Latest / Stories That Live In Us / South Carolina: Ancestors Leading the Charge in Battle and in Life (w/ Anne Mitchell) | Episode 111

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South Carolina: Ancestors Leading the Charge in Battle and in Life (w/ Anne Mitchell) | Episode 111 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Anne Mitchell: Cornwallis is like, you know what?
• 0:01
  Anne Mitchell: We're not gonna finish off that thing anymore, right?
• 0:04
  Anne Mitchell: We're not gonna go up north.
• 0:05
  Anne Mitchell: So he brings what is left of his army.
• 0:07
  Anne Mitchell: Of the uh English troops, 157 killed, 163 wounded, and 668 captured.
• 0:16
  Anne Mitchell: It was a very decisive victory.
• 0:18
  Anne Mitchell: The Patriots lost 28 men and had 62 wounded.
• 0:21
  Anne Mitchell: Very decisive victory.
• 0:22
  Anne Mitchell: But what happens to all the loyalists in the area?
• 0:25
  Anne Mitchell: A lot of them are like, you know what?
• 0:28
  Crista Cowan: Let's go be patriot.
• 0:29
  Crista Cowan: Stories That Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future.
• 0:37
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:41
  Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America.
• 0:52
  Crista Cowan: Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
• 1:01
  Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us.
• 1:08
  Crista Cowan: Well, we are getting close to the end of our season about America 250.
• 1:16
  Crista Cowan: And I've loved that we've been able to share stories as we've moved west about expansion, about adventure, about people who were explorers, about people who suffered tragedy.
• 1:28
  Crista Cowan: There's just been some really cool things that we have shared.
• 1:32
  Crista Cowan: But I wanted to make sure we got in at least a couple episodes about people who actually served in the Revolutionary War.
• 1:40
  Crista Cowan: And South Carolina seemed like the perfect place to do that.
• 1:44
  Crista Cowan: And my guest, Ann Mitchell, who has been on the podcast before, has probably the singular deepest roots in the state of South Carolina of any person I know.
• 1:57
  Crista Cowan: So when I asked if she wanted to share a story, she immediately knew exactly what story she wanted to share.
• 2:04
  Crista Cowan: One of the most significant turning points of the Revolutionary War was the Battle of King's Mountain.
• 2:12
  Crista Cowan: And Anne has a very personal connection to that battle.
• 2:17
  Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Ann Mitchell.
• 2:19
  Crista Cowan: Well, Ann, I'm so excited you're here.
• 2:21
  Crista Cowan: I don't know if I wore too bright of a color for one of your murder and mayhem stories.
• 2:32
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 2:33
  Anne Mitchell: Well, tell us what you tell us what you brought for us today.
• 2:36
  Anne Mitchell: Well, my assignment was to find one of my South Carolinian ancestors who maybe has something to do with the Revolutionary War.
• 2:45
  Anne Mitchell: And I found one.
• 2:46
  Anne Mitchell: Oh and he is a character, but a character of the good kind.
• 2:50
  Anne Mitchell: He's not on the murder side unless you consider battle murder, but he's an interesting character.
• 2:55
  Anne Mitchell: His name is Frederick Hambright.
• 2:57
  Anne Mitchell: He was born in 1727 in I think it's Moosbach, Germany.
• 3:04
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 3:04
  Anne Mitchell: In 1738, and I just did go through these details.
• 3:09
  Anne Mitchell: I don't know these usually off the top of my head, just so you know.
• 3:12
  Anne Mitchell: Uh, in 1738, he was about 11, and he came to America with his brothers and his father, maybe his mother.
• 3:19
  Anne Mitchell: Back then, records are really unclear, and a lot of it is hearsay.
• 3:23
  Anne Mitchell: But everybody thinks that's what happened.
• 3:26
  Anne Mitchell: He and then they moved to Virginia.
• 3:28
  Anne Mitchell: All right.
• 3:28
  Anne Mitchell: That's where they came to from Germany?
• 3:30
  Anne Mitchell: From Germany.
• 3:30
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 3:31
  Anne Mitchell: Right.
• 3:31
  Anne Mitchell: And how are you related to this man?
• 3:33
  Anne Mitchell: Oh, he's my sixth great-grandfather.
• 3:35
  Anne Mitchell: Six times on mom's side or dad's side?
• 3:37
  Anne Mitchell: My mom's side.
• 3:38
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 3:38
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 3:39
  Anne Mitchell: So 1738, he comes to Virginia.
• 3:44
  Anne Mitchell: They move in with a group of people, you know, rural communities, they settle down.
• 3:49
  Anne Mitchell: He meets um Sarah Hardin, who is my sixth great-grandmother.
• 3:53
  Anne Mitchell: They get married about 1755.
• 3:56
  Crista Cowan: And with the last name Harden, I suspect she was probably of English extraction.
• 3:59
  Crista Cowan: Probably, yes.
• 4:00
  Crista Cowan: And so, like, he came how old was he?
• 4:04
  Crista Cowan: He was 11.
• 4:05
  Anne Mitchell: So he had some time to learn English before he got married.
• 4:07
  Anne Mitchell: Yes.
• 4:07
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 4:08
  Anne Mitchell: And uh he had a version of Pennsylvania Dutch, they called it.
• 4:12
  Anne Mitchell: But I mean, it he always had a thick German accent, which comes up later in the story.
• 4:16
  Anne Mitchell: Oh.
• 4:16
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 4:17
  Anne Mitchell: Next foreshadowing.
• 4:18
  Anne Mitchell: So he married Sarah, and her and her family, some of her brothers, I think her father, him, they all head on down the Great Wagon Road, you know, that runs down like in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Appalachians.
• 4:34
  Anne Mitchell: They go down, they settle somewhere in the um Charlotte area.
• 4:39
  Anne Mitchell: So if you think about North Carolina.
• 4:40
  Anne Mitchell: The Piedmont, right.
• 4:42
  Anne Mitchell: So if you think about North Carolina, there's that line between North Carolina and South Carolina.
• 4:46
  Anne Mitchell: So they're settled very much like right there on the state line.
• 4:50
  Anne Mitchell: They hop back, they all hop back and forth between North Carolina and South Carolina.
• 4:54
  Anne Mitchell: In fact, the end of his life, he's in South Carolina, and that's where he passes away.
• 4:59
  Anne Mitchell: But and the battle he's in is in South Carolina.
• 5:01
  Anne Mitchell: So but they're all in the Carolina.
• 5:03
  Anne Mitchell: Were they still considered two separate colonies at that time, or were they?
• 5:06
  Anne Mitchell: Yes, they were two separate colonies.
• 5:08
  Anne Mitchell: Um land.
• 5:14
  Anne Mitchell: He had at the time of his death, he had four enslaved people.
• 5:19
  Anne Mitchell: Uh he had others throughout time.
• 5:22
  Anne Mitchell: It is unclear how many children he and Sarah had.
• 5:26
  Anne Mitchell: Sarah was his first wife.
• 5:28
  Anne Mitchell: Um, it could have been eight, it could have been ten.
• 5:32
  Anne Mitchell: It's records get a little he's a fun person actually to research because um the answers are not clear.
• 5:41
  Anne Mitchell: Sure.
• 5:42
  Anne Mitchell: I don't know about you, but if it's just there, what's the point, right?
• 5:45
  Anne Mitchell: It's like I need to dig, I need to get into all the records.
• 5:48
  Anne Mitchell: So my fifth great-grandmother is Elizabeth Hambright, and this is the oldest child.
• 5:55
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 5:55
  Anne Mitchell: And she was born when?
• 5:57
  Anne Mitchell: 1755, 1756.
• 5:59
  Anne Mitchell: Again, you know, dates are very, very iffy back then.
• 6:03
  Anne Mitchell: So they're still colonies.
• 6:05
  Anne Mitchell: Um they had that she was born in Virginia, right?
• 6:09
  Anne Mitchell: And they came down after, but so she's the oldest of this brood.
• 6:15
  Anne Mitchell: Um he got his start fighting in the military in the um battles against the Cherokee Indians, because in that area there were, you know, Indian skirmishes, all those kind of things.
• 6:27
  Anne Mitchell: So he was a lieutenant colonel by the time he got to the Revolutionary War.
• 6:31
  Anne Mitchell: He was also um involved in um he was not county government.
• 6:38
  Anne Mitchell: It's not like he was a politician, but he was a justice of the peace.
• 6:41
  Anne Mitchell: He was a commissioner, he held those different kinds of offices.
• 6:45
  Anne Mitchell: Those were civil service jobs back then, really, like volunteering in your community.
• 6:49
  Anne Mitchell: Right.
• 6:50
  Anne Mitchell: He was um he was a Presbyterian, he founded a Presbyterian church.
• 6:54
  Anne Mitchell: That's odd for a German.
• 6:55
  Anne Mitchell: I know, right?
• 6:56
  Anne Mitchell: Because usually you think Lutheran, that kind of thing.
• 6:58
  Anne Mitchell: But I'm suspecting that Sarah Hardin and her folks, because you know how you have the dominant family, right?
• 7:06
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, because he traveled with her family down to North Carolina.
• 7:10
  Anne Mitchell: So he came down there and I'm suspecting that they were Presbyterians.
• 7:14
  Anne Mitchell: But he has a church and he, and there's um, you know, I have the deed, a copy of the deed.
• 7:19
  Anne Mitchell: I don't have the actual deed, but a copy of the deed where he gave the land to the church and they built the church.
• 7:25
  Anne Mitchell: And Grover, this church is in Grover, North Carolina.
• 7:29
  Anne Mitchell: Grover, I'm not making this up.
• 7:32
  Anne Mitchell: Cleveland County, North Carolina.
• 7:35
  Anne Mitchell: And yes, yes, my friends, they picked that name because they thought it might get the attention of the president, because before that was something like Smithville or something.
• 7:44
  Anne Mitchell: But so Grover, North Carolina, and now you know.
• 7:48
  Anne Mitchell: Okay, so, anyways.
• 7:50
  Anne Mitchell: So before the Declaration of Independence, and I forget the year now, but a bunch of the counties in North Carolina, they were having none of this whole British thing, right?
• 8:01
  Anne Mitchell: And you do have to remember in that area of North, um, Lower North Carolina, Upper South Carolina, there was a lot of Patriots and there were a lot of loyalists, right?
• 8:10
  Anne Mitchell: It was very, very mixed population on what side people were.
• 8:15
  Anne Mitchell: Um, but there were uh groups of men.
• 8:17
  Crista Cowan: It was that was that as divisive as like politics today?
• 8:22
  Crista Cowan: Like is that comparable or do you or did they kind of live in harmony at all?
• 8:28
  Anne Mitchell: Uh it depends.
• 8:29
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 8:29
  Anne Mitchell: I think it was a lot like today.
• 8:31
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, people weren't out in the street all the time like fighting each other or anything.
• 8:34
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, it wasn't like total chaos, but people were would get angry with each other.
• 8:40
  Anne Mitchell: Yeah.
• 8:40
  Anne Mitchell: Right?
• 8:41
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, it was it was definitely a thing.
• 8:43
  Anne Mitchell: And it got worse during the World War II.
• 8:45
  Crista Cowan: And for him being German, he's gonna have no loyalty to the Loyalist cause, right?
• 8:50
  Crista Cowan: No.
• 8:51
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 8:52
  Anne Mitchell: But his wife's family is British or I they may be Scotch-Irish.
• 8:56
  Anne Mitchell: I don't know.
• 8:56
  Anne Mitchell: Well, then they really don't.
• 8:58
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, if you look at my Scotch-Irish from Amherst County, Virginia, when the Revolutionary War came along, they're like, We're our guns.
• 9:04
  Anne Mitchell: Yeah, we're going.
• 9:05
  Anne Mitchell: And they all went and they just wanted to shoot the English, right?
• 9:08
  Anne Mitchell: That was their thing.
• 9:08
  Anne Mitchell: Anyways, so no, but he had no loyalty to the English, to the king, whatever.
• 9:15
  Anne Mitchell: Um, and I'm sure because he was a wealthy man, paying taxes was not his thing.
• 9:19
  Anne Mitchell: So they did they the different counties sign these resolves where they're basically like, we want no part of this, we have the right to live free without taxation and all this kind of stuff.
• 9:30
  Anne Mitchell: And he's on one of those documents for Terran County, which later becomes Lincoln County.
• 9:36
  Anne Mitchell: And um what I love about these documents is when you look at all the men who signed them, I'm related.
• 9:42
  Anne Mitchell: Any one of these documents, I'm related to have these people because they all lived in these communities and they all married each other, right?
• 9:48
  Anne Mitchell: So, um, and as you know, uh fan clubs, right, networks on ancestry.
• 9:53
  Anne Mitchell: I keep putting all these groups of people in because I want to study them and see how they're all related and what new clues I can find.
• 10:01
  Anne Mitchell: So he gets involved in that.
• 10:03
  Anne Mitchell: So he is very clear, it is very clear to him what um what his stance is.
• 10:10
  Crista Cowan: And this is in like decades leading up to the revolutionary.
• 10:13
  Anne Mitchell: It was like a few years back.
• 10:14
  Anne Mitchell: I think it was in 74.
• 10:15
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 10:16
  Anne Mitchell: Oh, okay.
• 10:16
  Anne Mitchell: Okay, so you know, and then in 1970, or 19.
• 10:19
  Anne Mitchell: 1776, of course, we declare, but most of the early fighting was up north in the northern colonies.
• 10:26
  Anne Mitchell: It was Massachusetts and New York and New Jersey and all that kind of stuff.
• 10:30
  Anne Mitchell: But then eventually, by the time we get to 1780, early in 1780, Sarah Hardin dies.
• 10:39
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 10:40
  Anne Mitchell: Um, my fifth great-grandmother Elizabeth has married by then, and her husband, Joseph Jenkins, was also fighting with um, getting ready to fight with uh Frederick at that time.
• 10:52
  Anne Mitchell: But there were younger children.
• 10:54
  Anne Mitchell: So this is an she dies early 1780.
• 10:57
  Anne Mitchell: And by that time, he's how old by this time?
• 11:00
  Anne Mitchell: Let's see, he was born in 1727, so 1780.
• 11:06
  Crista Cowan: So he's in his 50s.
• 11:07
  Crista Cowan: He's in his 50s.
• 11:08
  Anne Mitchell: Yes.
• 11:08
  Anne Mitchell: Like it's not a young man.
• 11:10
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, that's my point, right?
• 11:11
  Crista Cowan: Like, I think a lot of times, especially those of us who've, you know, heard stories about World War I or World War II, right?
• 11:16
  Crista Cowan: In the Civil War, we think of it of fighting as a young man's like in experience.
• 11:22
  Crista Cowan: And yet with the Revolutionary War, especially, you have generational families like this, this man and his son-in-law fighting side by side, and he is not young.
• 11:32
  Crista Cowan: He is not young.
• 11:32
  Crista Cowan: And not young, even like maybe we might consider late 50s young today.
• 11:37
  Crista Cowan: Right, right, right.
• 11:38
  Anne Mitchell: But back then, but that was old back then.
• 11:40
  Anne Mitchell: That was old back then, and he and he had his sons and his neighbors.
• 11:44
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, there was a whole bunch of them, right?
• 11:47
  Anne Mitchell: So, what had happened in the war, and if you've seen the wonderful Ken Burns documentary, I hope you have, I hope everyone has, but in the sixth and final episode, they do talk about Battle of King's Mountain.
• 11:58
  Anne Mitchell: But what happens leading up to that, nothing is really going well for the Patriots at that point, right?
• 12:03
  Anne Mitchell: And it's the Revolutionary War is uh is somewhat of a battle of exhaustion.
• 12:08
  Anne Mitchell: Can we exhaust the English and their resources?
• 12:11
  Anne Mitchell: But Cornwallis starts coming through South Carolina.
• 12:15
  Anne Mitchell: The idea is he wants to come through South Carolina and then move up through North Carolina and you know, attack that way.
• 12:21
  Anne Mitchell: And is he coming in, like is he coming up from Charleston area?
• 12:25
  Anne Mitchell: So they're coming in off the sea.
• 12:26
  Anne Mitchell: They're coming in off the sea.
• 12:28
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 12:28
  Anne Mitchell: And um, so there's different battles that are happening.
• 12:31
  Anne Mitchell: They are not going well, right?
• 12:34
  Anne Mitchell: Calpins, all these other battles, and the Patriots are losing.
• 12:38
  Anne Mitchell: So Patrick Ferguson is leading this charge.
• 12:44
  Anne Mitchell: He's a well-respected, he's a really good military officer for the English army.
• 12:49
  Anne Mitchell: Um, he's traveling with his army.
• 12:52
  Anne Mitchell: He has his wife with him, or maybe his mistress, I can't remember.
• 12:56
  Anne Mitchell: That's the adultery part, because you know I have to always have some of that in there as well.
• 13:00
  Anne Mitchell: Um, but they're traveling along.
• 13:03
  Anne Mitchell: He's doing really well.
• 13:04
  Anne Mitchell: He's a really good army officer.
• 13:06
  Anne Mitchell: So they get to this place called Kings Mount, which is in South Carolina.
• 13:09
  Anne Mitchell: There's a town, Kings Mountain, which is in North Carolina, but the battlefield is in South Carolina.
• 13:14
  Anne Mitchell: All right.
• 13:14
  Anne Mitchell: Is it an actual mountain?
• 13:15
  Anne Mitchell: It's an actual mountain.
• 13:16
  Anne Mitchell: It's not a big mountain, it's more of a hill.
• 13:19
  Anne Mitchell: I've hiked it in less than an hour.
• 13:22
  Anne Mitchell: So it's it's and it's got a nice pig.
• 13:24
  Anne Mitchell: It's actually a beautiful, beautiful battlefield.
• 13:27
  Anne Mitchell: Yeah.
• 13:28
  Anne Mitchell: It's so quiet, and there's dogwoods, and the whole thing is just a little bit.
• 13:31
  Anne Mitchell: I love how we've done that.
• 13:32
  Anne Mitchell: Yeah, um, you know me.
• 13:34
  Anne Mitchell: I love to go to the places that they were.
• 13:36
  Anne Mitchell: So this battle, they he Patrick Ferguson takes his men and he puts them on top of the mountain.
• 13:43
  Anne Mitchell: Because he figured, I mean, that's a great place to defend.
• 13:47
  Anne Mitchell: Exactly.
• 13:47
  Anne Mitchell: Um he doesn't really build embankments or entrenchments like they usually do because it's gotten pretty cocky at this point.
• 13:55
  Anne Mitchell: There are no continental armies in the area.
• 14:00
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 14:00
  Anne Mitchell: There, none of George Washington's continental armies are in the area.
• 14:05
  Anne Mitchell: So what we've got here are militiamen.
• 14:08
  Anne Mitchell: There's a group of Tennesseans.
• 14:11
  Crista Cowan: Can you like help us contextualize the difference between the Continental Army and the militia?
• 14:17
  Anne Mitchell: So the Continental Army is technically going to be paid by the U.S., the government of the U.S.
• 14:23
  Anne Mitchell: if we win the war.
• 14:24
  Anne Mitchell: A lot of them don't get paid, a lot of them don't get paid very much.
• 14:27
  Anne Mitchell: And then that was the promise.
• 14:28
  Anne Mitchell: Right.
• 14:29
  Anne Mitchell: And they're part of George Washington's army.
• 14:31
  Anne Mitchell: And are they technically more trained or more experienced?
• 14:34
  Anne Mitchell: Often they're as the war went on, they became more trained, they became more experienced.
• 14:39
  Anne Mitchell: Yes.
• 14:40
  Anne Mitchell: The militias, though, are pretty experienced, right?
• 14:46
  Anne Mitchell: They fought in the Cherokee Wars, they fought in different wars.
• 14:50
  Anne Mitchell: Um they're a rough and rowdy group.
• 14:55
  Anne Mitchell: So they're frontiersmen.
• 14:57
  Anne Mitchell: They're frontiersmen.
• 14:58
  Anne Mitchell: They've defended their own territory for a long time.
• 15:01
  Anne Mitchell: Yes.
• 15:01
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 15:02
  Anne Mitchell: And the interesting thing about them is they have rifles because they go hunt.
• 15:08
  Anne Mitchell: Right.
• 15:09
  Anne Mitchell: Because they have to kill deer, whatnot, to feed themselves and their family.
• 15:13
  Anne Mitchell: Rifles are more accurate than the muskets that the British have.
• 15:19
  Anne Mitchell: So this word comes back that Patrick Ferguson is coming to Kings Mountain.
• 15:26
  Anne Mitchell: He's moving through.
• 15:27
  Anne Mitchell: There's a group called, I think, the Over Mountain Men from Tennessee.
• 15:31
  Anne Mitchell: They come down because they're like, we are having none of this.
• 15:36
  Anne Mitchell: They're militia.
• 15:37
  Anne Mitchell: There is a group of Patriot militia from the North Carolina, South Carolina.
• 15:43
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, there's a line there, but to the people who live there, they all just live in this area.
• 15:47
  Anne Mitchell: They are having none of this.
• 15:49
  Anne Mitchell: There is also a group of loyalists.
• 15:52
  Anne Mitchell: It's about half and half at that time in that North Carolina, South Carolina area.
• 15:57
  Anne Mitchell: So think about this.
• 15:58
  Anne Mitchell: Everybody's making this decision of which side is going to win?
• 16:03
  Anne Mitchell: Which side do I want to be part of?
• 16:05
  Anne Mitchell: There's the people who are like, I want none of this.
• 16:07
  Anne Mitchell: They're feisty.
• 16:08
  Anne Mitchell: This is where my guy was.
• 16:10
  Anne Mitchell: Um, they, you know, we're going to, we do not want any part of the English government.
• 16:15
  Anne Mitchell: But there are a lot of people who are like, you know, I don't think we're the Patriots are going to win.
• 16:21
  Anne Mitchell: They we want to, or they for whatever reason they want to be part of the English government.
• 16:24
  Anne Mitchell: So it's about half and half.
• 16:25
  Anne Mitchell: But there's spies going back and forth all over the place.
• 16:28
  Crista Cowan: But the militia, the people who are on the Patriot side, they're willing to put their lives on the line for this.
• 16:33
  Crista Cowan: The loyalists aren't joining the British Army.
• 16:36
  Anne Mitchell: No, no, no, no.
• 16:37
  Anne Mitchell: They might occasionally, but no.
• 16:39
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 16:39
  Anne Mitchell: It's more of the side they are on.
• 16:41
  Anne Mitchell: But the Patriots are like, no.
• 16:45
  Anne Mitchell: So they know.
• 16:47
  Anne Mitchell: So it's this hill, right?
• 16:49
  Anne Mitchell: King's Mountain.
• 16:50
  Anne Mitchell: It's this basically this really big hill.
• 16:52
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, it's it's not really mountain.
• 16:55
  Anne Mitchell: It's well, whatever.
• 16:56
  Anne Mitchell: It's a Carolina mountain.
• 16:57
  Anne Mitchell: It's a Carolina mountain.
• 16:58
  Anne Mitchell: But um, so Patrick Ferguson is up here on top.
• 17:02
  Anne Mitchell: So all the militias sort of surround him like this.
• 17:05
  Anne Mitchell: This battle lasts 65 minutes.
• 17:09
  Anne Mitchell: That's it.
• 17:10
  Anne Mitchell: 65 minutes.
• 17:11
  Anne Mitchell: And Patrick Ferguson is for a long time.
• 17:15
  Anne Mitchell: Him and his men are holding their own.
• 17:16
  Anne Mitchell: They're on top of the mountain, they're shooting down.
• 17:19
  Anne Mitchell: A couple of the big commanders get shot on the Patriot side, but they keep fighting.
• 17:25
  Anne Mitchell: And they don't fight where they line up and then they just march towards each other and shoot.
• 17:31
  Anne Mitchell: Who thought that was a good idea?
• 17:32
  Anne Mitchell: The British for a really long time.
• 17:34
  Anne Mitchell: Right?
• 17:35
  Anne Mitchell: Who thought that was a good idea?
• 17:36
  Anne Mitchell: Okay.
• 17:36
  Anne Mitchell: But these guys are used to hiding in the woods and fighting, you know, Native Americans and they're they're hunting deer.
• 17:45
  Anne Mitchell: They're not just like out there in the open.
• 17:47
  Anne Mitchell: So they're you know shooting and and they're a lot more accurate.
• 17:52
  Anne Mitchell: So um Patrick Ferguson is like, we're we're cleaning the day.
• 18:01
  Anne Mitchell: We're about 60 minutes into the battle.
• 18:03
  Anne Mitchell: And uh one uh oh my gosh, I've forgotten the name of the commander who was killed.
• 18:08
  Anne Mitchell: He fell.
• 18:09
  Anne Mitchell: On the Patriot side.
• 18:10
  Anne Mitchell: On the Patriot side.
• 18:12
  Anne Mitchell: And this is when Frederick stands up, he's on his horse, and I've got to read this because I want to get this right, all right?
• 18:20
  Anne Mitchell: So James Williams says, for God, he's what another one of the commanders, for God's sakes, boys, don't give up the hill.
• 18:29
  Anne Mitchell: Because it's not looking great at this point.
• 18:32
  Anne Mitchell: Hambright, Frederick Hambright, sorely wounded, his boot overflowing with blood, and his hat riddled with three, count them, three bullet holes, declined to dismount, but pressed gallantly forward, exclaiming in his Pennsylvania Dutch, I'm not even gonna pretend the accent here, huzzah, my boys, fight on and the battle will soon be over.
• 18:57
  Anne Mitchell: He stayed on his horse, he met that moment and they charged up the hill.
• 19:02
  Anne Mitchell: They ended up shooting and killing, no one's really sure, shooting and killing Patrick Ferguson.
• 19:09
  Anne Mitchell: He had seven bullet holes in him, and they won the day.
• 19:13
  Anne Mitchell: So what happens after that?
• 19:15
  Anne Mitchell: Well, to Frederick, he's in bad shape.
• 19:18
  Anne Mitchell: Right.
• 19:19
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, but you could admire the man, right?
• 19:22
  Anne Mitchell: He's like, no, I am not giving up.
• 19:24
  Anne Mitchell: I am moving on, we're getting up this hill.
• 19:26
  Anne Mitchell: And there were a lot of brave men there.
• 19:27
  Anne Mitchell: He wasn't the only one, but he was it was that moment.
• 19:30
  Anne Mitchell: You had somebody to rally the troops.
• 19:32
  Anne Mitchell: Right.
• 19:32
  Anne Mitchell: Rally the troops.
• 19:34
  Anne Mitchell: He met that moment, and um they take him to a local log cabin in the area.
• 19:42
  Anne Mitchell: He ends up building a house quite near there.
• 19:44
  Anne Mitchell: And he's nursed to health by a woman named Mary Dover, who he later marries and has another eight to children.
• 19:51
  Anne Mitchell: He was a very prolific man, let me say.
• 19:53
  Anne Mitchell: Um he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
• 19:57
  Anne Mitchell: Right.
• 19:57
  Anne Mitchell: And he was older and it was, it was, I mean, he had a bullet hole in his thigh.
• 20:01
  Anne Mitchell: He was very um, he was wounded.
• 20:05
  Anne Mitchell: So what was interesting though is a lot of the loyalists at this point, because suddenly everything changed, right?
• 20:14
  Crista Cowan: So is that battle like is that a turning point?
• 20:17
  Anne Mitchell: It is a turning point.
• 20:18
  Anne Mitchell: In fact, Theodore Roosevelt, I have more quotes, Chris, I have more quotes.
• 20:22
  Anne Mitchell: Theodore Roosevelt, yes, that Theodore Roosevelt.
• 20:25
  Anne Mitchell: The brilliant or this brilliant victory marked the turning point in the American Revolution.
• 20:31
  Anne Mitchell: Because what happens is Cornwallis is like, you know what?
• 20:34
  Anne Mitchell: We're not gonna finish off that thing anymore, right?
• 20:36
  Anne Mitchell: We're not gonna go up north.
• 20:38
  Anne Mitchell: So he brings what is left of his army.
• 20:40
  Anne Mitchell: Of the uh English troops, 157 killed, 163 wounded, and 668 captured.
• 20:48
  Anne Mitchell: It was a very decisive victory.
• 20:50
  Anne Mitchell: The Patriots lost 28 men and had 62 wounded.
• 20:53
  Anne Mitchell: Very decisive victory.
• 20:55
  Anne Mitchell: But what happens to all the loyalists in the area?
• 20:58
  Anne Mitchell: A lot of them are like, you know what?
• 21:00
  Anne Mitchell: Let's go be patriots.
• 21:02
  Anne Mitchell: Maybe I picked the wrong side.
• 21:03
  Anne Mitchell: I picked the wrong side.
• 21:04
  Anne Mitchell: And some of the men who had been like spying for the English, they found them and they hung them.
• 21:12
  Anne Mitchell: They had no sympathy for those men, right?
• 21:14
  Anne Mitchell: It was like, because so you know, you get back, this is where it starts to get ugly.
• 21:18
  Anne Mitchell: And there's a lot of fighting.
• 21:19
  Anne Mitchell: If you go through and you read the local histories, the local histories are fascinating in the Syria at the time.
• 21:24
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, they were fighting, they were warning each other, they were, I mean, it was just crazy.
• 21:29
  Anne Mitchell: But they took their revenge, they were mad.
• 21:32
  Anne Mitchell: But this turned the tables, and then the American armies started to go through and uh ended up at Yorktown eventually.
• 21:41
  Anne Mitchell: And it was sort of a big turning point in the war.
• 21:44
  Anne Mitchell: And in fact, Herbert Hoover, and this is there's a bunch of monuments up there, but uh, but you know, one of the things that he says about this battle is it was a little army, a little battle.
• 21:54
  Anne Mitchell: And it was 65 minutes, 65 minutes, about a thousand men.
• 21:59
  Anne Mitchell: But it was a might portent.
• 22:01
  Anne Mitchell: History has done scant justice to its significance, which rightly should be placed besides Lexington, Bunker Hill, Trenton, and Yorktown.
• 22:10
  Anne Mitchell: The great thing about doing family history is that you learn these things.
• 22:18
  Anne Mitchell: I would have never known this battle.
• 22:20
  Anne Mitchell: Right?
• 22:22
  Anne Mitchell: But it was that moment, that ancestor who at the moment when he needed to stand up.
• 22:30
  Anne Mitchell: And you always want to believe that when our moment comes, we will stand up and do the right thing, even if it's hard.
• 22:37
  Anne Mitchell: Yeah.
• 22:37
  Anne Mitchell: But he did.
• 22:38
  Anne Mitchell: Yeah.
• 22:39
  Anne Mitchell: And it's just like I haven't in the sense of awe of him.
• 22:42
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, he was he a perfect human?
• 22:44
  Anne Mitchell: No, of course not.
• 22:45
  Anne Mitchell: I'm sure there were plenty of things he did that were questionable.
• 22:49
  Anne Mitchell: Yeah.
• 22:49
  Anne Mitchell: But in that one moment when history called upon him, he stood up and he did the right thing and he helped get them over the finish line.
• 23:00
  Crista Cowan: Literally stood up in blood-soaked boots.
• 23:02
  Anne Mitchell: Blood-soaked boots.
• 23:03
  Anne Mitchell: He was standing on, he was on a horse.
• 23:04
  Anne Mitchell: In his stirrups.
• 23:05
  Anne Mitchell: In his stirrups, right?
• 23:07
  Anne Mitchell: And uh the state of North Carolina gave him a sword to commemorate this.
• 23:11
  Anne Mitchell: It is on display at the um Visitor Center Monument at Kings Mount National Park.
• 23:19
  Anne Mitchell: And uh I went to a few years back, I was in the area, and I went to Kings Mount.
• 23:25
  Anne Mitchell: I remember walking up the hill that day because I was looking, I knew that DR, daughters of the American Revolution, had put up a monument to him.
• 23:31
  Anne Mitchell: And I walked up the hill and it was just so beautiful and quiet.
• 23:35
  Anne Mitchell: And I love battlefields because they just have this sense of serenity.
• 23:40
  Anne Mitchell: Even though you can imagine, whether it's Revolutionary War or Civil War, whatever it is, you can just imagine that the chaos, the chaos that was happening.
• 23:50
  Anne Mitchell: But you get to the top and there's this little sign that says Colonel Hambright and you go, and there's this little monument.
• 23:56
  Anne Mitchell: And that's who he was.
• 23:59
  Anne Mitchell: And his they there is, I have never been, but every, I believe it's every October, uh his descendant get together for a family reunion.
• 24:07
  Anne Mitchell: They reenact the battle and all that kind of stuff.
• 24:10
  Anne Mitchell: So I mean it's a it's a thing.
• 24:13
  Anne Mitchell: But I I just am so in awe of being descended from somebody like that.
• 24:21
  Anne Mitchell: And as we approach the 250 anniversary, it just takes on a special meaning, you know?
• 24:26
  Anne Mitchell: You're just like I want to be like that when my time comes, and I just hope that I have that in mind.
• 24:33
  Anne Mitchell: Um he lived to 1817, so he lived almost 90 years.
• 24:41
  Anne Mitchell: Uh, and he they he and Mary and there's so many children.
• 24:46
  Anne Mitchell: Um, they uh he built a log cabin in near the base of King's Mountain and uh in South Carolina.
• 24:54
  Anne Mitchell: He was like, this could do either North or South Carolina.
• 24:57
  Anne Mitchell: Uh and um he passed away there and uh he had 700 acres for slaves and who knows how many children, but uh what an interesting man, what an interesting life.
• 25:09
  Anne Mitchell: He was an immigrant, moved.
• 25:12
  Anne Mitchell: I mean, moving then wasn't easy, but he made his mark in history and nobody talks about it really.
• 25:16
  Anne Mitchell: Yeah.
• 25:17
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, like I've heard of the Battle of King's Mountain, but I had no idea any of the story around it.
• 25:23
  Crista Cowan: And then for you to have that personal connection, like that's so incredible because we know that there are people who made those choices in those moments.
• 25:31
  Anne Mitchell: Right.
• 25:32
  Crista Cowan: And and you just don't always hear them, or those stories just don't always get passed down.
• 25:36
  Crista Cowan: So at what point in your exploration of your family history did you come across this story, or were you always kind of raised knowing about it?
• 25:44
  Anne Mitchell: I did nothing about it.
• 25:45
  Anne Mitchell: Nothing about it.
• 25:46
  Anne Mitchell: And I was um, you know, you're you're just working your way back generation by generation.
• 25:52
  Anne Mitchell: And um I found Elizabeth and she'd married Joseph Jenkins, and then I started to find member Therese that said her father was Frederick.
• 26:02
  Anne Mitchell: And I was like, well, that would be cool if it were true.
• 26:05
  Anne Mitchell: And uh so this is, you know, maybe a decade ago, I had discovered this information.
• 26:09
  Anne Mitchell: And then, you know, you go and you you search out the documents, right?
• 26:12
  Anne Mitchell: Because you're like, I gotta prove it.
• 26:14
  Anne Mitchell: Suggestion, great, let's prove it.
• 26:16
  Anne Mitchell: And then I prove it.
• 26:17
  Anne Mitchell: I'm like, okay, I found the wheels, all that good stuff.
• 26:19
  Anne Mitchell: And uh then it was just the, you know, as time permits, you start to dig up more information about all the different things that happened.
• 26:27
  Anne Mitchell: And it's just so fascinating.
• 26:28
  Anne Mitchell: And I have loyalist ancestors too, not quite as inspiring, but uh um, because you never knew who was gonna be on what side down it.
• 26:36
  Crista Cowan: Well, and you also, I mean, like, it's interesting because we laud the Patriots now and their choices in those moments, but that's because they won.
• 26:42
  Crista Cowan: They won, right?
• 26:43
  Crista Cowan: There's nothing like being a winner.
• 26:45
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 26:45
  Crista Cowan: And but, you know, had the other side won, that would have been considered traitorous behavior.
• 26:50
  Crista Cowan: It would have been.
• 26:50
  Crista Cowan: And so ultimately, like, we we make the best decisions we can in the moment about our lives and our families and how we want to support them and move forward in the world.
• 26:59
  Crista Cowan: And sometimes we're on the losing side.
• 27:01
  Anne Mitchell: Sometimes we're on the losing side.
• 27:02
  Anne Mitchell: Sometimes sometimes we make decisions.
• 27:05
  Anne Mitchell: They may be the right decisions for us in that moment, but they don't end up being revered by history.
• 27:13
  Anne Mitchell: Yeah.
• 27:13
  Anne Mitchell: And we always do have to remember that as well.
• 27:15
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 27:16
  Anne Mitchell: But it is a bit of pride to know that you come from somebody like that.
• 27:19
  Anne Mitchell: Right.
• 27:19
  Anne Mitchell: Well, especially this year.
• 27:21
  Anne Mitchell: Yes, right.
• 27:22
  Anne Mitchell: And it was just because when you and I were talking, it was like, do you have Revolutionary War?
• 27:26
  Anne Mitchell: I'm like, please.
• 27:27
  Anne Mitchell: But this one, this one I think is one of the most interesting.
• 27:31
  Crista Cowan: So fascinating.
• 27:32
  Crista Cowan: And and South Carolina, like the fact that it played such a pivotal role in the Revolutionary War, I think is also something that a lot of people don't know.
• 27:39
  Crista Cowan: No, they don't.
• 27:40
  Crista Cowan: Because we do.
• 27:40
  Crista Cowan: We associate it, like you know, like Roosevelt said, with with, you know, Yorkstown and Lexington.
• 27:46
  Crista Cowan: And yeah, like um, I have family who fought in battles in New Jersey, and like we associate it so much with the North, but the fact that it came that far south.
• 27:54
  Crista Cowan: But then you also have the situation where, you know, 80 years later, South Carolina plays a really pivotal role in the Civil War.
• 28:01
  Anne Mitchell: Right.
• 28:02
  Anne Mitchell: And in that very area, which is if you think about it, so you have the Patriots and the Loyalists, and they're very split.
• 28:08
  Anne Mitchell: It is um, and if you listen to the Kim Burns documentary, he refers to it as sort of a civil war down there.
• 28:13
  Anne Mitchell: And he's not wrong.
• 28:15
  Anne Mitchell: You have these two groups of people that are just sort of fighting each other and always doing whatever.
• 28:20
  Anne Mitchell: So you get to the Civil War, right?
• 28:22
  Anne Mitchell: That whole thing happens.
• 28:23
  Anne Mitchell: And then afterwards, um Grant, when he was president, at some point took about eight to ten counties and put them under martial law because they were such a disaster.
• 28:34
  Anne Mitchell: And the York County, which is where Kings Mountain Battlefield is, this is where groups of people were very split during Reconstruction, were fighting each other.
• 28:46
  Anne Mitchell: It was just, I mean, this area is just always people just never agreeing on anything.
• 28:52
  Anne Mitchell: And not and not a peaceful disagreement.
• 28:55
  Anne Mitchell: Let's sit down over a cup of coffee and talk this out.
• 28:58
  Anne Mitchell: It could be, you know, there was a lot of Klan activity down there.
• 29:00
  Anne Mitchell: There was a whole lot of things happening.
• 29:02
  Anne Mitchell: Um, but it's history.
• 29:05
  Anne Mitchell: And if we understand the history of who we are, good and bad, it informs, I think, who we are and sometimes why we are the people we are, and it helps make better decisions about our life.
• 29:17
  Crista Cowan: So beautifully said.
• 29:18
  Crista Cowan: Well, I'm glad that's what you've learned from your family history.
• 29:21
  Crista Cowan: I wish more of us could dive into our stories and really understand them at that level because I think it helps inform our perspective in that way and take a stand for things you believe in and be willing to stand up even in bloody boots, right?
• 29:34
  Crista Cowan: Right.
• 29:35
  Anne Mitchell: Hopefully, I never have to stand up in bloody boots, but stand up for what you believe in.
• 29:40
  Anne Mitchell: It's very, very true.
• 29:40
  Anne Mitchell: Yeah.
• 29:41
  Anne Mitchell: Thank you.
• 29:41
  Anne Mitchell: Thank you.
• 29:42
  Anne Mitchell: Always glad to be here.
• 29:44
  Anne Mitchell: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.