Battle of Spencer's Ordinary

On June 26, 1781, near the close of the American Revolutionary War, a sharp but indecisive clash unfolded close to Williamsburg, Virginia, at a crossroads tavern known as Spencer's Ordinary. The engagement pitted British troops led by Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe against Americans under Colonel Richard Butler, each commanding smaller detachments drawn from larger forces, Simcoe's from General Lord Cornwallis's army and Butler's from that of the Marquis de Lafayette.

In the days leading up to the fight, Lafayette had been tracking Cornwallis's march toward Williamsburg from the interior of Virginia. When he learned that Simcoe's unit had drifted apart from Cornwallis's main body, he dispatched Butler with orders to intercept and isolate the British colonel. As the skirmish progressed, however, each commander grew wary that the enemy might soon receive support from its larger army nearby, and this mutual caution ultimately led both sides to disengage before the outcome could be settled.

Battle

Marching along the route to Williamsburg, Simcoe's column had its infantry and jäger units at the head, guided by Major Richard Armstrong as they escorted a herd of cattle. Simcoe himself trailed with the cavalry, roughly an hour's distance behind. The combined force reunited at Spencer's Ordinary, a tavern by the terminology of the day, and stopped there to recover from the march. Judging the surrounding terrain useful for maneuvering, Simcoe had nearby fences dismantled, remarking that the spot suited what he called the chicanery of action. During this pause, several Loyalists left to gather additional cattle spotted nearby, while the cavalry rode to a neighboring farm so their mounts could feed. It was there that McPherson's soldiers stumbled upon the horsemen, and the alarm raised by sentries reached the rest of Simcoe's command. Reacting quickly, Simcoe sent his cavalry charging into McPherson's ranks, shattering the formation. McPherson himself was thrown from his horse along with several others in the confused fighting, and a handful of prisoners were seized just as Butler's larger force began appearing on the scene.

Simcoe responded by directing the bulk of his infantry forward to reinforce the cavalry, while dispatching the jägers and light infantry into woodland on the right flank to outmaneuver the approaching enemy line. Interrogation of the captured men revealed that Lafayette's forces were near at hand. Simcoe relayed this information to Cornwallis, sent the cattle onward toward Williamsburg, and had timber cut down to build a roadblock as a defensive measure. He then positioned his men in a manner designed to convince the Americans that a much larger body waited just beyond a nearby rise.

Once Butler's troops reached the field, Simcoe launched an infantry assault that drove the enemy's leading elements into the surrounding trees, where the jägers subsequently pressed them further backward. Despite this setback, Butler's soldiers kept pressing forward. In response, Simcoe unleashed a cavalry charge accompanied by cannon fire meant to simulate the arrival of reinforcements. This combined action pushed Butler's men into retreat, and both sides then withdrew from the engagement, Simcoe out of caution regarding Lafayette's advancing troops, and Butler because his forces had been deceived by Simcoe's tactical deception.

Butler's identity

Historians have never fully settled which Butler actually led the American troops that day. Among the earliest chroniclers, Benson Lossing pointed to Percival Butler as the man in charge, noting that he had previously served alongside Daniel Morgan during earlier campaigns. Henry Johnston, however, offered a different account, naming Richard Butler, celebrated for his role at Stony Point, as the officer in question. This disagreement persists in more recent scholarship as well: Fryer and Dracott side with Johnston in identifying Richard as the commander, whereas Brendan Morrissey seems to have gotten it wrong altogether, attributing the role to John Butler instead.

Aftermath

Under cover of a truce flag, Simcoe abandoned his injured troops at the tavern and pulled back along the Williamsburg road, meeting up with a detachment Cornwallis had dispatched roughly two miles down that same route. Meanwhile the American forces fell back toward Lafayette's encampment at Tyre's Plantation, which allowed Simcoe the chance to head back to the tavern and retrieve the men he had left behind.

According to Simcoe's own account, his side suffered 11 dead and 25 injured, while he placed American losses at 9 dead, 14 injured, and 32 taken prisoner. Lafayette, however, insisted that his men had inflicted 60 deaths and 100 injuries on the British side. Cornwallis offered yet another figure, putting combined British dead and wounded at 33. This last tally matches what Fryer and Dracott recorded, provided one sets aside Hessian losses from the count.

Today the battlefield sits within the boundaries of Freedom Park, located in James City County near Williamsburg. Materials issued by the park make no mention of whether the precise spot where the fighting occurred carries any form of marker.