This roadside marker directs visitors toward Red Hill, Patrick Henry’s final home and burial place several miles away. The grave is not located at the marker itself. Henry purchased Red Hill in the 1790s, after the Revolution, and died there on June 6, 1799. The site’s Revolutionary importance therefore comes primarily from the life commemorated at his grave rather than from a documented wartime event on the property.

Henry emerged as one of Virginia’s most forceful critics of British imperial policy during the 1760s. In the House of Burgesses he introduced resolutions against the Stamp Act, arguing that Virginians possessed the traditional rights of English subjects and could be taxed only by their own representatives. His language and courtroom style made him a popular spokesman for resistance, although surviving accounts of his speeches were often recorded or reconstructed years later.

At the Second Virginia Convention in St. John’s Church, Richmond, on March 23, 1775, Henry urged the colony to prepare for armed conflict. The famous concluding words, “give me liberty or give me death,” come from a later published reconstruction rather than a contemporary transcript, but the substance of his proposal is well established. The convention adopted measures to organize Virginia’s defenses at a moment when many delegates still hoped for reconciliation.

After fighting began, Henry briefly served as commander in chief of Virginia’s forces. Political disputes and the reorganization of troops into the Continental Army limited his military role, and he resigned his commission in 1776. That same year he became the first governor of the independent Commonwealth of Virginia. He worked to mobilize manpower and supplies, defend the state, and support the wider war. Henry served multiple terms as governor and remained a major political figure after independence.

During the debate over the federal Constitution, Henry became a leading Anti-Federalist, warning that the proposed national government threatened state authority and individual liberty. Although he opposed ratification, pressure from Henry and other critics helped create momentum for amendments protecting specific rights. His later career therefore linked Revolutionary resistance to the continuing argument over the structure of the republic.

At Red Hill, Henry lived as a planter and lawyer. The surviving law office is historic, while the main house burned in 1919 and was later reconstructed over its foundation. Henry and his second wife, Dorothea Dandridge Henry, are buried on the grounds. This marker serves as a directional memorial to that burial place. It connects a quiet postwar home with a public career that helped move Virginia from protest, through independence, into the constitutional disputes of the new nation.