06/22/2026
General Nathanael Greene died of sunstroke on Monday, June 19, 1786 at his home at Mulberry Grove near Savannah, Georgia after walking a friend’s fields the week before in the hot summer sun and without a hat. His wife Caty and friend General Anthony Wayne held vigil by his bedside for days. Nathanael stopped breathing at 6 a.m. He was 43. Wayne wrote to Colonel James Jackson,
“I have often wrote you but never on so distressing occasion. My dear friend General Greene is no more. He departed this morning a six o’clock a.m. He was great as a soldier, greater as a citizen, immaculate as a friend. His co**se will be at Major Pendleton’s this night the funeral from thence this evening. The honors, the great honors of war are due his remains. You, as a soldier, will take the proper order on this melancholy affair. Pardon this scrawl; my feelings are too much affected, because I have seen a great and good man die."
With Wayne's letter, the shocking news of Nathanael’s death spread throughout Savannah and the nation. Only the week before, he was walking the streets of Savannah with the firm tread of young health.
Friends dressed his body in the uniform he had worn on formal occasions as a major general of the Continental Army. White silk gloves, a gift from the Marquis de Lafayette, were slipped on his hands. His remains were floated down the river to Savannah and carried ashore where Caty and his children waited among silent citizens. His body lay in state for five hours at his friend, Nat Pendleton's house on the bluff overlooking the Savannah River. Then, a military corps escorted his coffin through the streets while a band played a dirge accompanied by muffled drums. Artillery at Fort Wayne fired in respect. The funeral party reached Colonial Cemetery. A solemn service was read and then Nathanael’s body was placed in the Graham Vault and a 13 gun salute was fired. In their sudden grief, no one thought to erect a marker. 💔
On October 1, 1786, General Greene’s close friend and executor of his will, Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth wrote to George Washington about the general‘s death, information he had received from Phineas Miller, who tutored the Greene’s children:
“Mr Miller a Young Gentleman who went with him to Georgia & lived on terms of intimacy & confidence with him assures me the General was in good Spirits and that he is persuaded he died of a fever in the Head which might have been removed if the Physicians had understood his disorder he had for some time before had an inflamation in one Eye—which was almost done away, when he was Sezed at table with a Violent pain in his Eye & Head which forced him to retire, a fever ensued the Symptoms increased and a few days put an end to his existance.”
