Susannah Bolling

Susannah Bolling was born 5 December 1764 in Charles City County, Virginia, into the prominent colonial Bolling family — granddaughter of Virginia Burgess Alexander Bolling and great-great-granddaughter of Colonel Robert Bolling who emigrated from England to Virginia in 1660. In late May 1781, age 16, British General Charles Cornwallis arrived unexpectedly on her family's plantation with the entire British Southern Army and quartered overnight. She overheard Cornwallis's plan to capture the Marquis de Lafayette the next morning at the Half Way House, midway between Richmond and Petersburg. In the middle of the night she snuck out of her home through a secret underground tunnel, crossed the Appomattox River in a canoe, borrowed a neighbor's horse, rode through pitch darkness to the Half Way House, and warned Lafayette of Cornwallis's plan. Lafayette evaded capture and went on to play cat-and-mouse with the British Southern Army, eventually trapping Cornwallis at Yorktown by August 1781. The Battle of Yorktown followed, resulting in Cornwallis's surrender — the last major land battle of the American Revolution. The Patriot victory at Yorktown would not have been possible without Susannah Bolling's courage, patriotism, and determination. She later married Archibald Baird and bore at least two sons including Samuel Davis Baird Sr. (1780), Brant's 5th-great-grandfather. She died in 1820, age 55 or 56. She is doubly descended from Col. Robert Bolling the immigrant: her father Alexander Bolling and her mother Susannah Bolling (b. 1728) were first cousins, both grandchildren of Col. Robert Bolling I and Anne Stith. Alexander Bolling married his first cousin Susannah Bolling on 23 December 1745 in Prince George County Virginia.