Capt. Simon Bright

A Patriot of the American Revolution for NORTH CAROLINA with the rank of Captain. DAR Ancestor # A014495

His abilities as a military leader were proved when during the War of the Regulation (1771) he served as captain of a detachment of the Dobbs militia which fought in the Battle of Alamance. Over the next few years, as Britain's colonies moved toward their break from the mother country, he became increasingly active in the state's political life. Elected as a delegate from Dobbs County to each of the first five provincial congresses, he attended all but all but the third (Hillsborough, 20 August-20 Sept, 1775) when, as a commander in the North Carolina Continental Line, he was urged by Richard Caswell (friend and neighbor) to remain in the field in order to prepare for the rapidly developing struggle with Britain.

Though an illness sufficiently serious to have prompted Bright to make his will (23 November, 1775) may have kept him from accompanying Dobbs troops to Moore's Creek (February, 1776), he had recovered sufficiently by the following spring to accompany Caswell to the fourth provincial congress (Halifax, 4 April-14 May, 1776). Bright's finest hour may have come at that assemblage, when he and more than eighty additional delegates drafted the Halifax Resolves, thus making North Carolina the first of Britain's American colonies to declare its independence. Over the summer, his health again worsened, forcing him to resign his military command, though he had improved sufficiently by the fall to represent his county at the fifth congress (Halifax, 12 Nov.-23 Dec., 1776), at which time the first constitution of the new state was drafted. At that same congress, Richard Caswell was appointed governor, subject to the convening of the new state legislature. The endorsement of his good friend for this important post was likely Bright's last contribution to the new state. Returning home to Dobbs, his illness suddenly worsened, and he died

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