to a park ranger to get your badge! 

The history of the North Carolina Piedmont traditionally centers European settlements and the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, part of the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution. Less visible are the movements of peoples and the pursuit of livelihoods and community that existed prior to commemorated military events and continues through present day. Explore the shifting populations and maps of the region through the lens of indigenous scholarship to illuminate beyond 250.

Landscapes of Freedom consists of three related programs presented in partnership between the  Greensboro History Museum, Greensboro Public Library, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park and Guilford College. This project is supported through a grant from America 250 NC, a program of the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Guilford Courthouse National Military Park hosts this third and final program on indigenous landscapes. 

Join us for a ranger led discussion of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Learn how British and American soldiers experienced the battle and how it affected the course of the Revolutionary War. 

Programs last around 30 minutes and may include up to a quarter mile walk.

Note: Programs are subject to change and/or cancelation due to inclement weather, heat, or other unforeseen circumstances. Weather-appropriate clothing and closed toe shoes are recommended. 

Come join us in the Visitor Center Theater at 4:00 P.M. on Saturday, April 4 for a special lecture. Dr. Antwain K. Hunter will discuss his book, A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina 1715-1865.

Spanning the 1720s through the end of the Civil War, his book explores how free and enslaved Black North Carolinians accessed, possessed, and used firearms—both legal and otherwise—and how the state and white people responded. North Carolinians, whether free or enslaved, Black or white, had different stakes on the issue, all of which impacted the reality of Black people’s gun use.

Antwain K. Hunter reveals that armed Black people used firearms for a wide range of purposes. They hunted to feed their families and communities, guarded property, protected crops, and defended maroon communities from outsiders. Further, they resisted the institution of slavery and used guns both against white people and within their own community. Competing views of Black people’s firearm use created social, political, and legal points of contention for different demographics within North Carolina and left the general assembly and white civilians struggling to harness Black people’s armed labor for white people’s benefit. A Precarious Balance challenges readers to rethink how they understand race and firearms in the American past. 

Antwain K. Hunter is a historian of slavery and freedom in North America, with a current focus on the Carolinas. He serves as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Hunter is also in the very early stages of another book project which delves into Black people’s alcohol use and healthiness in antebellum Charleston, South Carolina. He is also working on two article length projects, the first on free North Carolinians of color’s labor at the state’s Confederate forts and the other on role of the veterans of the 28th USCT—Indiana’s only Black Civil War regiment—in that state’s commemoration of the war.

This program is free, and seating is available first come first served in the Visitor Center Theater. 

Come join us in the Visitor Center Theater at 4:00 P.M. on Saturday, March 21 for the second lecture of the park's 2026 Revolutionary Lecture Series. 

Using the Regiment Von Bose as tour guides, Ranger Baum will explore the Hessian experience during the American War of Independence. He will cover why the British used the Hessians in the war and also explain why Hesse Kassel was a "mercenary state". After exploring what kind of society these men were coming from, his talk will then focus on what the experience was like for men who crossed the Atlantic and spent over 7 years at war. He will also examine the Hessian experience of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse and what happened to the Regiment Von Bose after they left North Carolina. Overall, it will be shown that these soldiers were not "barbarous strangers" as Mercy Warren called them, but professional soldiers not too different from their Continental and Redcoat peers.
 
Jason Baum is an Interpretive Park Ranger and has worked at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park since 2015. He earned a bachelor's in history from Ohio University in 2009. He served as an Intelligence Officer in the US Army from 2010 to 2014. During his time with the Park Service, he has subsequently earned a master's in museum studies from UNCG in 2016, and a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Film from Wake Forest University in 2024


This program is free, and seating is available first come first served in the Visitor Center Theater. 

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park invites you to bring your American flag along to help us welcome our newest fellow citizens. In partnership with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the park will host a naturalization ceremony on Wednesday, May 27 at 11:00 am on the Nathanael Greene Monument lawn. 

Immerse yourself in the American Revolution! Join a ranger for a fun activity at the Nathanael Greene Monument Lawn. Programs vary by date but can include the following:

Colonial Medicine

• In 18th century America, there was limited knowledge and treatments for the sick or injured. Medicine had to be shipped to the colonies. Those who lived in the backcountry of North Carolina were not the first to receive medical supplies. What techniques did they use when medicine was not available? Students will learn about colonial medical techniques and ingredients in backcountry North Carolina.

Battlefield Archeology

• Historians and archeologists use various kinds of evidence to accurately interpret a battlefield. Using archeological evidence and primary sources, students will determine which section of the battlefield corresponds with their evidence and argue their case.

Divided Loyalties

• Loyalist or Patriot? Was the decision to stay loyal to Great Britain and King George III or fight for American independence an easy choice? Step into the shoes of historic individuals who lived through the Revolution and use facts about their lives to guess where their political loyalties were. 

Revolutionary War Pensions

• Roughly 2,000 American veterans and their surviving widows of the battle of Guilford Courthouse applied for pensions in the 1800s for their service in the Revolutionary War. Explore some of those individual stories and learn how they proved their military service and eligibility for a pension.

Note: Programs are subject to change and/or cancelation due to inclement weather, heat, or other unforeseen circumstances. Weather-appropriate clothing and closed toe shoes are recommended. 

Park Day is a volunteer service event sponsored by the American Battlefield Trust. At Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, volunteers have the opportunity to remove split rail fences from non-historic locations in the park. These structures were common in eighteenth-century America and played a role in the opening of the battle at the American First Line. Today, the fences serve as an interpretive tool and reminder of the land's history and agricultural use. Park Day volunteers will also have the opportunity to clean monuments.

The service project involves the demolition of split rail fences. Physical requirements include team lifting weights of up to 25 lbs, walking on a paved incline for ¼ miles, and walking on uneven surfaces.

Volunteers should bring a water bottle. Water fountains are available in the Visitor Center and throughout the park.

Guilford Courthouse NMP has a limited supply of work gloves, which we will distribute on a first-come, first-served basis. Volunteers are encouraged to bring personal work gloves.

Volunteers should dress comfortably and are required to wear closed-toed shoes.

Concluding the 2026 Revolutionary Lecture Series, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park proudly hosts Dr. Seanegan P. Sculley, author of "Contest for Liberty: Military Leadership in the Continental Army, 1775-1783."

In the summer of 1775, a Virginia gentleman-planter was given command of a New England army laying siege to British-occupied Boston. With his appointment, the Continental Army was born. Yet the cultural differences between those serving in the army and their new commander-in-chief led to conflicts from the very beginning that threatened to end the Revolution before it could start. The key challenge for General George Washington was establishing the standards by which the soldiers would be led by their officers. What kind of man deserved to be an officer? Under what conditions would soldiers agree to serve? And how far could the army and its leaders go to discipline soldiers who violated those enlistment conditions?

These questions could not be determined by Washington alone. His junior officers and soldiers believed that they too had a part to play in determining how and to what degree their superior officers exercised military authority and how the army would operate during the war. A cultural negotiation concerning the use of and limits to military authority was worked out between the officers and soldiers of the Continental Army; although an unknown concept at the time, it is what we call leadership today. How this army was led and how the interactions between officers and soldiers from the various states of the new nation changed their understandings of the proper exercise of military authority was finally codified in General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben’s The Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, first published in 1779. The result was a form of military leadership that recognized the autonomy of the individual soldiers, a changing concept of honor, and a new American tradition of military service.

Seanegan P. Sculley enlisted in the U.S. Army in January 1995 as an airborne infantryman before attending Officer Candidate School in the summer of 1999. He was commissioned as an Armor officer, serving at Fort Hood, Texas before completing his B.A. in History at Texas State University in December 2002. COL Sculley then deployed to the Republic of Korea from 2003-2005, and earned his M.A. in History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2007. From 2007-2012, he served as both an instructor and Assistant Professor of History at the United States Military Academy, during which time he deployed to Mosul, Iraq from 2009-2010. Following his assignment to West Point, COL Sculley served at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in May 2015. He directed the American History Program at West Point from 2015-202 and currently serves as an Associate Professor and the Director for the Digital History Center in the Department of History at the U.S. Military Academy. COL Sculley is the author of Contest for Liberty: Military Leadership in the Continental Army, 1775-1783 (2019).

The event is free. Registration is not required.