These Soldiers Were Buried in an Unmarked Grave During the Revolutionary War. Now, Historians Finally Know Their Names

At a recent memorial ceremony, officials honored 28 Continental soldiers and at least 38 British soldiers who were buried in Wilmington, Delaware, nearly 250 years ago

Ellen Wexler | Writer and Special Projects Editor

October 6, 2026 7:00 a.m.

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

During the American Revolution, many of the soldiers killed in action were interred in unmarked graves. The fledgling nation wouldn’t “systematically care for its war dead” until decades later, according to Arlington National Cemetery. “After a battle, the victorious army, which controlled the battlefield, would usually bury the dead from both armies.”

At one long-forgotten burial, a list of names has finally appeared. A cemetery in Wilmington, Delaware, holds the remains of at least 66 soldiers who died during the war, and researchers have now identified 33 of them.

“For nearly 250 years, they have lain unknown and unremembered,” John Carney, the mayor of Wilmington, said at a memorial ceremony last month. “For too long, their stories have been obscured and their final resting place overlooked. Today, that changes as we dedicate a permanent memorial on this hallowed ground in their honor.”

The list includes 28 soldiers from Rhode Island, half of whom were Black, and 5 British officers. (At least 38 British soldiers are buried at the site, but most are still unidentified.) At the ceremony, attendees listened to the national anthems of the United States and the United Kingdom, and all 33 names were read aloud.

The British soldiers died after sustaining injuries at the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania, where nearly 30,000 troops fought on September 11, 1777—the largest single-day battle of the Revolution. When the British emerged victorious, they quickly set up a hospital in Wilmington to treat their 488 wounded. Two days after the battle, 112 wagons full of injured soldiers traveled to the city, located some nine miles south. Those who died were buried in the Poor and Strangers cemetery.

“We had to use modern algorithms to sort of reverse engineer this, to figure out how many we could have expected from the 488 to die,” local historian Bill Knightly, who led the research on the British soldiers, tells Nathan Field of the Wilmington History Society. “The very, very conservative algorithm that we used came up with 38 deaths, and we actually think it’s much more.”

Four years after Brandywine, in 1781, the Rhode Island soldiers were among the 20,000 patriot troops who fought in the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia. After the battle, which laid the groundwork for the British Army’s surrender, these members of the First Rhode Island Regiment made their way home, with many contracting smallpox along the way. Some were treated at a hospital in Wilmington, and 28 of those patients died.

“You have to believe these soldiers could at least see the end of the war coming,” Knightly tells the Wilmington History Society. “And then to succumb to smallpox is probably something they did not foresee.”

These men were also buried in the Poor and Strangers cemetery. As the city expanded in the 1850s, both groups of soldiers’ remains were moved to the Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery, where they rest today.

Researchers found the men’s names by combing through primary sources. One document lists all 28 of the Continental soldiers, who died between December 8, 1781, and January 27, 1782. Ten were free Black men, while four were enslaved laborers.

“Black soldiers fought alongside white and Indigenous soldiers for American independence at a time when the nation’s promise of liberty did not extend to them,” the City of Wilmington says in a statement. “For those who enlisted while enslaved, military service also represented a path to freedom.”

In 1778, Rhode Island lawmakers, facing a shortage of soldiers, voted to allow enslaved men to enlist. In return, these men would be granted their freedom, and their enslavers would be compensated. Lawmakers repealed this policy a few months later, but by then, more than 100 enslaved men had already taken the government up on its offer.

One of the Black soldiers buried in Wilmington was Private Caesar Rose. One of his direct descendants, Jason Roomes, attended the memorial ceremony. “He went from a slave to a soldier,” Roomes tells WDEL News’ Mark Fowser. “I’m glad that they’ve built something to recognize all of the soldiers, not just the generals and colonels.”

Also in attendance was Colonel Thomas Archer-Burton, a military representative from the British Embassy. During the ceremony, he spoke about the significance of honoring British and American soldiers together.

“I don’t believe these soldiers could have imagined this scene,” Archer-Burton said. “They couldn’t have imagined the Union flag and the Stars and Stripes being carried together. They could not have imagined ‘God Save the King’ and ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ being played at the same ceremony.”

At the gathering, officials also read an excerpt from a poem by Adam Drummond, the father of one of the British soldiers. Knightly tracked down the poem at the National Library of Scotland, whose staff sent him the full text. It begins:

His past, its past, the dread suspense is o’er
My dear my lovely soldier is no more
The murdrous gun in this unnatural strife
So surely aim’d has robb’d him of his life
And he to death has fallen an easy prey
Why did I live to see the fatal day

Ellen Wexler is a staff writer and special projects editor, digital, for Smithsonian magazine.