RUTHERFORD COUNTY, N.C. AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

Rutherford County was formed, along with Lincoln County, out of Tryon County in 1779. The first session of court was held at the home of Colonel John Walker, which was located near the mouth of Cane Creek, and not far from Logan Station, that is now on highway 64 on the way to Morganton, N.C. Later the county's business was conducted at the home of William Gilbert which became known as Gilbert Town, that was just north of Rutherfordton, N.C., out past the Tanner plant. A court house was constructed in 1781 on the forks of Shepards Creek on the property of James Holland. In 1785 the court house moved to the new town of Rutherfordton.

Tryon County had been formed from Mecklenburg County shortly after Mecklenburg had been divided from Anson. These divisions and creation of new counties came about as more and more settlers came into the western part of the colonies.

The earliest settlers in what is now Rutherford County probably came here around 1730. They were primarily German and Scotch-Irish. Throughout the mountains the majority were the Scotch-Irish like those that settled in the Cane Creek area and later formed Brittain Church. They brought their own ordained ministers with them. These Presbyterian Ministers were college trained and served also as educators. These settlers were becoming educated, and could read their own bibles, which had been translated by authority of King James I of England, who was also King James the VI of Scotland. One other thing that set these Presbyterians apart was the fact that they elected their own church elders. This was in sharp contrast to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. We will get back to the Scotch-Irish frontiersmen a little later.

If you study the chronology of the events leading up to hostilities between the American Colonies and England, starting in 1764 with ever increasingly punitive laws and taxes, leading to open fighting and then the Declaration of Independence, you will find that even after the Declaration, the war was quite simply, not going well for the Americans. Very few of the historical battles noted in history books were victories for the Americans....1780 was especially bad.

The war in the north was stalemated with General George Washington, and less than 5000 troops in New Jersy against superior numbers under Lord Clinton in New York. The British decided to move the war south where they believed the majority were Tories or Loyalists to King George. They believed that they could recruit these Tories to join the British Army and fight against the American rebels. The Americans were known as Whigs, a political name which denoted support for separation from England. The British moved by sea to the south and attacked Charleston, S.C. in March, and forced its surrender along with 5400 troops on May11th. On May 29th, Colonel Banastre Tarleton slaughtered patriot forces at the Waxhaws, butchering many after they had surrendered. In June Lord Clinton, supremely confident, returned to New York, leaving General Cornwallis in charge of the British and Tory forces in the south. As Cornwallis moved his forces west and north into the up country, patriot forces of local malitia did defeat Tory forces at Ramseur's Mill, Fort Thickity, and Musgroves Mill. On August 16th, Cornwallis routed and destroyed the continental army under General Gates at Camden, S.C. This appeared to leave the entire south open to him. Cornwallis sent Major Patrick Ferguson to invade North Carolina. Ferguson was to recruit and train additional Troy troops and to supress the Backwater men whom he thought of as barbarians. Recruitment had been successful throughout South Carolina. Now all that remained was to secure the left flank along the mountainous frontier, rejoined Cornwallis for a march through North Carolina on to the Chesapeake, then finally to meet General Washington and end the revolution.

On September 7th, Ferguson and his forces came to Gilbertown in Rutherford County. It seemed that Cornwallis and Ferguson had thought of everything. Their military strategy and tactics had been almost flawless with the exception of the three battles with Militia. They had just made a fatal error. Not an error in military tactics or strategy but one of human nature. They completely misjudged the character of the Patriot frontiersmen of Rutherford County, the rest of the frontier of North and South Carolina, Virginia and what is now Tennessee.

Such men as Colonel Andrew Hampton, David Dickey and James Gray were there and knew when Major Ferguson came just to far. Under the command of Colonel Charles McDowell they had fought against Tories in numerous fights for years. They had also fought against the Cherokee Indians who fought on the side of the British as far back as 1755. At this time General Griffith Rutherfod (for whom the county is named) had led them in a successful campaign that drove the Indians further into the mountains.

A small battle was fought on Cane Creek before these few troops, greatly outnumbered, retreated over the mountains to Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River near present day Elizabethton, Tennessee. One of the patriots in the Cane Creek fight was Aaron Devinney. He was captured by Tory spies and held prisoner by Ferguson at Gilbertown. His wife sarah followed and pleaded for his release. This was refused but Sarah persisted, finally getting in to see Ferguson himself. Resorting to tears she again implored for Aaron's freedom. Finally Ferguson consented, saying that he would "rather see 10 men dead than one crying woman." Under terms of Aaron's parole he was pledged not to fight against the British and served in defense against the Indians thereafter....... Joan Devinney Wall, the wife of Ben who is the current president of the Rutherford County Historical Society, is the great great great grand daughter of Aaron and Sarah.

Other wives came to Gilbertown to inquire about their captive husbands. On one occasion in answer to what was going to happen to them a Tory woman, wife of an active Tory fighter, said, "we are going to hang all the dammed rebels and scrape their wives tongues and let them go." Perhaps this was what reduced Sarah Devinney to tears. At any rate we will hear more about that Tory lady later.

Colonel Andrew Hampton had lost his son Noah,... killed by a Tory raiding party just because his name was Hampton. Witnesses said that one of the Tories was Ambrose Mills of Rutherford County. Mills Springs was named for his family. We will here more about him later.

Such incidents were typical of the war in the south. Not only neighbor against neighbor, but brother against brother was not uncommon. Some on both sides fought as outlaws but both sides had good people that felt strongly for their beliefs...loyalty to the king or for this new concept of freedom and independence. James Gray had killed a 'noted Tory' at the Cleghorn Plantation in a previous skirmish. James lived not for from there on Grays Creek. Hampton , Dickey and Gray marched with their friends to Sycamore Shoals to a gathering that was to change history.

Now what kind of people were these fierce frontiersmen? They were, for the most part, the Scotch-Irish. 220 years before, their ancestors lived in the lowlands of Scotland, close to the northern border of England. They were a mixture of Celts, Britons, Normans, Romans, Anglo-Saxon, and the stone-age tribes of Ireland. They were recently reformed into the Presbyterian Church and were very religious. King James I of England had been James the VI of Scotland. The failure of the crown to get the Irish Catholics to become protestant had led James to a new strategy. Starting in 1610 he began granting lands to his English Lords and sending the lowland Scots to Ulster in Northern Ireland as tenant farmers . Professor James G. Leyburn in his book "the Scotch-Irish: a social history" tells us that the Presbyterian Church had transformed these Scots into a sense of self responsibility. The work ethic replaced the old raid ethic which had been much like the wild west was later in the U.S., with cattle rustling and constant threat of battle. But their old fighting instincts endured. They knew they were being used by King James and the Lords but they accepted the move because it held the promise of a better life than on the poor soil of Scotland.

By the early 1700s, due to successive crop failures, increased land rents, and punitive acts to restrict trade, these people began to immigrate to the American Colonies, first to New England, then in ever increasing numbers to Philadelphia, sailing up the Delaware River, then west to the mountain valleys on the frontier, then south through the Valleys of the Cumberland, the Shenandoah, the Dan of Virginia, then into North Carolina along the Yadkin.

Then they came west and south to the Catawba, the Green, the Broad, the French Broad, the Holston, the Watauga, and others. They farmed, raised corn (some of which they converted to whiskey before selling it), and raised cattle . They raised their own wool , linen, spun and wove their own clothes. The Colonial Governments welcomed them and gave them grants of land on the provision that they would raise forts to be the first line of defense against the hostile Indians. Once again, they were considered as expendable to a governments plans, but, again they accepted it gladly, because it offered the hope of something better. In the French and Indian War of the 1740's they learned about Indian fighting, very similar to the fighting of their ancestors against the Highland Scots, and became very efficient and fierce fighters.

From Scotland to Ulster to Rutherford County, these people had survived centuries of living in a hard environment, which made them hard, both physically and socially. Through famine, plague , poor soil for crops, and constant fighting, they learned to fight back, to give blow for blow, and above all to endure. They had been tempered by their religion, but it too was a hard religion, steeped in the old testament religion of the Lord of battle. And finally these men came to the gathering at Sycamore Shoals, a gathering primarily of Presbyterians. They were joined by Colonel Campbell and his men from Western Virginia, by Issac Shelby and John Sevier, from that area, and they determined to go and get Ferguson. But first they would have a religious service, after all, five of their commanders were elders of the church: Colonels Campbell, Cleveland, Shelby, Sevier, and Williams.

It was altogether fitting that they would gather there along with their women folk and children, under the preaching of the Reverend Sam Doaks, a Presbyterian Minister. He had done his share of fighting but would not go with them after Ferguson, but stay in defense of the women and children. He preached a powerful sermon admonishing the men to do their duty in the upcoming battle. He prayed and asked the Lord to note the similarities of these men to the army of Gideon in the fight against the Midianites and he ended his prayer with the words of Gideon when he instructed his men to surround the enemy and on the signal of the trumpets to shout, 'The Sword of The Lord and of Gideon.' Reverend Sam paused. Then raised his arms and his voice to the gathering and told them "let that be your battle cry. The Sword of The Lord and of Gideon". The men shouted back "The Sword of The Lord and of Gideon."

It was time to go, and they started the climb up the mountains, once again looking for something better. This time though, the something better was not just for them. It was, in fact a 'birth of freedom 'which became the last great hope of freedom loving people the world over.

As they reached the top of Roan Mountain they found snow and lost two deserters [probably spies] who rushed ahead to warn Ferguson. Duly alarmed by what he called an inundation of barbarians, Ferguson left Gilbertown to rejoin Cornwallis in Charlotte.

The patriots went from Roan through Yellow Mountain Gap, by Roaring Creek, through Brights settlement and Davenport Springs. On September 28 they were at Grassy Creek, then on through Gillispe Gap where they split into two columns, now suspecting that Ferguson had been warned. At Quaker Meadows, near Colonel Charles McDowell's house, they were given the hospitality of his home, and then were joined by additional men from Wilkes and Surry Counties under Colonel Cleveland. On October 3 they camped at Cane Creek, and on the fourth on the Gilbert Town campsite abandoned by Ferguson. They were at a ford of Green River on the fifth, and there learned that Ferguson was headed for Charlotte and Cornwallis. The night of the sixth they were at Cowpens. On the seventh they learned from a young farm girl whose father was afraid or unwilling to give them information, that Ferguson was on Kings Mountain. She pointed toward Kings Mountain..'they are over yonder.' At three o'clock on the 7th. The battle was joined, Ferguson was killed, his whole army either killed or captured, many of those wounded. The battle lasted only one hour.

The next morning, James Gray found a neighbor of his that had been captured. He had a severe wound in the ankle. James knew that this was a true loyalist and not just a raider. He bound up his wound and helped him down to a creek where he could get water. The Tory recovered from his wounds and became a good and useful citizen of Rutherford County. He remained a close friend throughout his life.

The captives were taken to the vicinity of Sunshine where nine of them were tried as outlaw Tories and were hanged including Ambrose Mills.

Remember the Tory lady that insulted the wives at Gilbertown? Her husband was among the captives, and she came to inquire about him. James Gray spotted her and having been told what she had said couldn't help throwing her words back. 'We are going to hang them all and scrape their wives tongues and let them go.' Her husband was not among those hanged, however, and his descendants still live on the land he farmed .

Just before the battle, David Dickey and a few others stopped a British wagon and discovered that it belonged to Ferguson. They captured Furgeson's breakfast, and paroled his cook.

In the 1880s Lyman Draper (WHOSE PAPERS POINT THE FINGER AT THOMAS AND JESSE BURNETT) wrote the definitive book "Kings Mountain and its heroes." Much of his research was by letters to and from Rutherford County citizens who remembered the veterans or who had learned from their families about these men.

W. I. Twitty wrote that James Gray was first a Presbyterian, then a Methodist. He was remembered in 1881 as being well respected, impulsive, even rude at times, brave and daring. J. Gilkie writing in his 92nd year noted that James Gray served as a Major at Kings Mountain, and was a good Whig and hated Tories with a perfect hatred.

In January 1781, the British, under the hated Tarleton, were defeated by General Daniel Morgan at Cowpens, just a short way from Kings Mountain and many of these same men fought in that battle, also Cornwallis abandoned the south and started north. One year later, in October 1781, he surrendered at Yorktown.

So right here in our backyard, our direct ancestors turned the tide of the war, and made the victory and independence a reality. Thomas Jefferson said it, and so have others including Lord Clinton himself, who wrote about it after the war. History is filled with ironic twists, here is no exception. Forces started by King James 170 years previously led through a winding trail to Kings Mountain and the defeat of King George III.

James Gray had married Isabella McClure in 1776. They had two sons , Samuel and David. David married the daughter of David Dickey, his fathers friend, and had 14 children, three of the children went to California to seek gold. One of David's daughters married a Wilkins, and one of their daughters married Nathan Moore who was my wife's grandfather.

James Gray was born in Virginia in 1755, and died in Rutherford County in 1832. He is buried at Gray's Chapel Church on the Rutherford/Polk County line. There he was honored by the over the Mountain Victory Trail Association on Sunday, October 5th, 1997.

David Dickey became a doctor, a civil engineer, surveyed for the county, served as Commissioner, Justice of the Peace, and in the State Legislature. He died in 1835, and was buried in the Old Lynch Cemetary in Green Hill. Carpenters and Toms are among decendant families.

Lucille Hampton Daniels, the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Andrew Hampton lives up on Hampton road and writes text books which many of you have studied.

I want to close by talking about perfect hatred. The Treaty of Paris which officially ended the war specifically stated that no one would lose property or freedom just because they were a Tory. I am sure there was some bitterness, but no drawn out lingering conflict. The leaders had planned it so. One Tory among those captured at Kings Mountain, William Greene, was later a State Legislator from Rutherford County and in 1886 Centennial Methodist Church was founded on land donated by three grandsons of Tories, including Ambrose Mills one of those hanged.

I invite you to join and come to meetings of the Rutherford County Historical Society, and the Genealogical Society of Old Tryon County. Learn if your great great great great grandfather was there . The Genealogical Society's library is in the old bank building with the clock on the square in Forest City. Come see us.

NOTE:

This text is a slight modification of a talk given to the students of Chase High School on their Pioneer Day on October 3, 1997, the 217th. anniversary of the day that the Over The Mountain Men reached Cane Creek in pursuit of Ferguson.

E-Mail- bharnold @ blueridge.net

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