Some unsung heroes of the Battle of Kings Mountain
This third installment of a four-part series celebrating the Appalachian region’s contributions to the creation and culture of the United States expounds on a portion of the story told in the first installment: “Across the mountain: The courage and American legacy of the frontier settlers of the Watauga Settlement.” As a complement to that story’s mention of lesser-known patriots who helped deliver victory, this report endeavors to call particular attention to their legacy of selfless service alongside their more famous counterparts.
By Ron Roach
On Oct. 19, 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered his army to George Washington’s American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia, ending major military operations in the American Revolution. The surrender marked the culmination of more than six years of fighting and remains one of the most celebrated events in American history. Yet few Americans realize that the road to Yorktown passed through the mountains of Southern Appalachia, where one year earlier a relatively small force of frontier militiamen had won a decisive victory over a British command at a place called Kings Mountain.
Fought on Oct. 7, 1780, the Battle of Kings Mountain helped reverse a series of British successes in the South. The victory disrupted British plans to secure the southern colonies, strengthened patriot resistance, and suppressed Loyalist support for the British. This defeat, when added to the subsequent heavy British casualties at the Battles of Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse in early 1781, forced Cornwallis to move toward Yorktown, where he would be entrapped. General Henry Clinton, Cornwallis’s superior, later wrote that King’s Mountain “unhappily proved the first link of a chain of evils that followed each other in regular succession until they at last ended in the total loss of America.” From the American perspective, Thomas Jefferson described the battle as “the turn of the tide of success” in the war for independence.
Despite its importance, Kings Mountain has received less attention in popular accounts of the Revolution than the larger battles in the New England and Middle Atlantic colonies. Even among those familiar with the battle, attention has generally focused on its famous leaders, such as John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, William Campbell, and, on the British side, Patrick Ferguson. While their leadership was certainly important, the victory would not have been won without the courage and sacrifice of hundreds of ordinary men and women whose names are largely forgotten today.
As Americans commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is appropriate to remember these lesser-known participants. Their stories reveal much about the diverse peoples who settled the Appalachian frontier, their relations with the indigenous peoples they encountered there, the difficult choices they faced during the Revolution, and the contributions they made to the founding of the United States.
The rank and file
In September 1780, Major Patrick Ferguson, a Scotsman, was leading his British force through the Carolina backcountry, recruiting Loyalists and threatening those who continued to resist. Ferguson warned that he would cross the mountains, hang the patriot leaders, and “lay their country waste with fire and sword.” This was not the first such threat directed toward the frontier settlements. For example, on May 18, 1776, while the Continental Congress was hammering out the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, a mysterious rider delivered a letter to Charles Robertson, one of the leaders of the Watauga settlement, declaring that if the settlers did not sign the oath of allegiance to King George III, they would bring “inevitable ruin” to themselves and their families. Rather than intimidating the frontier settlers into submission, these threats galvanized resistance, leading them to organize a preemptive expedition against Feguson.
On Sept. 25, 1780, approximately 1,000 patriot militiamen from the frontier settlements of southwestern Virginia and what is now northeast Tennessee (then part of North Carolina) assembled at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River. The following morning, they began their march across the Blue Ridge Mountains to confront Ferguson. This force, later called the Overmountain Men, rendezvoused with smaller militia forces from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia to pursue Ferguson toward Kings Mountain, a low wooded ridge about 40 miles southwest of Charlotte.
On Oct. 7, approximately 900 riflemen from the patriot force surrounded Ferguson’s position and, using tactics learned from years of frontier fighting, moved through the forest and up the ridge. In a battle that lasted little more than an hour, Ferguson was killed and more than 1000 of his force of 1,100 men were killed, wounded, or captured. The patriots suffered approximately 90 casualties. Ferguson’s command represented roughly one-quarter of the combined British field forces operating under Cornwallis in the Carolinas, so its destruction was a major blow to British military strength and to their strategy of securing the southern backcountry through Loyalist support.
Notably, the Battle of Kings Mountain was fought almost entirely between Americans. On the British side, only Ferguson was a regular soldier from Britain. The remainder were American Loyalists, including approximately 100 professionally trained Provincial soldiers and about 1,000 militiamen, primarily from the Carolinas. The conflict was therefore not simply a struggle between Americans and a foreign army. In the southern backcountry, the Revolution was frequently a civil war that divided families, neighbors, and communities.
The victory was remarkable not only for its military significance but also for the character of the men who achieved it. None of them were professional soldiers; they were farmers, hunters, craftsmen, and merchants who had traveled considerable distances, providing their own horses, rifles, and supplies. Many were immigrants or the children and grandchildren of immigrants.
Among the most numerous of these settlers were the people who came to be known as the Scotch-Irish, Ulster Scots, or, later, Scots-Irish. They were primarily descendants of Scottish Presbyterians who had settled in the northern Irish province of Ulster during the 17th century. Beginning in the early 18th century, large numbers emigrated to America, most settling first in Pennsylvania and then moving south through the Shenandoah Valley into the Carolina backcountry and Appalachian Mountains. Historians estimate that approximately 200,000 to 250,000 Scots-Irish immigrated to the American colonies by the beginning of the American Revolution. Including their American-born descendants, they constituted one of the largest groups of European ancestry in the colonies, second only to the English in some historical estimates, comprising as much as one-tenth of the colonial population. Their numbers were especially significant along the western frontier, where many sought inexpensive land beyond the established settlements.
In addition to the English, the Scots-Irish on the frontier were joined by immigrants and their descendants from other parts of Ireland and from Scotland, Wales, Germany, France, Holland, and elsewhere in Europe. The varied European ancestry of the patriot forces at King’s Mountain was reflected in three of their most prominent commanders: John Sevier, whose ancestors were French Huguenots; Isaac Shelby, whose father had emigrated from Wales; and William Campbell, whose Scots-Irish great-grandfather immigrated from Ulster in 1726.
In addition to the Europeans in the colonial settlements, both enslaved and free African Americans lived in the southern Appalachian region at the time of the Revolution, although their numbers were considerably smaller than in the plantation districts of the Carolina and Virginia lowlands.
The Cherokee were the largest and most influential indigenous people of the southern Appalachian region. By the beginning of the American Revolution, however, their population had declined to approximately 8,500 to 12,000 people, living in several dozen towns across what are now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, northern Georgia, and western South Carolina. Their numbers had been substantially reduced by epidemics, warfare, and the growing pressures of colonial expansion.
The European American settlers, African Americans, and indigenous Cherokee therefore constituted an emerging and complex frontier society, marked by a clash of cultures and worldviews and marked by varying degrees of cooperation, conflict, unequal power, and competition for land.
The surviving military records help to verify the diverse makeup of the patriot force at Kings Mountain, which was a reflection of the population in the frontier settlements. South Carolina historian Bobby Gilmer Moss identified 868 participants who could be shown to be in the battle through pension applications and other written records (scores more were in the battle or in the larger campaign but lack documentation). Of those documented, at least 58 were identified as Irish by birth, parentage, or descent, including 19 whose hometowns or counties in Ulster and four from southern Ireland. Since most of the records of this time do not list national or ethnic origin of soldiers, the fact that so many are specified as Irish, with a high percentage being from Ulster, is significant.
These numbers, however, tell only part of the story. We must remember that the term “Scotch-Irish” did not come into popular usage until the mid-19th century, so they were all labeled as Irish in the war records, whether they were from Ulster or southern Ireland. In addition, many soldiers with Irish ancestry had been born in America, sometimes two or more generations after their families emigrated. In addition to the 58 noted above, analysis of Moss’s roster reveals at least 250 soldiers with traditional Scots-Irish, Irish, or Scottish surnames. This is not definitive, of course, since many surnames were shared across different populations but taken together, these data suggest that the Irish and the Scots-Irish immigrant traditions were significantly represented among the patriots at Kings Mountain.
In fact, a number of the Scots-Irish in the ranks were born in Ulster, including William “Billy” Hill, William Caldwell, and William Candler, all born in Belfast; and Patrick “Paddy” Carr, John Brown, and Bellingsby Gibson, all from Londonderry or County Derry. Other documented participants included James Dysart of County Donegal, Arthur Erwin of County Antrim, James Hawthorn of County Armagh, and Samuel Mackie and Samuel Martin of County Tyrone. James Miller’s exact place of birth in Ireland is not known, but he and his wife Mary were Scots-Irish Presbyterians who immigrated to the colonies in the early 1760s with their five children. Miller became a leader in Rutherford County, North Carolina and served as chaplain for South Carolina militia unit at Kings Mountain.
Many more soldiers were the children or grandchildren of immigrants from Ireland. For example, Major Joseph McDowell of Quaker Meadows, North Carolina, had a Scots-Irish, Protestant father who was born in County Antrim and a Catholic mother who was born in County Cavan, an unusual mixed marriage for the time.
At least four patriot soldiers at Kings Mountain are cited as being born in the south of Ireland and were therefore probably of the Catholic faith. This is notable, and shows the strength of immigration from Ireland, for at the time of the American Revolution, Catholics constituted only about one percent of the colonial population, numbering approximately 25,000 people, most of whom lived in Maryland, with relatively few residing in the southern Appalachian backcountry. Among these four Irish-born patriots was Patrick Murphy, a native of County Kerry in southwestern Ireland, who served in Sevier’s Watauga contingent. Murphy was wounded in the neck and, according to historian Katherine Keogh White, when his fellow soldiers washed the wound with some captured rum, Murphy grabbed the bottle and drank some, remarking that “it was as good in as it was out.” This incident offers a glimpse of the courage and humor of the ordinary soldiers who fought at Kings Mountain.
These men in the ranks were fighting for more than an abstract political principle. They had survived the dangerous immigration journey to America, seeking religious, political, and economic freedom. In addition, as many as 20 percent of Scots-Irish immigrants and 60 percent of immigrants from southern Ireland, served as indentured servants upon arrival in the colonies. They had experienced the hardships of frontier life and most had already served in earlier campaigns. Now the lives they had forged on the frontier, including their farms, families, and communities, were directly threatened by the British army and its Loyalist and Native American allies. Their determination to defend their homes and families, coupled with their familiarity with the mountain landscape and frontier fighting skills, made the extraordinary victory at Kings Mountain possible.
Homefront defenders
Of course, not all of the men and women who contributed to the victory were actually present at Kings Mountain, for the frontier settlements were under continuing threat of attack while so many able-bodied men were away pursuing Ferguson. Although the Watauga settlements were some distance from the principal Cherokee towns to the south, they were established on lands traditionally claimed by the Cherokee. In 1772, the settlers had negotiated a lease with Cherokee leaders allowing them to remain on these lands, followed by a purchase of the land in 1775. However, these agreements were opposed by some Cherokee leaders, particularly Dragging Canoe, who led a faction of the Cherokee in armed resistance to the expanding settlements and into alliance with the British.
The threat of attack was especially serious in the Watauga, Holston, and Nolichucky settlements, where frontier families had engaged in ongoing clashes with Native Americans for years, and experienced major attacks in 1776. Consequently, some fighting men had to remain behind to defend the settlements. Among those who stayed was John Adair, an Ulster-born settler who had settled along the Holston River in the early 1770s. In 1779, Adair became the entry taker for newly formed Sullivan County, responsible for recording land claims and collecting payments owed to the state of North Carolina. When John Sevier and Isaac Shelby were preparing their expedition against Ferguson in September 1780, they desperately needed money to purchase ammunition and other supplies. Adair had approximately $12,735 in public funds that he had collected but had not yet forwarded to the state treasury.
Although he had no legal authority to use the money, Adair agreed to advance the funds, reportedly declaring that if the British conquered the country, its liberty would be lost and the money would be of little consequence. Sevier and Shelby personally pledged to repay the money or obtain legislative authorization for its use, thereby accepting responsibility for the funds.
Another who remained behind was Colonel Anthony Bledsoe, an experienced frontier militia officer who had commanded patriot forces at Fort Patrick Henry on the Holston River during the Cherokee attacks of 1776. Bledsoe’s service illustrates the dilemma facing the militia, who realized the need to counter the threat from Ferguson but who also could not afford leave their families and communities defenseless. Although men like Adair and Bledsoe did not participate in the battle itself, their contribution to the cause was vital.
The women behind the victory
The role of women in the American Revolution has received increased attention in recent decades but their contributions to the campaigns along the southern frontier deserve much more recognition. Women not only had to maintain farms and households, raise crops, care for children, and care for the wounded, but they also gathered intelligence and, when necessary, took up arms themselves to defend their homes and communities.
In addition, the women of the communities served as the quartermasters of the frontier force as it prepared for battle, sewing uniforms, assembling food, weapons, blankets, tents, and other supplies, preparing livestock, and helping to mold bullets. This role is exemplified by Mary McKeehan Patton, who operated a gunpowder mill near Sycamore Shoals. Born in England in 1751, Patton had learned the process of manufacturing gunpowder, probably from her father, before moving to the frontier with her husband, John Patton, an Irish immigrant who had served in the Pennsylvania militia. As the Overmountain Men mustered at Sycamore Shoals, Patton supplied more than 500 pounds of gunpowder, without which the battle could not have been fought. Mary lived until 1826, continuing her gunpowder business, and is honored with a granite marker in Patton-Simmons Cemetery in Carter County, Tennessee.
Another important woman in the larger campaign on the frontier was Nanyehi, also known by her English name Nancy Ward. Nanyehi was an influential Cherokee Ghi-gau or “Beloved Woman,” who sought to maintain peace between her people and the European settlers. As niece of the famous Cherokee chief Attakullakulla and cousin to Dragging Canoe, Nanyehi had a prominent diplomatic role. She had become a Beloved Woman following her heroic actions in a 1755 battle with the Muscogee (Creek) people, traditional enemies of the Cherokee, in which her husband, Kingfisher, was killed and Nanyehi took up his rifle to continue the fight. In 1759, Nanyehi married an Irish trader named Bryant Ward, with whom she had two daughters.
Nanyehi, with her ties to both the Cherokee and colonial settlers, is a vivid illustration of the complex relationships on the frontier. Her actions reflect the difficult questions and divided loyalties facing frontier inhabitants on all sides during the Revolution. Nanyehi, who along with Attacullaculla had supported the land sale to the Wataugans, warned the settlers of the impending attack by Dragging Canoe in 1776, probably seeking to prevent retaliation upon her people.
Also in 1776, Nanyehi used her power as Beloved Woman to spare the life of Lydia Bean, who had been captured and was about to be burned at the stake. Lydia’s husband William was a friend of Daniel Boone, became the first permanent European American settler in Tennessee, and later fought at Kings Mountain. Nanyehi nursed Lydia back to health while Lydia taught Nanyehi loom weaving and dairy farming, skills that Nanyehi taught to other Cherokee women. Over time, Nanyehi came to oppose further land sales to the European settlers but she continued to seek peace, helping to negotiate peace treaties in 1781 and 1785. Despite her efforts, most of the Cherokee would tragically be forced to leave their Appalachian homes in the 1830s, though a remnant stayed in the Qualla Boundary of North Carolina and are still a vital part of the region today.
Nanyehi died in the early 1820s and is buried in the Nancy Ward Memorial, erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution, near Benton, Tennessee. She is remembered for her contributions by both Cherokee communities and American patriotic organizations. Her leadership and efforts to prevent bloodshed make her one of the most remarkable figures in the history of the Appalachian frontier.
Women also provided essential medical care to the wounded following the Battle of Kings Mountain, as the frontier army had no formal medical personnel. Ellen McDowell and her daughter Jane lived near enough to Kings Mountain that they heard the gunfire. When the sounds of battle ceased, they rushed to the battlefield and spent several days tending the wounded of both sides.
Elizabeth Steele Moore’s husband William was severely wounded in the battle and his leg was amputated. When the army departed, he was left at a local farmhouse. When Elizabeth received the news weeks later, she rode on horseback to Kings Mountain from their home along the Holston River in southwest Virginia, despite the November weather. She then located her husband, nursed him back to health, and took him home. In 1789, he was granted a pension for his service and died in 1827, aged 75 or 76, following Elizabeth’s death several years before. The Moores are buried in Rock Spring Cemetery in Glade Spring, Virginia.
These are but a few of the many stories that illustrate the vital roles that women played along the Appalachian frontier during the American Revolution. Their contributions were essential to building and sustaining the communities and armies that won American independence from Great Britain.
African American patriots
Among the least recognized participants in the Battle of Kings Mountain were several African Americans, both free and enslaved, who served with the patriot forces. Their presence reminds us that the struggle for American independence involved people whose own experiences of freedom and opportunity differed greatly. Historians estimate that between 5,000 and 8,000 African Americans served as soldiers in the patriot forces during the American Revolution, with thousands more contributing in other capacities. At Kings Mountain, historical records identify at least five African American patriots who participated in the battle, although the actual number may have been higher.
One of the best-documented Black patriots was Andrew Ferguson, a free African American born in Virginia around 1765. According to his pension records, Ferguson was still a teenager when he entered military service. He and his father, also a free man, were initially forced into British service but escaped and joined the patriots. Ferguson then participated in several important battles, including Kings Mountain and Cowpens. He suffered several wounds during the war, including a serious head injury that affected him for the remainder of his life. Ferguson settled in Indiana after the war, where he applied for and received a pension in 1831 and a grant of 160 acres in 1836.
Another African American patriot at Kings Mountain was Ishmael Titus, born into slavery in Virginia around 1743 and enslaved by Lawrence Ross of Rowan County, North Carolina. Titus entered military service in 1779 as a substitute for Ross, who promised him freedom in return. After completing a year of service, Titus gained his freedom and voluntarily reenlisted. According to his later pension application, he fought under Colonel Benjamin Cleveland at Kings Mountain and participated in the battles of Guilford Courthouse and Deep River in 1781. He eventually settled in Massachusetts, where he died in 1855 or 1856, reportedly more than 100 years old.
Esaias Bowman, a free man of color from southwestern Virginia, was among the soldiers who pursued Major Patrick Ferguson during the battle. Bowman was one of several men who claimed to have fired the shot that killed Ferguson, although it has never been established who delivered the fatal wound. Bowman survived the war and died in about 1837 in Washington County, Virginia. In 2016, the Daughters of the American Revolution dedicated a monument to Ferguson, Bowman, and John Broddy, another African American patriot, on the battlefield at Kings Mountain National Military Park, in a ceremony attended by descendants of the three men.
The experiences of these men demonstrate the complexities of the time period and the contradictions of a revolution fought in the name of liberty while slavery remained deeply entrenched. Some African Americans supported the patriot cause in hopes of securing freedom or improving their circumstances, while others joined the British, who offered opportunities for emancipation under certain conditions. Nevertheless, these soldiers made important contributions to American independence, sowing the seeds for the future abolition of slavery, and deserve a place of honor alongside the other patriot soldiers.
Remembering the unsung heroes
The victory at Kings Mountain was a turning point in the southern campaign of the American Revolution. It disrupted British plans, revived patriot morale, and helped set in motion the events that led to the final victory at Yorktown the following year. Its significance also extends beyond military history. The battle offers an important glimpse into the complex society that was emerging on the Appalachian frontier. As noted above, the patriot forces included immigrants and descendants of immigrants, primarily from the British Isles, but also from other European nations, as well as several free and enslaved African Americans. These communities also existed uneasily alongside the Cherokee and other Native American peoples, whose struggles to protect their homelands were an inextricable part of the American Revolution on the frontier.
The battle also illustrates the importance of the thousands of ordinary men and women who sustained the struggle for independence. While the names of the patriot leaders are rightly remembered, the outcome of the conflict depended upon countless individuals who never achieved public recognition. They included the farmers who left their fields to fight, the men who defended the settlements in their absence, the women who supplied the forces and cared for the wounded, and the African Americans who served in a war whose promises of liberty were not yet fully available to them.
Their experiences reflect both the strengths and contradictions of early Appalachian society. The people who lived there were neither uniformly heroic nor united in their beliefs. They were individuals confronting extraordinary circumstances, making difficult choices, and helping shape the future of a new nation. The society of that time was imperfect in many ways, as is our world today, but we should be cautious about judging the people of the past solely by the standards of our own time. As the novelist L. P. Hartley famously observed, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Those who lived through the Revolution on the frontier faced difficult choices and circumstances that we are fortunate never to have experienced ourselves.
Over the generations, through a Civil War, two world wars, the Cold War, and the struggle for civil rights, the United States has continued to confront its shortcomings and, often through great sacrifice and struggle, has made substantial progress toward fulfilling its founding ideals of freedom, equality, and justice for all. From these conflicts rose a remarkable nation that has made immeasurable contributions to the world and serves as a symbol of liberty for people around the globe. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, it is a fitting time for Americans to renew their commitments to those ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
The story of Kings Mountain reminds us that the Revolution was not won by celebrated generals and political leaders alone. It was also the work of ordinary people, many of them immigrants or descendants of immigrants, whose courage, labor, and sacrifices made victory possible. Their names may not be widely remembered, but their contributions helped change the course of history. They deserve a prominent place in our understanding of the Revolution and in the history of Appalachia, America’s first frontier.
Ron Roach is chair of the Department of Appalachian Studies and Director of the Center of Excellence for Appalachian Studies and Services at East Tennessee State University.
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