Browse Items (36 total)

After crossing the Broad River at Cherokee Ford, the mounted patriot militiamen gathered information from locals about where Major Ferguson and his loyalist army might me. A young woman shared that she had just that morning taken eggs to the major's…

Colonel James Williams was the highest ranking officer killed at the Battle of Kings Mountain. He was wounded in the last minutes of the battle on October 7, and tended by his son, Daniel. His men carried him carefully on their withdrawal on October…

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…

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…

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…

The Overmountain Men marched over the mountain barrier following a narrow path known as "Bright's Trace." It followed a route used by Indians and created over centuries by migrations of deer, elk, and buffalo to cross the mountains. That path offered…

On the evening of September 26, after completing their first day's march, the Overmountain Men arrived at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. They camped along the Doe River at a meadow known as "the Resting Place" and stored their gunpowder…

Responding to the call for a muster, the militiamen from North Carolina's overmountain region and those from southwest Virginia gathered on September 25, 1780 in the flats adjacent to Sycamore Shoals and next to Fort Watauga.

During the muster,…

Mary McKeehan Patton learned how to make gunpowder from her father and then operated a powder mill in Pennsylvania with her husband. They sold it and moved south when the prospect of a British invasion made living there dangerous. They built a new…

The Virginia militiamen, mustered under Colonel William Campbell, marched south from the Muster Grounds on Wolf Creek just west of Black's Fort toward the general muster at Sycamore Shoals. They followed their second in command, Major William…