Gloucester County and The American Society of Le Souvenir Français, Inc., will unveil a granite memorial honoring the French soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice at Gloucester County’s 1781 Battle of the Hook on Friday. The dedication ceremony will begin at 1:30 p.m. at Abingdon Elementary School, rain or shine.
The largest cavalry battle of the American Revolution, the Battle of the Hook, has often been overlooked, according to Robert Kelly, Gloucester’s Historic Resources Supervisor. It is one of the most important episodes of the siege of Yorktown, when the Duc de Lauzun’s famous Legion of hussars with 300 troops of the “Infanterie de Marine,” and Lt. Col. John Mercer’s Select Battalion of Grenadiers, under the overall command of Brigadier Gen. Claude de Choisy, defeated Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton’s British Legion and a detachment of the Royal Welch Fusiliers.
In 2018, Gloucester County received funding from the American Battlefield Protection Program of the National Park Servic...