The Revolutionary War is coming to Mathews this weekend.

Reenactors plan to travel to the county on Friday and set up camp on the grounds of the Gwynn’s Island Civic Center to commemorate the 242nd anniversary of the Battle of Cricket Hill.

They will spend the weekend living the way the soldiers of the period lived—sleeping on straw, cooking their meals out in the open, and staging drills for the historic battle.

The battle, which took place in present-day Mathews just five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, was one of the defining engagements of the American Revolution. It was the final stand of Virginia’s last royal governor, Lord Dunmore, who had fled to Gwynn’s Island after the burning of the City of Norfolk.

When revolutionary forces began to gather across Milford Haven, along the shores of the mainland, Dunmore dismissed them as mere crickets. But General Andrew Lewis, who had a personal grudge against Dunmore, attacked the ...