Peter Groseclose, Jr.
(1757-1805)

    Peter Groseclose, Jr., the eldest son of Peter Groseclose, Sr. (1730-1803), entered the Revolutionary War while a resident of Pennsylvania. He was in the Battle of Bunker Hill, reportedly lost an arm at the Battle of Brandywine, and was in service until the close of the Revolutionary War. */

    Peter Jr. built this house between 1785 and 1790, after he had moved with his father to Ceres, Virginia, around 1780. He married Elizabeth Sluss in 1782, a cousin of the Sluss family that was massacred by Indians at Sharon Springs (present-day Ceres) during the 1770s or 1780s. **/ He built his home on the land adjoining his father's property on the North Fork of the Holston River, approximately three miles west of Ceres.

    Peter Jr. died in 1805. His wife, Elizabeth, built a dam and grist mill a short distance upriver from the house. Court records state a committee was appointed to inspect it. Their son, "Miller Jake," as he was called, inherited the house and mill. Miller Jake left the house and the mill to his son, Joseph Groseclose, father of Eliza Jane Groseclose (1848-1930). In 1961, a nephew of Joseph, Benjamin Dodd Groseclose, was still residing in the house. The mill is no longer standing.

    Eliza Jane Groseclose married her distant cousin, J.A.T. Groseclose in 1868, and in 1902 the couple moved with their family to Idaho.
 

(Adapted in part from History of Bland County Virginia, 1961)

*/ It is unlikely that Peter Jr. participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. However, it is very possible that he was among the enlistees of several companies of Pennsylvania Riflemen that were organized during June/July 1775 and that accompanied General George Washington, head of the newly commissioned Continental Army, to lay siege on Boston, eventually liberating the city from the British in early 1776. (More about the Pennsylvania Riflemen and the Siege of Boston ...)

**/ See accounts of the Sluss Family Massacre, the Sluss Family, and Spangler's Fort. See also MASSACRE OF THE SCHLUSS FAMILY.