Bladen County’s critical role during the Revolutionary War as part of “the race to Wilmington” was commemorated Sunday, Feb. 22 at Harmony Hall Village Plantation outside of White Oak.

Two weeks earlier, Loyalist forces under Colonel John Slingsby captured several Whig—that is Patriot—supporters in what’s now Fayetteville. Slingsby brought his prisoners to Elizabethtown, in Bladen ...