Private Journal (Supplement):
Case File: 006
Dilwynn, Virginia
September 15, 1984, 2:02:23 AM
We made contact! I’m not certain if I need to take a bath or be excited. Last night we made contact. The creature we’re looking for is named Peter Francisco. Yes, the Revolutionary War hero. As expected, he knew we were there. Unexpectedly, he was civil and very open to conversation. He’s about 6′ 8″ tall and weighs about 250 pounds (at least by his human looks–he’s never admitted to any other looks). He dresses in dark clothes not unlike a typical amish outfit–black pants, black vest, gray shirt and black hat. He has no facial hair, but his wild gray hair falls down to his shoulders. He walks with a limp in his right leg, and seems quite pale, but otherwise he appears healthy. Quickly, we convinced him, we weren’t crackpots but actually knew something. Abruptly, he decided a field wasn’t the best place to talk and invited us to his house for dinner. His place ended up being the house of a local family. The family clearly didn’t enjoy his presence, but firmly accepted his charge. It was obvious they are being coerced and lest anyone think Peter is just a genial old man, he is something far more powerful and disturbing. I have met my fair share of psychopaths in prisons, but he is even more dangerous than that. I will relate some of the story about his life which he readily told us.
Francisco’s origins are shrouded in mystery. He believes he was born on July 9, 1760 at Porto Judeu on the island of Terceira, in the Azores. He was found at about age five on the docks at City Point, Virginia, in 1765. Peter was taken to the Prince George County Poorhouse. Not speaking English, he repeated the name “Pedro Francisco”. The locals called him Peter. The locals discovered the boy spoke Portuguese and noted his clothing was of good quality.
Peter said he had lived in a mansion near the ocean and his mother spoke French and his father spoke another language which he did not know. He and his sister were kidnapped from the grounds and they were both tested in some form of a ritual by a local witch. His sister was released, while he was bound and put on board a ship. He believes to be killed at sea. The sailor’s however, could not believe he was an evil creature and, instead, dropped him off in City Point.
Peter was soon taken in by the judge Anthony Winston of Buckingham County, Virginia, an uncle of Patrick Henry. Francisco lived with Winston and his family until the beginning of the American Revolution and was tutored by them. When he was old enough to work, he was apprenticed as a blacksmith, a profession chosen because of his massive size and strength. Francisco became part of the movement for American independence; he attended Patrick Henry’s famous “Liberty or Death” speech outside St. John’s Church in Richmond.
At the age of 16, Francisco joined the 10th Virginia Regiment in 1777, and soon gained notoriety for his size and strength. He fought with distinction at numerous engagements, including the Battle of Brandywine in September. He fought a few skirmishes under Colonel Morgan, before transferring to the regiment of Colonel Mayo of Powhatan. In October, Francisco rejoined his regiment and fought in the Battle of Germantown, and also appeared with the troops at Fort Mifflin on Port Island in the Delaware River. Hospitalized at Valley Forge for two weeks following these skirmishes, he shared a room with the 20-year-old Marquis de Lafayette, with whom he became friends. At Lafayette’s request, George Washington authorized the crafting of a special sword for Francisco, measuring some five feet long.
Over the next three years, Francisco became the most well-known private soldier of the war. On June 28, 1778, he fought at Monmouth Court House, New Jersey, where a musket ball tore through his right thigh. He never fully recovered from this wound, but fought at Cowpens and other battles.
He was part of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne’s attack on the British fort, Stony Point, on the Hudson River. Upon attacking the fort, Francisco suffered a nine-inch gash in his stomach, but continued to fight; he was second to enter the fort. He killed three British grenadiers and captured the enemy flag. Francisco’s entry into the fort is mentioned in Wayne’s report on the battle to General Washington, dated July 17, 1779, and in a letter written by Captain William Evans to accompany Francisco’s letter to the Virginia General Assembly in November 1820 for pay.
Following the Battle of Camden, South Carolina, Francisco noticed the Americans were leaving behind one of their valuable cannons, mired in mud. He freed and picked up the approximately 1,100-pound cannon and carried it on his shoulder to keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy. At Camden, he 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.
Hearing that Colonel Watkins was headed on a march through the Carolinas, Francisco joined him, seeing action at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. He killed eleven men on the field of battle, including one who wounded him severely in the thigh with a bayonet.
Francisco was sent home to Buckingham to recuperate. He volunteered to spy on Tarleton and his horsemen, who were operating in the area. It was on this journey that he performed his best-known action, Francisco’s Fight. He defeated a band of Tarleton’s Raiders and escaped with their horses. He killed all 11 raiders. One night, nine of Tarleton’s men surrounded Francisco outside of a tavern and ordered him to be arrested. They told him to give over his silver shoe buckles. Francisco told Tarleton’s men to take the buckles themselves. When they began to seize his shoe buckles, Francisco took a soldier’s saber and struck him on the head. The wounded soldier fired his pistol, grazing Francisco’s side; the American nearly cut off the soldier’s hand. Another enemy soldier aimed a musket at Francisco, but the musket didn’t harm Francisco. Francisco grabbed it from the soldier’s hands, knocked him off his mount, and escaped with the horse.
He met his first wife Susannah Anderson outside of St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, while traveling with Lafayette. He and Susannah had a son and daughter before Susannah’s death in 1790. He remarried in 1794, to Catherine Brooks, with whom he had three sons and one daughter. After she died in 1819, he married in 1821 for the third time, to Mary Grymes West.
He spent the last three years of his “life” working as the Sergeant-at-Arms to the Virginia State Senate. He “died” of appendicitis, in January 1831; he was buried with full military honors in Shockoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond. He awoke in the mortuary feeling renewed by the psychic emanations coming from the grieving mourners. After thinking about himself he realized he had always healed quickly from wounds in batter and always felt better after a fight. They more vicious, the better he felt. Confused, but knowing he couldn’t suddenly be “alive”, so he pretended to be dead. That night, he killed a man and carried him to the mortuary. Drained of blood in the river, he laid the body in the hearse. When being transported to the graveyard, he switched bodies and left the hearse. Knowing he couldn’t be seen in Roanoke or Richmond again, he traveled to Locust Grove; a property he owned from his first father-in-law.
