Christian Peters – Founder of Peterstown

In This Article

His Story

A Young Man on the Virginia Frontier

Long before Christian Peters became associated with the founding of a Virginia frontier town, he was a young rifleman marching into the Carolinas to fight the British. His Revolutionary War service carried him from isolated forts in western Virginia to the battlefield at Cowpens, where General Daniel Morgan won one of the most important American victories of the southern campaign.

Peters was born on October 16, 1760, in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia. In his later pension testimony, he identified Rockingham County as his birthplace, although that county had been formed from Augusta County in 1778, after his birth.

One of the most personal details he preserved concerned his father and an old family Bible. Peters remembered that his father had recorded his birth date in German. More than fifty years later, the aging veteran still recalled the entry, although he believed the Bible had passed into the possession of one of his sisters.

He was fourteen when the Revolutionary War began. His home region lay along the western edge of established colonial settlement, where residents lived with the possibility of frontier warfare as well as the growing conflict between Great Britain and the American colonies.

From Frontier Forts to the Southern Army

Peters first recalled being drafted into the Virginia militia under Captain Robert Craven. His company marched toward the Tygart Valley, where soldiers were assigned to several forts protecting the settlements. Peters remembered being stationed at the upper Woods fort for at least a month.

His surviving statements disagree about the year of this service, placing it in either 1779 or 1780. The chronology of his later southern campaign makes 1780 the more plausible date, but the discrepancy remains part of the historical record.

After returning to Rockingham County, Peters volunteered to march south with Craven. He remembered that the governor of South Carolina had offered a bounty of one thousand pounds of tobacco to encourage volunteers. Craven offered Peters the position of corporal, which he accepted.

The company marched through Hillsborough and Salisbury, North Carolina, before continuing into South Carolina. Peters recalled joining American forces near Cheraw Hills and participating in operations along the Pee Dee River against Loyalist and British forces.

His recollections of these smaller expeditions included the capture of prisoners near a place he called Black Swamp and another operation toward Georgetown. The dates and sequence in his pension account are not entirely consistent with the known campaign chronology, a difficulty that becomes especially apparent when comparing the Georgetown expedition with the Battle of Cowpens.

A Rifleman at the Battle of Cowpens

On January 17, 1781, the American army under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan faced a British force commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina. Peters remembered joining Morgan’s command shortly before the battle.

According to his account, Morgan’s army shifted its position during the night, leaving men behind to maintain the campfires. The British attacked around sunrise.

Peters identified himself as one of Morgan’s riflemen. He remembered being positioned on the right of the American army, in the second company counting from that flank. This unusually specific detail is among the most valuable parts of his testimony because it records where he believed he stood during the engagement.

Morgan’s carefully arranged defense drew the British into an attack that ended in a devastating defeat for Tarleton’s command. American militia, Continental soldiers, and cavalry contributed to the victory. Peters remembered approximately six hundred British prisoners being taken, a figure he recalled decades afterward.

The Southern Campaigns transcription includes an editorial suggestion that Peters may have been attached to Captain James Tate’s Augusta County militia company. That identification is an interpretation based on his described battlefield position, not an assignment Peters explicitly named in his declaration.

The Retreat Across the Yadkin

Victory at Cowpens did not mean the Americans were safe. British forces under Lord Cornwallis pursued Morgan’s army as it withdrew northward. Peters remembered that his company was assigned to help escort captured British soldiers into Virginia.

Near Salisbury, North Carolina, the Americans crossed the Yadkin River. Peters recalled that the British advance guard reached the opposite bank, but the river was rising so rapidly that the pursuers could not cross at the same place.

His company lost the baggage wagon it had brought from Rockingham County. Nevertheless, the men continued toward Virginia, eventually delivering their prisoners to the militia at Pittsylvania Court House.

Peters returned to Rockingham County and recalled receiving his discharge in the spring of 1781. He later explained that he sold his tobacco bounty as partial payment for a horse and surrendered his bounty certificate and discharge to the purchaser. Decades later, he no longer possessed those documents to support his pension claim.

His Final Campaign in Virginia

Peters’s service did not end with Cowpens. In 1781, he joined another Virginia militia company under Captain Jeremiah Beasley, accepting the position of sergeant in place of a man who was unwilling to serve.

The company marched eastward and joined the American forces opposing the British in Virginia. Peters recalled fighting at Spencer’s Ordinary, also called Hot Water, on June 26, 1781, and at Green Spring near Jamestown on July 6.

At Spencer’s Ordinary, he remembered a difficult engagement during which fourteen men in his company were wounded and one was killed. He recalled retreating under the protection of troops commanded by General Anthony Wayne.

At Green Spring, Peters remembered that his own position on the right exposed him to comparatively little danger, while Wayne’s regular troops suffered heavily.

His final account of his service described approximately one month as a private, six months as a corporal, and three months as a sergeant. He remembered carrying his own rifle, tomahawk, and butcher knife during his wartime service.

Building a New Life at Peterstown

After the Revolution, Peters exchanged military life for the work of settlement and community building. His pension testimony records that he moved to Union County in 1789. Other accounts of his civilian life place him in the region of present-day Peterstown, West Virginia, during the early years of the republic.

An early twentieth-century history of the Peterstown community, preserved by the West Virginia State Archives, credits Christian Peters with an important role in the settlement’s development. According to that account, he established a home approximately two miles east of the later town in 1784.

This local history reports that Peters constructed several gristmills along Rich Creek. Such mills were important to frontier communities because they allowed farming families to have their grain ground locally rather than travel long distances for milling.

The account credits Peters with building three mills, including one around which the community of Peterstown developed. It also describes his involvement in local business and the establishment of a household within the developing settlement.

These details come from a retrospective community history rather than Peters’s own pension testimony. They provide substantial evidence of how he was remembered locally, while original deeds, mill records, and other contemporary documents would help establish the exact sequence of his activities.

The Mills and Founding of the Town

The Peterstown community history reports that Christian Peters built a house in the settlement before 1800 and laid out streets and lots in 1801. The town was formally established by an act of the Virginia legislature on January 4, 1804.

According to this account, the settlement developed around Peters’s milling operations. His work connected agricultural production, transportation, and commerce in a region where local institutions were still taking shape.

The historical account also describes a tavern associated with Peters’s house. A later annotation attributed to a Peters descendant, B. L. Clark, states that the house eventually passed into the household of Peters’s daughter and her husband George Spangler and was destroyed by fire in 1918.

The same local history makes an important distinction between Peterstown and Peters Mountain. While Peterstown was associated with Christian Peters, the mountain’s name was attributed to Peter Wright, not to the Revolutionary War veteran.

Christian Peters thus appears in two different historical records: as a soldier whose firsthand testimony described the Battle of Cowpens, and as a settler remembered for helping establish a frontier community. The first is documented in his pension application; the second is preserved in later local histories.

From His Account

Military Service

Conflict	American Revolutionary War
Allegiance	American Patriot
State	Virginia
Organization	Virginia Militia
Ranks	Private, Corporal, Sergeant
Company Commanders	Captains Robert Craven and Jeremiah Beasley
Other Officers	Daniel Morgan, Edward Stevens, Nathanael Greene, John Willis, Anthony Wayne
Service	Frontier defense; southern campaign; Virginia campaign
Notable Engagements	Cowpens; Spencer’s Ordinary; Green Spring
Reported Service Duration	Approximately ten months in his later pension declaration
Pension Application	S5898
National Archives Identifier	Not independently verified

Later Life & Burial

By September 1832, Christian Peters was living in Peterstown, Monroe County, Virginia, in the region that became West Virginia in 1863. He was seventy-one years old when he appeared before the county court to seek a federal pension for his Revolutionary War service.

His application depended partly on the testimony of men who had known him during the Revolution. His brother John Peters supported his account of service under Captain Craven and Captain Beasley. John Dunn, who had served alongside him in Virginia, corroborated his participation in the engagements at Hot Water and Jamestown.

In a supplemental statement, Peters acknowledged that advancing age had weakened his ability to remember exact dates and periods of service. He nevertheless continued to describe the campaigns, officers, and experiences that had marked his military life.

Later genealogical accounts report that Christian Peters died on October 18, 1837, two days after his seventy-seventh birthday. Find a Grave memorial number 21424645 identifies his burial as Peterstown Cemetery in the Rich Creek area of Giles County, Virginia.

The death date and cemetery identification are reported in secondary genealogical records and have not been independently confirmed through a contemporary death record or authenticated burial inscription.

Family & Descendants

The family of Christian Peters appears in both his Revolutionary War pension materials and later histories of Peterstown. Together, these sources provide a starting point for tracing the generations that followed him, although they do not establish every relationship with equal certainty.

Marriage and Children

Later genealogical accounts identify Christian Peters’s wife as Anna Katherine Fudge Peters (1766–1839) and report that they married on May 3, 1785. These details require confirmation through contemporary marriage or family records.

The early Peterstown community history identifies two sons, John and Conrad, and four daughters. It records the daughters through their marriages to John Symns, Elias Hale, Charles Spangler, and George Spangler. Their given names are not established by the information used for this account.

The same local history describes John Peters, also known as Captain Jack, as a miller and wagon maker. Conrad Peters was remembered as a blacksmith and hotel keeper. The source also reports that both men held militia commissions around the War of 1812, although it does not conclusively establish their wartime service.

Conrad Peters also appears in Christian’s pension materials as a justice of the peace before whom supporting testimony was taken. The pension transcription identifies Conrad as Christian’s son. Later genealogical accounts give his fuller name as Conrad Lewis Peters and report his dates as 1786–1849.

Siblings and Family Witnesses

Christian’s brother John Peters, himself associated with pension application S5897, supplied testimony confirming Christian’s Revolutionary War service.

His sister Mary Peters married John Dunn, who served with Christian during the Virginia campaign and testified on his behalf. Their relationship is identified in the annotations accompanying the pension transcription.

Christian also remembered his father’s German-language entry in the family Bible, but his father’s name is not established by the pension evidence presented here.

Grandchildren and Later Generations

The Peterstown community history identifies several members of later generations, including Mrs. Eliza Dunn, S. Y. Symns, G. P. Spangler, and J. E. Spangler. These names offer useful leads for further research into the Peters family’s descendants.

Because the local history was written long after Christian Peters’s lifetime, these descendant relationships should be checked against census records, probate documents, marriage registers, deeds, and family papers before constructing a definitive family tree.

For descendants researching Christian Peters, pension application S5898 is an essential starting point. The Peterstown community history supplies additional family leads, but the two sources should be used together rather than treated as equally direct evidence for every detail.

Original Sources & Historical Note