page_title: Provincial troops in the French and Indian Wars
section_title: Virginia
hierarchical_section_title: Provincial troops in the French and Indian Wars / French and Indian War / Virginia
caption_attribution_description: The earliest authenticated portrait of George Washington shows him wearing his colonel's uniform of the Virginia Regiment from the French and Indian War. The portrait was painted about 12 years after Washington's service in that war, and several years before he would reenter military service in the American Revolution. Oil on canvas.
context_page_description: Provincial troops were raised by the colonial governors and legislatures for extended operations during the French and Indian Wars. The provincial troops differed from the militia, in that they were a full-time military organization conducting extended operations. They differed from the regular British Army, in that they were recruited only for one campaign season at the time. These forces were often recruited through a quota system applied to the militia. Officers were appointed by the provincial governments. During the eighteenth century militia service was increasingly seen as a prerogative of the social and economic well-established, while provincial troops came to be recruited from different and less deep-rooted members of the community.
  The first provincial forces in British North America were organized in the 1670s. The major operations during King William's War were conducted by provincial troops from Massachusetts Bay. During Queen Anne's War provincial troops from Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Hampshire made up the bulk of the English forces.
context_section_description: The conflict over the Ohio Country led to raising of the first provincial regiment in Virginia. In 1754 the General Assembly voted to raise a regiment of 300 men and send it to the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers. After the battle of Fort Necessity the regiment the Assembly voted to raise the regiment from five to ten companies.
  Virginia Regiment, Colonel Joshua Fry; Colonel George Washington.
  The Virginia provincial troops that participated in the Braddock Expedition of 1755, and suffered defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela were unregimented; at the behest of General Braddock they were organized in two companies of carpenters, six companies of rangers, and one troop of mounted rangers, in all 450 men. The remaining 350 from the original ten companies of the Virginia Regiment were used to augment the two regular regiments of the expedition.
  After Braddock's defeat, the Virginia regiment was immediately reformed, and the Assembly voted in 1755 to raise it to 1,500 men in 16 companies. In 1756 its actual strength was 1,400 men, while in 1757 it was reduced to 1,000 men.
  Virginia Regiment, Colonel George Washington.
  In 1758 Virginia raised two regiments of a thousand men each for the Forbes Expedition. The enlistment period for the first regiment expired in May 1759, and for the second in December 1758:
  First Virginia Regiment, Colonel George Washington.
  Second Virginia Regiment, Colonel William Byrd III.
  After the fall of Fort Duquesne, the Assembly voted in 1759 to fill up the one regiment still in service, and to raise a force of another 500 men that would remain in the province for its immediate defense. The regiment would remain in service until May 1760:
  Virginia Regiment, Colonel William Byrd III.
  Additional force of 500 men.
  With the outbreak of the Cherokee War, the Assembly prolonged the Regiments service, adding 300 men in three companies as frontier guards. It remained on the Cherokee frontier until early 1762, when the governor disbanded it:
  Virginia Regiment, Colonel William Byrd III; Lieutenant Colonel Adam Stephen.
  In 1762 the British government wanted Virginia to raise a regiment that would be put on the regular British establishment, but the General Assembly voted to re-raise the Virginia Regiment. That regiment was disbanded in May 1763, just before the outbreak of Pontiac's War, since the province could not maintain it without the paper money disallowed by the Board of Trade.
  Virginia Regiment, Colonel Adam Stephen.
caption: George Washington in the uniform of the Virginia Regiment
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