Author: Marshal Kent Gregory
William Simpson was born on October 14, 1755 near Quantico Creek in Prince William County, VA, the son of John and Hannah Simpson.

He joined the local militia at age sixteen, and volunteered in September 1777 to join the Virginia Line after Governor Patrick Henry’s call to arms. In Captain Valentine Peyton’s Company of Col. William Crawford’s Virginia Brigade, he marched over two hundred miles north to Pennsylvania to join 10,000 troops camped at Pennypacker Mills under General Washington’s command. In the next three months they moved the camp four times to locations closer to Philadelphia waiting for Gen. Howe to bring out his troops. On December 4, Howe led 14,000 British troops to the Battle of Whitemarsh. After three days of skirmishes, Howe retreated back to Philadelphia after encountering the well-entrenched Continental troops on hills above Wissahickon Creek. On December 11, Washington moved his Continental troops to Valley Forge, and William Simpson was sent home with the other militia troops.

During much of the war, William Simpson served as a militia guard on the Potomac River watching for British raiding parties. In January 1781, William responded to Governor Thomas Jefferson’s dispatch and marched 130 miles to Williamsburg under the command of Major Armstrong. He was sent to Yorktown and Mulberry Island to look out for the British troops under Benedict Arnold’s command. William returned to Williamsburg on April 18 when the British moved up the James River. He fought in the battle for Williamsburg on April 20, then retreated to Richmond, where he joined forces under Gen. Lafayette and Gen. Von Steuben to defend Richmond against British Generals Phillips and Arnold.
Later in the year, when Washington and Rochambeau were marching south to Yorktown, the Prince William County Militia under Col. Henry Lee was ordered to cut a wide new road from Georgetown to Dumfries, crossing the Occoquan River at Wolf Trap Shoals. Washington ordered they do this rather than join them in the march to Yorktown.

After the war, Simpson married Elizabeth Cheshire and eventually had eleven children. In 1787 they moved south to Halifax County.

In 1798 he purchased a farm in Henry County near Martinsville, VA. Simpson moved his family west to Rutherford County, Tennessee in 1807, joining the thousands of Americans moving west. In 1816 they moved north into the Illinois Territory and homesteaded on the frontier near Burnt Prairie. Illinois gained statehood in 1818, and in 1819 Wayne County was formed. William Simpson served on the first two Grand Juries in Wayne County, IL.

In 1833 William Simpson gave testimony in Fairfield, IL at the Wayne County Courthouse on his service for a Revolutionary War pension (R. 9596) of $20 a year.

William Simpson died March 21, 1839 and is buried in the Simpson Cemetery southeast of Fairfield, IL.