Daniel Morgan’s temper brought him 499 lashes from the British. He repaid them with American victories.

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George Schember takes a few moments to pick through a cabinet full of books and papers before pulling out a magazine and setting it on a nearby table.

The Sept. 3, 1951, edition of Life features Italian model and film star Gina Lollobrigida on the cover, but Schember, 81, keeps the magazine for the article that begins on page 53 with the headline, “Who Gets The General’s Body?”

Over the next several pages, the story chronicles an effort by a group from South Carolina that wants to dig up the remains of Revolutionary War hero Daniel Morgan and reinter them at Cowpens, the site of the general’s most impressive victory. With grass growing up around his crumbling grave in an old section of Winchester’s Mount Hebron Cemetery and only one monument dedicated to Morgan in Winchester at the time — a sign on the outskirts of town — the South Carolinians claimed Winchester was not paying proper respects to its hometown legend.

In and around Cowpens, the article states, streets and town squares bear Morgan’s name. Furthermore, Daughters of the American Revolution chapters built three monuments in his honor. The article quotes a lawyer from the Cowpens area who stated that residents and visitors there are immersed in Morgan lore while in Winchester, only one of 40 people he quizzed knew who Morgan was. “One thought he was a state cop,” the lawyer said.

Schember, who has a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in history and was working on a doctorate in the subject before changing career paths, is a bit embarrassed to admit that he didn’t know much about Morgan when he and his wife, Jeanne, purchased their home in Winchester in 1994. It’s the home where Morgan died on July 6, 1802.

“We didn’t know who Daniel Morgan was,” Schember said with a laugh while sitting on a couch in a sitting room on a recent rainy afternoon. “Don’t tell anybody that. Especially since I was from New Jersey, too.”

Little is known about Morgan’s early life, but historians believe he was most likely born in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, around 1736. After a falling out with his father, he left home around the age of 17 and took odd jobs in Pennsylvania and other spots along the Great Wagon Road (Pennsylvania Route 30 today) before settling in Winchester in 1753.

In Winchester, Morgan became a teamster, hauling goods back and forth across Virginia with horse-drawn wagons. He also made a name for himself as a tough guy, fond of fighting and drinking.

“He couldn’t read, couldn’t write and he was a brawler, he was a rough guy,” said Schember, president of the Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society for about the past 15 years and a leader of Preservation of Historic Winchester before that. “When you look at the records of the time, people sued each other all the time, that was normal and he was constantly in the courts, but that was typical, it was nothing unusual.”

A history of Morgan published on the city of Winchester website states that Morgan was “known as ‘The Old Wagoneer’ and also acquired the nickname of ‘The Bully of Battletown’ given his propensity to engage in brawls.”

The late historian Don Higginbotham wrote in his book, “Daniel Morgan: Revolutionary Rifleman,” that Morgan settled down after beginning a romance with Abigail Curry, with whom he had two daughters and eventually married — “In the next few years only two assault and battery cases were aimed at him, and both were dropped by the plaintiffs.”

But Morgan’s temper got the best of him early in his military career, as he fought on the British side in two Indian wars. It seems he also fought a British officer and paid a painful price, receiving 500 lashes at the camp whipping post. Morgan claimed he remained conscious throughout the punishment, counting the lashes along with a drummer. The drummer, as the legend goes, miscounted and Morgan received only 499 lashes.

“If Morgan did keep his senses, it was a tribute to his superb physique,” Higginbotham wrote. “Standing six feet tall, with broad shoulders and massive arms, he was certainly capable of enduring great punishment.”

Morgan routinely displayed his strength and endurance in his military career, and when it came time to change sides and fight for the Continental Army against the British, he earned the admiration of his superiors, including Generals George Washington, Benedict Arnold, Horatio Gates and Nathanael Greene. He was particularly adept at leading militias composed of riflemen who had similar frontier backgrounds.

“I don’t see historically how there was any better person to lead those people, those backwoods people. He’s an intimidating force,” said Richard Sullivan, a master gunsmith at Colonial Williamsburg.

Sullivan said he’s had a keen interest in Morgan for as long as he can remember. “There’s no way you can be a gunsmith making long rifles and not know who Daniel Morgan is,” he said.

While Morgan recruited and led expert marksmen throughout his military career, Sullivan said he’s not aware of any stories of Morgan’s prowess with a rifle. “He was captain of the militia in the area and that’s where rifles were made. He has some gunsmiths who are members of his rifle company that marched to Boston. It’s just part of that culture of the Valley, big game hunting and Indian fighting. The last Indian raid in the valley was 1766 so that’s a militia duty in the Valley.”

Washington and other top Continental Army commanders coveted the militias after learning how they could provide an advantage fighting the Redcoats.

“The Kentucky rifle, as it was called, was a deadly weapon in the hands of an expert,” Higginbotham wrote. “Spiral grooves inside the barrel, making the bullet rotate in flight, gave it range and accuracy. … Though unable to stand against a bayonet charge in open fields, they would be valuable as snipers and wood-fighters if the growing friction between the colonies and mother country culminated in war. America was mostly a dense wilderness, and riflemen, wearing their traditional hunting shirts — the color of a dry leaf — would blend superbly into this landscape.”

After the Boston Tea Party and the start of the Revolutionary War with the battles of Lexington and Concord, Congress created the Continental Army in June 1775 and voted to raise 10 companies of expert riflemen, six from Pennsylvania, two from Maryland and two from Virginia. Morgan was selected to recruit and lead one of the Virginia companies. After quickly filling his ranks, he marched his company 600 miles to Boston in just 21 days to support the Continental Army there.

Morgan and his men faced a much more difficult task later that year when they took part in a failed raid on Quebec. After leading a grueling winter march through Maine and into Canada, Morgan was forced to surrender and was taken prisoner. Higginbotham said Benedict Arnold’s failure to give clear orders to his subordinates on who should be in charge after he was injured and couldn’t continue hindered the Continentals’ efforts. Morgan wanted to continue taking the battle to the Redcoats, but was overruled by others.

Recognizing his leadership abilities, the British offered Morgan the position of colonel in its army, but he refused. After seven months of captivity, Morgan was freed. Back home on friendly soil, he was commissioned a colonel of a rifle company that became known as Morgan’s Rifle Corps and led them into battle in one of the Continental Army’s most important victories, at Saratoga, New York in fall 1777.

Following the second of two battles at Saratoga, where Morgan’s double envelopment led to victory, Gates wrote in a report to Congress that “too much praise cannot be given to the Corps commanded by Col. Morgan.”

The victory marked a turning point in the war by preventing the British from dividing New England from the rest of the colonies, a development that prompted France to formalize its alliance with the Americans.

“The hero of Saratoga, the guy who gets credit is Horatio Gates,” Sullivan said, “but it’s Benedict Arnold and Morgan who are hugely important.”

Sullivan said artist John Trumbull, aware of Morgan’s importance at Saratoga, put him in the front row of his painting, “Surrender of General Burgoyne,” which hangs in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

Two years after Saratoga, Morgan resigned from the army, disappointed that he was passed over for promotions, and returned to his wife and children in the Winchester area.

At the request of Gates and Congress, Morgan returned to active duty in 1780 to help lead the Southern Campaign. He was promoted to brigadier general and earned his most impressive victory at Cowpens in January 1781.

Schember said the Cowpens victory highlighted Morgan’s knowledge of militias and his rapport with the men: “He knew what they could do and couldn’t do. They didn’t have bayonets, they’re not going to stand. … He said, ‘OK, give me two shots and then you’re out of here.’ So automatically he got the guys on his side. ‘We don’t have to stand up against these charging British guys, the highlanders with their bayonets, just two shots and get behind the Continentals.’ So that was kind of smart. It used their skills as sharpshooters but then get them off the line so they’re not going to get taken out.” 

Morgan’s plan for Cowpens called for placing a line of southern militiamen accustomed to guerilla warfare at the front of his battle formation. Behind them, on higher ground, were two more lines of militia and Continental Army regulars. 

“Morgan’s disposition of his troops was far from orthodox in that he posted his most unreliable units far in advance of the main line of defense,” Higginbotham wrote.

When the British saw the militiamen retreat after taking their shots, they thought they were winning the battle and broke ranks to pursue them. That allowed Morgan’s other lines to inflict heavy casualties on the British while surrounding them and forcing Gen. Banastre Tarleton to surrender.

“Morgan’s courage and confidence, as well as his compelling personality, enabled him to gain the utmost service from militia unaccustomed to open-field fighting,” Higginbotham wrote. “Realizing their limitations, he had adopted a plan of battle specifically designed for them. It was also decidedly to Morgan’s credit that he recognized Tarleton’s errors and was able to achieve the double envelopment of the British flanks.”

Tarleton’s defeat had longer-term consequences and played a role in the Continental Army winning the war at Yorktown.

In poor health following Cowpens, Morgan again retired and returned to Winchester, where he had a new home built in what is now Clarke County. He named the home, “Saratoga.”

But Morgan’s career was not quite finished. In 1793 he was appointed major general in command of the Virginia Militia and in 1794 he helped quell the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania, a violent protest to a tax on spirits that was made law in 1791 to help pay war debts. He also served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Federalist from 1797-1799.

In 1799, he purchased and moved into the home now owned by the Schembers, where he died in 1802. Morgan was initially buried in a graveyard at the old stone Presbyterian Church where he was a member, but his remains were moved and hidden during the Civil War to keep them out of Union hands.

His remains were reinterred at Mount Hebron Cemetery in 1868 and remained there peacefully until the South Carolinians’ attempt to move them once more.

“In the end, Morgan’s memory was the victor, for the Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society erected an impressive granite monument bearing the General’s likeness over the grave,” Higginbotham wrote. “Unveiled by children descended from members of Morgan’s first rifle company, it was dedicated by Congressman Burr P. Harrison. Even in death, Morgan was the center of activity and not a little controversy.”

A statue of Morgan now stands just outside the Old Stone Church on East Piccadilly Street, site of his original burial spot, and Daniel Morgan Middle School is named for him.

His 17-room, 7,000-square-foot home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013 and bears a couple of plaques commemorating Morgan. The Schembers have hosted a number of home tours and other events there over the years.

Sullivan, who has visited the Schembers several times, said Morgan “needs to be remembered, that’s for sure.”