her own borders the Tories were rising, and planning to join the
British in the subjection of this rebellious state.

The plan formulated by the enemy was this: Sir Henry Clinton, with
troops of British regulars, was to come down the coast to the mouth of
the Cape Fear River, where Lord Cornwallis, who with seven regiments
from England was hastening across the Atlantic, was to join him. Lord
Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia, was to incite the slaves and
indentured servants in the Albemarle district to unite with the Tories
in the State; and the Indians in the western counties were to be induced
to take up arms against the whites.

If these plans had matured, North Carolina would have been overpowered,
but one by one they were frustrated. The battle of Great Bridge defeated
Dunmore in his purpose. The Snow Campaign quieted the Indian uprising.
The battle of Moore's Creek Bridge crashed the Tories, and the heavy
winter storms delayed Cornwallis and prevented him from joining Clinton
at the mouth of the Cape Fear.

When Lord Dunmore issued his proclamation offering freedom to the slaves
and indentured servants who should join his majesty's forces, and then
followed up this notice by burning and ravaging the plantations around
Norfolk, Virginia, called upon her sister State for help, and Long and
Sumner, from Halifax, and Warren, Skinner and Dauge from Perquimans and
Pasquotank counties, hastened with their minute men and volunteers to
Great Bridge, where Colonel Woodford in command of the Virginia troops,
had thrown up fortifications.

Among the volunteers who were hastening to the scene of action was John
Koen, of Pasquotank, a boy in years, but a man in purpose and
resolution.

On December 9, 1775, the British attacked the fortifications, and the
sound of heavy firing at Great Bridge, the first battle in which the men
of the Albemarle section had been called to participate, was heard by
the dwellers in the counties nearest Norfolk.

The story is still told by old residents of Rosedale, that John Koen's
mother, who was washing the breakfast dishes when the firing began,
hearing the first heavy reverberations from the cannon some thirty miles
away, dropped the dish she was wiping, and in her motherly anxiety for
the safety of her boy, cried out, "Dodge, John, dodge!"

Whether John dodged or not we do not know, but we do know that he bore
his part manfully in this, his first battle, and shared in the victory
whi