“[T]he whole Rebel Line presented itself to View & so close that those who compos’d this spirited Attack had nothing to Expect but Slaughter.”1
— Lt. Frederick Augustus Wetherall, September 1777
Once the main British line reached Street Road, Capt. Johann Ewald’s original advance guard was absorbed into the main body of Cornwallis’s division. The 17th Regiment of Foot’s light company formed on the right of Col. Abercromby’s 1st Light Infantry Battalion, and the 42nd Highlanders’ light company formed on the left of the battalion. Ewald’s jaegers dispersed in front of the entire line, traded shots with the Americans, and continued moving forward.
Members of the 3rd Virginia, meanwhile, fired from the Jones orchard at the powerful lines of professionals tramping steadily toward them. When the pressure became too great, the Virginians fell back to the three-foot stone wall surrounding the one-acre cemetery abutting the Birmingham Meetinghouse some 300 yards south of the Street Road-Birmingham Road intersection. Because the Quakers believed gravestones to be nothing short of “monuments to vanity,” other than scattered mounds and depressions from recent burials, the cemetery constituted unencumbered ground. Once behind the rock wall, the 3rd Virginia began picking off members of Abercromby’s battalion. Lord Stirling, who was watching the action unfold to his front from his post on Birmingham Hill, ordered his artillery to open fire as the British light infantrymen ascended the small hill upon which sat the meetinghouse.2