Monument located in
Old Pilgrim Reform Churchyard Wooldrich Fritz was my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Wooldrich Fritz was the only son born to Hans Ulerich Fritz, and he was born in Germany in 1730. The Fritz family left Germany by way of the Rhine River, sailing on the English ship Elizabeth to the Isle of Wright, and from there to America. The Fritz family arrived in Philidelphia on October 30, 1738. Wooldrich was eight years old when the family arrived in America.

After leaving Phildelphia, the Fritz family established their residence in Shenandoah County, Virginia. Wooldrich married in Virginia, and he and his wife Janet had four children there. They had two sons, George and John, and two daughters, Mary and Jean. Wooldrich's family moved sometime after 1762 to Lexington, North Carolina, where became a farmer and had a third son, Henry. It was these three sons that later changed the family name from Fritz to Fritts. Wooldrich belonged to the Pilgrim Reform Church a few miles south of Winston-Salem.

Wooldrich and his two oldest sons were soldiers in the service of North Carolina during the American Revolution. Wooldrich served as a private in the Revolutionary Army and fought in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in 1781. After that battle, the war moved on, and Wooldrich returned to his farm. As the war was coming to an end, some weeks after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis and as the British troops were withdrawing to ports to return to their homeland, a disgruntled band of British sympathizers, Tories and Redcoats, went to Wooldrich's home on the evening of November 2, 1781 and shot and killed him. Wooldrich's patriot friend Valentine Leonard was also shot and died on November 18,1781. The two were buried side by side in the Old Pilgrim Reform Churchyard near Lexington, North Carolina. This is one of the oldest graveyards with many tombstone inscriptions in the German language. A 16 foot tall monument was erected over the two graves by the citizenship in 1896. The inscription reads "Erected to the memeory of two courageous Patriots of the Revolution, Wooldrich Fritts and Valentine Leonard".

I am a descendant of Wooldrich Fritts by his youngest son Henry. From Henry's ten children, Jacob was my great-great-great-grandfather. Jacob had eleven children, of which William Nelson Fritts was my ancestor, and his daughter Adelia Fritts married Samuel Houston Anderson, my great-grandparents.