1757 Va. Acts 334, An Act for Better Regulating and Disciplining the Militia, ch. 1

I. WHEREAS it is necessary, in this time of danger, that the militia of this Colony should be well regulated and disciplined, Be it therefore enacted, by the Lieutenant-Governor, Council, and Burgesses, of this present General Assembly… that from and after the passing of this Act every … officer, bearing any commission in the militia of this Colony, shall be an inhabitant of, and resident in, the County of which he is or shall be commissioned…IV. …that every person so as aforesaid enlisted (except free mulattoes, negroes, and Indians) shall be armed in the manner following, that is to say: Every soldier shall be furnished with a firelock well fixed, a bayonet fitted to the same, a double cartouch-box. . . .