Browse Items (36 total)

On September 12, 1780, Burke County militiamen under Colonel Charles McDowell and Rutherford County militiamen under Colonel Andrew Hampton were encamped near Pilot Mountain at White Oak Springs when they received word that Major Patrick Ferguson and…

Bedford Hill was the campsite of the backcountry militiamen on the nights of October 1 and 2. A heavy and persistent rain forced the men to stop their march toward Gilbert Town. These volunteers did not have a military discipline and they soon became…

On Friday, October 13, 1780, the patriot force and its loyalist prisoners marched six miles to descend upon the plantation of loyalist Captain Aaron Biggerstaff. He had been mortally wounded during the battle and left for dead. On the 14th, the…

The patriot militiamen passed through Gilbert Town on October 11, 1780, during their withdrawal from the battlefield, They had not only 800 prisoners to tend to, but their own wounded as well. The Presbyterian community around Brittain Church along…

During the morning of October 7, 1780, the 900 mounted patriot militiamen who had left The Cowpens late at night, arrived at the Broad River. Believing that Ferguson might well have set an ambush for them across the river, they rode downstream to the…

On September 25, after camping the night before northeast of Fort Womack, the Washington County Militia crossed the South Fort of the Holston River at Choate's Ford,

Today's Bluff City, Tennessee, surrounds that crossing and has embraced the…

On the evening of October 5, 1780, the patriot militiamen reached the Green River but had lost the trail for Patrick Ferguson's retreating army. Nevertheless, good fortune intervened. A large band of South Carolina militia had withdrawn into North…

William Lenoir lived in the Yadkin River Valley and served in the Wilkes County Militia under Colonel Benjamin Cleveland. His home on the Upper Yadkin River was built in 1792 near the site of his fortified home of the same name which he occupied…

Gilbert Town was a small frontier settlement occupied at different times by patriot and British forces. British Lt. Anthony Allaire wrote in his diary: "This town contains one dwelling house, one barn, a blacksmith's shop, and some out-houses…

After camping along the North Toe River at Grassy Creek, the Overmountain patriots marched up Grassy Creek on September 29 to reach the crest of the Blue Ridge. From Gillespie Gap, they could look far into the Catawba River valley. They faced there a…