Jack Jouett is a local hero in this part of Virginia. Most folks have never heard of him, but his story as Virginia’s Paul Revere in the wake of Tarleton’s Raid on Charlottesville was as instrumental as any during the Revolutionary War:
Jouett, then 26 years old, lay asleep on the lawn of the Cuckoo Tavern (Jefferson’s own account says, erroneously, that Jouett was at his father’s house) in Louisa County, Virginia on the night of June 3, 1781. Tarleton’s forces stopped at Cuckoo Tavern from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m., to rest and water the horses. Jouett overheard snatches of their conversation and guessed that the cavalry were marching to Charlottesville to capture the government. Jouett knew that the legislature was completely undefended. Very little fighting had taken place on Virginia soil from 1776 to 1780, so most of Virginia’s forces were deployed elsewhere (a small contingent headed by Lafayette was about 50 miles from Charlottesville, and an even smaller force was stationed at the confluence of the Rivanna and the James, at what is now Bremo Bluff in Fluvanna County). With no possibility of defense, the only hope for Jefferson and the legislators was warning and escape. Jouett quickly mounted his horse and, at about 10 p.m., began the 40-mile ride from Cuckoo to Charlottesville.
The “smaller contingent” was a band of Fluvanna militia under the command of Baron von Steuben based at Point of Fork Arsenal near Columbia, Virginia — not Bremo Bluff (about 10mi up the James River). Cornwallis dispatched a contingent of British cavalry under Lt. Colonel Simcoe to wipe out the arsenal.
Marquis de Lafayette and his regulars tracked Simcoe along the Three Notched Road (today’s U.S. 250) as the Tarleton burned their way towards Charlottesville. When Tarleton was unsuccessful in capturing the Virginia General Assembly and her then-former Governor Thomas Jefferson, he returned to Point of Fork, killing the horses and destroying what he could not take with his rangers at Elk Hill Plantation before withdrawing further south towards Yorktown.