Lieut. Wm. Baylis, of the 8th Virginia Regiment, is the only Revolutionary soldier buried in Henry County. He was born in Virginia in 1755, enlisted in 1777, was commissioned lieutenant in 1781, and at the close of the war moved to Kentucky. In 1836 he came to Henry County, Missouri, and died four years later. During the Revolutionary War he was one of that courageous band of followers who served and suffered at Valley Forge. General Washington was a familiar figure to him. Many were the stories he told his friends of the war. Of the Hessians, the winter at Valley Forge, and the Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown, he knew many incidents.     The latter epoch making event Lieut. Baylis frequently recounted. The old steel engraving, representing the two armies facing the American defiant, the English dejected and the open space where stands Lord Cornwallis with head bowed and uncovered, presenting his sword to the haughty, overbearing condescending General Washington, was not, according to Lieutenant Baylis, true in fact or spirit. The armies were drawn up, but neither general was present. Lord Cornwallis' orderly presented his sword to a representative of General Washington, who magnanimously relieved the dejected commander of any personal humiliation.     Lieut. Baylis, better known as Captain Baylis, was a man of culture and education. He was intensely patriotic, even disinheriting a daughter who married an Englishman. At his expressed request his body was buried on his own farm and a slab of sandstone, quarried from this farm, was the only marker.     Over half a century passed and the grave was almost forgotten until in 1902, James R. Bush, editor of the Calhoun Clarion, was taken to the spot by the late Yantis Parks. Mr.Bush aroused the interest of the only two surviving grandsons, Hon. W. D. Steele, of Sedalia, and Baylis S. Steele, postmaster at Kansas City. The D. A. R. Chapter at Clinton, Missouri, took up the patriotic work, and the erection of a government marker resulted. MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW. VOLUME XI, October, I9i6-July, 1917