Known primarily through a mix of fact and legend as the most notorious Patriot of the southern campaigns, Paddy Carr was also claimed to have an “amiable and benevolent” nature. As if that contradiction were not enough to create complexity of character, Carr, a stone cold killer of Tories, never swore or uttered blasphemy. Instead, when faced with dangerous situations, he maintained the ability to remain completely calm. In fact, according to one story told by an early historian, Paddy considered himself “insensible to fear.” Just to demonstrate that quality to a friend, Paddy once sat on a keg of gunpowder and requested a candle. Just as he touched the powder with the lighted end, another man walking close by lost his nerve and snatched the powder away. Paddy’s friend considered himself spared from a dreadful explosion only by the “providence of God.” Meanwhile, Carr remained perfectly calm and asked if he were now convinced, which he was. At that point, Carr said that he might have made “a good soldier but nature had formed his heart too tender and compassionate.”[1] Yes, all of those descriptions create a single individual, the man we know as Paddy Carr.
Other than his Irish heritage and settlement in Georgia, little is known of Carr prior to his appearance in May 1779 as a captain in the Wilke’s County militia regiment. He fell under the command of Elijah Clarke and served on most of Clarke’s expeditions during the war. The record is unclear as to whether Paddy had a family of his own but he may have been influenced by the experiences of his close friend, Peter Strozier. After the war, Mrs. Strozier wrote that “Carr was intimate & often at her house before he went into the army.” Unfortunately for her, after Peter and Paddy joined the militia, Tories came and destroyed “everything of consequence … She fled with her family of little children through South Carolina, half begging & starving suffering greatly” from cold and exposure.[2]
Regardless of the original source for Carr’s attachment to the cause of liberty, he soon became a total enthusiast. Carr “conceived the most dreadful and implacable hatred against the Tories. Their desertion of principles which he held so sacred, entitled them, upon his political hypothesis, to no kind of mercy or indulgence. Whether therefore as prisoners, or as enemies in battle he gave them no quarters.”[3] And it was exactly that unrelenting attitude that would define Carr’s character for history and not the glowing accolades that appear as contrast in the opening paragraph.
The earliest example of Paddy Carr in action comes from Col. Richard Winn of the South Carolina militia. Winn described an encounter immediately after the action at Ramsour’s Mill in North Carolina around June 20, 1780. One of the early refugees to flee Georgia after British occupation, Paddy had only just reached the area after the battle concluded. Colonel Winn tells the story:
After the battle of Ramsours Colo. Sumter with his party set out for Charlotte and encamped that night in a few miles of the battle ground. A small party of Georgians had joined him. Among them was a man name of Paddy Carr. After we had taken up camp this same Paddy and another man went to a house about one or two miles off. They inquired of the man of the house if he had not joined Colo. Moore. Answer yes, but that he after being made a prisoner was set at liberty by Genl. Rutherford and had just got home to his wife & children. By this time it had become dusk, Paddy inquires the way to camp. The man tells him the path forked in half mile you take such a hand. Carr tells him you must get up behind me and show me the path I must take. He did so. When they came to the fork, the man jumpt off and told him that is your path then Paddy, Judas like, shot him dead on the spot on the story being related to Capt. Winn by the man who was with him I ordered Carr to be delivered over to the Civil magistrate which was accordingly done but he was found in camp next morning.[4]
Even though Colonel Winn was clearly shocked by Carr’s casual murder of the paroled Tory, nothing came of the episode and Paddy soon joined Elijah Clarke’s regiment of volunteer refugees from Georgia. Later in the summer, Clarke was operating near Musgrove’s Mill and sent Carr on patrol to capture a local Tory named Beaks Musgrove. According to a story passed down in the Musgrove family, Carr caught him unarmed sitting down to supper at the Musgrove home. Just as Carr raised his sword, Mary Musgrove threw herself between the men and pleaded for her brother’s life. Carr paused long enough to interrogate the Tory.
An interview now took place between Carr and Musgrove. Carr was struck with his manly beauty, & said, ‘Musgrove, you look like a man that would fight.’ ‘Yes’, said Musgrove, ‘There are circumstances under which I would fight.’ ‘If I had come upon you alone,’ said Carr, ‘in possession of your arms, would you have fought me?’ ‘Yes, sword in hand.’ Carr was so taken with Musgrove that he proposed to him to become a member of his unit & go with him on the spot, & then never to bear arms against the American Cause. His men had been stationed in the Cedars some distance from the house, & had by this time come up to the scene. Mary seeing her brother disposed to accede to Carr’s proposition, her fears for his safety being still awake, challenged Carr for his motives. ‘Mr. Carr,’ she said, ‘you do not design to persuade my brother to leave me, & then when the presence of his sister is no longer a restraint, butcher him in cold blood; pledge me sir, that such is not your design.’ ‘I’ll swear it,’ said Carr.’[5]
Even though Carr allowed Beaks Musgrove to join the Patriot cause rather than fall to the sword, his heart soon turned stone cold. Perhaps due to the bitter battles around Augusta in which Clarke was repulsed amid charges of atrocities and many hangings, Paddy Carr did not accompany the refugees to Watauga in October 1780. Instead, he joined a company of Georgians with Major Candler that fought at King’s Mountain. During that battle and aftermath, Carr was reported to have personally killed eighteen Tories.[6]
Carr also earned distinction in bringing on Tarleton’s assault at Blackstock’s Plantation. Unfortunately, once again, he showed a decided disregard for his Tory prisoners. In that instance, Carr held a couple of Loyalist teens in front of Tarleton’s charging dragoons as if they were Patriots. He released them just as the dragoons arrived and rode off to join his regiment. The young men were hacked to death before the Provincial dragoons realized that they were killing Loyalists.[7]
With Tarleton’s repulse at Blackstock’s and the Long Cane uprising that took place in December 1780, British control over the backcountry appeared increasingly doubtful. Cornwallis took his army to North Carolina and left orders that no one travel in groups less than 125 men. As a result of this vacancy, Whig partisans started terrorizing the countryside. Paddy Carr joined with “one Dunn & a Party of Rebels from Carolina” on a raid against the Tories of Wrightsborough above Augusta. In late February 1781, they murdered at least nine men and plundered the area. Most galling of all must have been the report that “many people & some Women received Dunn & furnished him with provisions, etc.”[8]
Within a couple of months, Loyalists in the Georgia backcountry were almost completely defeated. During the siege of Augusta, Paddy Carr took a prominent role in two skirmishes, both later deemed to be massacres against the Tories. In the first instance, Colonel Clarke got word that a Loyalist Major Dill was recruiting among the Loyalist population for help in coming to the assistance of Augusta. Clarke “dispatched Carr and Shelby with the command of Georgians and Overmountains and they met at Walkers Bridge on Brier Creek where they routed Dill completely, killing a number of his adherents with a very considerable loss; Carr and Shelby returned to Col. Clarke with their laurels.”[9]
In his second skirmish during the siege, Carr again joined with Isaac Shelby and the Overmountain Men. This time they ambushed a party of Tories and Indians traveling below Augusta on an island where the Bugg Plantation was located. Carr “slaughtered them indiscriminately without any killed or wounded on our side. Mrs. Bugg and her family had suffered so extremely by them that she would not suffer them to be interred on her plantation.” The bodies were sent across to South Carolina for burial except for several dead Indians who received a “more expeditious internment.”[10]
With the fall of Augusta in June 1781, the British retreated from the backcountry but still tried to hold onto Savannah and the lower regions near the coast. Many Loyalists moved with the British but others tried to remain on the frontiers in hopes of regaining their homes. Carr received a bump in rank and became Major Carr. It was during this time that he likely earned the reputation for hunting Loyalists. One author noted that “he hunted them down like wild beasts, and permitted no asylum to protect them.”[11]
Even a month after the surrender at Yorktown, Paddy Carr remained as unrelenting as ever. At Ogeechee Ferry the Georgians had some British officers cornered in a small fort and arranged for their surrender. Unfortunately, “the glory of this brilliant exploit was soon obscured by the rash and sanguinary act of Captain Carr, who killing one of the British officers after the surrender, the rest resumed their arms, and retiring to a fortified house, compelled the Colonel to relinquish his prize.”[12] Carr’s continuous murdering ways had become a liability.
In a report to London, the governor cast doubt on Carr’s guilt in the Ogeechee incident. He actually stated that the murder was committed by a man named Samuel West but then quickly got around to the subject of Carr. “Captain Paddy Carr, remarkable for his being concerned in many murders committed on the loyal inhabitants of this province, is missed by the rebels, and we hope is among the slain.”[13] While insightful in giving the British opinion of Carr, the report was premature in suggesting his demise. Less than a month later the governor added this blurb: “Capt Paddy Carr, who it was thought was killed at Great Ogechee, it seems was fortunate enough for that time to escape.”[14]
In time the war ended but violence continued on the frontiers of Georgia. Campaigns against the Indians and rumors of Tories in the swamps continued for several years and men like Paddy Carr had trouble turning off their desire for vengeance. Unfortunately for Paddy, the rules were now different. In 1790 he was convicted for the murder of Acquilla Massey. Carr was quickly sentenced to death but, before the sentence could be carried out, a number of his old friends from the militia broke into the jail and rescued Carr from the hangman. Upon their petition, the governor ended up granting a reprieve to Carr a few weeks later.[15]
Paddy Carr’s harsh treatment of the Loyalists came to an abrupt and appropriate end in August of 1802. No one knows for certain who murdered Paddy but “it was said the act was committed by descendants of the Tories.”[16] A rather odd obituary notice appeared in the paper not long afterwards. It described Carr’s service in the cause of freedom as an “avenger of his country’s wrongs though his death is unavenged.” But that wasn’t quite enough to mark the death of Paddy Carr. With all the bad marks upon his reputation, the author of Carr’s death notice felt compelled to add a few remarks that read like an excuse for his murderous behavior. “Like other men, Carr had failings, and who is perfect? Say he was rigid, it was a time when vigor was a virtue, and levity would have been a crime.”[17]
To summarize, Paddy Carr came to the revolution out of the Georgia backcountry. Although loyal to his neighbors, Carr let the war bring out the worst in men. His numerous murders of prisoners and Loyalist civilians still echo today in books that concern the southern campaigns of the American Revolution. In those histories, the war in Georgia is known as the most brutal part of the war with acts of vengeance and murder being commonplace. Perhaps Paddy Carr is responsible for a bit more than his fair share of that reputation.
Author’s Note – The point of the sketch above is to provide insight into the character of Paddy Carr along with relaying specific incidents involving him. The powder keg story and the capture of Beaks Musgrove may fall better into the category of legend. Even so, the inclusion of these details helps the reader understand the complexity of Carr and his not-so-glorious reputation.
[1] Thomas Usher Pulaski, The Life of Major General James Jackson (Randolph & Co., Augusta, GA, 1809), 22f.
[2] Margaret Strozier, Pension Application of Peter Strozier, (file number R10279 and transcribed by Will Graves at http://revwarapps.org/r10279.pdf).
[3] Pulaski, The Life of Major General James Jackson, 22f
[4] Richard Winn, “General Richard Winn’s Notes – 1780,” transcribed by Will Graves, http://revwarapps.org/scx2.pdf.
[5] Edward Musgrove, Draper Manuscripts 16vv298, 311-314.
[6] Lyman Draper, King’s Mountain and its Heroes (Cincinnati : Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1881), 341.
[7] Hugh McCall, History of Georgia (Savannah, GA: Williams, 1816), 345.
[8] Waters to Wright, February 20, 1781, and Grierson to Wright, March 4, 1781, Mary Bondurant Warren, Georgia Governor and Council Journals 1781 (Athens, GA: Heritage Papers, 2009), 18, 19.
[9] Samuel Beckaem, “Captain Samuel Beckaem’s Statement on the War in Georgia, 1778 – 1781,” Robert S. Davis Jr., Georgia Citizens & Soldiers of the American Revolution (Southern Historical Press, Greenville, SC 1979), 169.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Pulaski, The Life of Major General James Jackson, 22f
[12] Ibid, 36.
[13] Wright to Germain, November 15, 1781, Warren, Georgia Governor and Council Journals, 237 – 239.
[14] Wright to Germain, November 29, 1781, Warren, Georgia Governor and Council Journals.
[15] Judy Swaim Kratovil, Georgia Governors’ Journals 1789 – 1798 (Fernandino Beach, FL: Wolfe Publishing, 2000), 11-12.
[16] Draper, King’s Mountain and its Heroes, 341.
[17] Notice from Georgia Gazette, December 24, 1802, Draper Manuscripts file 16vv83-86.
19 Comments
Thank you, Wayne, for this incredible article describing a subject that screams for further attention. Stories of atrocities committed by Americans seems to rarely find much expression in Rev War accounts, with many simply believing they could not have been capable of such actions. Carr shows that perception is way off base.
Had he lived today, I can picture him a member of some organized mob dismembering bodies after they had received a gunshot to the head or were strangled by piano wire. He sounds like nobody I would ever want to meet.
Enjoyable and informative article, Wayne. It intrigues me how brutal the internecine Patriot/Tory warfare became in the south. Up here in Vermont, we certainly had our share of Loyalists but the conflict never turned as bloody as it did in the south.
Thanks Gary and Mike. Your comments have me considering the question of why. Why is the war in the south more vicious and personal than the war in the rest of the colonies? I think the answer lies in a couple of things. First, the various banishment and property confiscation acts of 1777 and 1778 against the Loyalists made them understandably quite resentful. I believe the situation was similar up north. However, the British invaded the GA and SC back country and actually tried to reinstitute local government and control in 1780. This brought the resentful Loyalists back to the top of the heap and scattered warfare broke out on personal/local levels. We have plenty of examples of men who joined the resistance because they feared reprisals from the Loyalists. Nowhere else in the colonies was this type of thing tried by the British. However, and Todd Braisted might comment on this if he is available this morning, I think the most similar situation occurs in the No Man’s Land between the lines around New York during the same time frame. Lots of personal violence revolving around the people’s political choices.
Wayne,
I think your perceptions are valid in that things were more vicious in the south than in the north.
I have spent the past year researching and just now completing a master’s thesis on the creation of Vermont’s 1777 Constitution (finally getting my military history of the Rev War degree!) and did some work on how the people in the Grants treated the loyalists and those insisting on maintaining their allegiance to New York after it was drafted. That document is supposed to have been the most “radical” and “democratic” of any created at the time and I wanted to see just how the drafters viewed the ideals they had laid out.
After looking at their conduct in the years after it was “ratified” (a whole different issue) in early 1778, the dictatorial Council of Safety set about going after not only loyalists, but extending their rule over the resident Yorkers. There are reports of people being harassed, physically manhandled and beaten unconscious, their homes and barns being confiscated, burned, fences torn down and crops trampled, etc., but really nothing that comes close to what happened in the south.
Even Ethan Allen did not kill anyone as far as I can tell, but he did cut several Yorkers with his sword on at least one occasion (again, another story). However, he did preside over the sham trial of David Redding, a member of the Queen’s Rangers, for “inimical conduct” and which resulted in his being railroaded straight to his death in Vermont’s first execution by hanging.
There was also an onerous law passed that allowed for branding and nailing someone to a post by the ears (and cropping), but I could not find any instance when that actually happened. Extra-legal courts were set up and Yorkers were tried, but the sentence was usually a whipping and then banishment, punishable by death if they returned.
I also seem to recall that there was some kind of a low grade “civil war” if you will taking place in the south even before the British moved operations into it in 1778. So, perhaps some of the troubles that rebels visited on loyalists that you describe may have been an extension of an already existing situation, but just made all the worse because of the war.
Hi Wayne/Mike/Gary,
Good to see a new article from you Wayne, since we are interested in so many of the same things. One thought on this. I’ve found that a lot of the absolute worst accounts of violence in the South…simply aren’t true. As I tried to trace some of them back to some kind of original source, I found a lot of them came from 19th century histories that are often of suspect origins, based on “family legends” or similar sources. I found one account, for example, of a British officer having a Patriot in York County, SC drawn and quartered. It’s repeated a moderate amount in even relatively recent histories, but there’s absolutely nothing to back it up besides a completely unsourced family legend.
That’s not to say there wasn’t great violence. There certainly was as Wayne describes here. But what I found was that for much of the war the violence was actually more restrained than I would have expected. The Patriots saw the Loyalists as a threat to the extent they were necessary for the successful implementation of the British southern strategy. The loyalists in and of themselves were not the threat. (There was no perceived need to “purify” the body politic as you would find in other, more revolutionary revolutions.) Therefore preventing the loyalists from providing that support to the British was sufficient for the Patriots, and going further, including killing them, was often seen as a waste of time and resources.
I would therefore suggest two possible theories. One, we’re talking about different things. My work looks at Patriot strategy, leadership, organized violence, etc. The worst violence could have simply been the unorganized stuff – individuals or groups seizing opportunity when it presented itself, but not with any larger strategic purpose in mind. The violence I’ve studied – that directed by the provisional and state governments, military leadership and others in charge of the resistance effort against the British – definitely had a specific strategic purpose.
My second theory is this could be a temporal issue. My focus was looking at the ways Patriot political and military leadership organized resistance against the British army during its southern strategy to retake control of the southern colonies by focusing on recruiting loyalist support. In reality, Cornwallis had largely given up on having success in recruiting loyalists even before King’s Mountain, though that battle ensured the effort to recruit loyalists would fail. After that Cornwallis spent a while chasing Greene around North Carolina hoping to capture or destroy his army, and after Guilford Courthouse and resting in Wilmington he headed north, officially ending the British southern strategy. So my period of focus ends as 1780 turns into 1781, as the southern strategy really ends. A lot of the worst accounts of violence in the Carolinas I’ve seen tend to mostly pick up in early 1781 (David Fanning’s Narrative, for example). I wonder if the departure of the British army, the end of the clash between Patriots and British for control of the loyalist population, led to a powder keg blowing up in the south – there was little strategic requirement guiding either side in those colonies once the Patriots had retaken each of the outposts in SC and GA, and there was a lot of waiting around with both sides having the opportunity to unleash their anger, frustration, boredom, whatever on the other side depending on who had the upper hand and where at that time.
Anyway, these are just a couple guesses. I don’t know the answer. I was honestly surprised about how relatively little violence there was through most of the war based on what I had read about the South. I was also surprised how for much of the war (during the overthrow of British governance in the provinces, the years in between, and during the southern expedition) how little the Patriots actually seemed to care about the Loyalists per se, and how so much of the actions taken against white, black and Indian loyalists were taken specifically because of the effect it would have on British strategy. For these reasons I’m not a huge fan of calling the war in the South a civil war, based on political science definitions of civil war. But I’ve said enough here. If interested you can see my thoughts on the civil war question here:
https://generalcommittee.wordpress.com/
Again, good to hear from y’all.
Good morning Dan, excellent to hear from you. Apparently we were both writing at the same time. I hope to respond a bit more specifically to your thoughts in a little while. Yep, luv them southern campaigns.
Hi Dan, I agree completely, it is nice to see an article of mine merit attention at the JAR. I have just finished up my busy season and hope to get in a few more. In fact, I am currently researching some events that touch on your comments. But, before that, a few thoughts on the violence in the south.
I tend to agree with you that certain descriptions go overboard in describing the situation in the southern states. I do not know of any quarterings. However, I do collect instances of hangings and other atrocities that are discussed in primary sources. Once authorized by Cornwallis, the various British and Loyalist commanders freely employed the gibbet in their attempts to pacify the interior. Those instances are very well documented in the British sources. In response, the Patriot partisan leaders felt free to employ similar tactics. Another event that frequently occurred in the south was the killing of soldiers trying to surrender. Several known instances exist on both sides. That pattern may very well have begun in the south with the murder of Captain Moore and subsequent killing of James Screven during the British invasion of Georgia in November 1778.
Those things said, I have also considered a few circumstances that tend to support much of your thesis. First, the subject of Tar and Feathering. I have heard claims that hundreds or even thousands of Loyalists were subjected to the practice. And yet, I think I doubt the frequency, at least in the southern colonies. In my readings, I have found an instance or two of tar and feathers in July 1775. Additionally, there were threats made against a couple of other people who publicly professed Loyalism. The threats were taken seriously and the individuals either went quiet or ran away to New York. These acts seem to have been ordered by the Committee of Safety of GA or SC as the case may be. Other than that, I don’t really think tar and feathers was a common occurrence. In my frequent visits to pension files or Draper film, I run across lots of hangings and such later on but I do not find other instances of tar and feathers.
I am not at all sure what you mean when suggesting the Patriots saw no need to purify the body politic. As mentioned in prior comment, among their first acts as new states was to confiscate and banish Loyalists via acts of attainder. (and, of course, knowing they did this led directly to the ban on bills of attainder in the Constitution.) Not only did this happen in GA and SC but, even the Wataugans in east TN engaged freely in confiscation and banishments. I have some upcoming research on John
Sevier that concerns his work against the Tories prior to 1780. It may be that no further purification was deemed necessary after the Loyalist exodus of 1782 and 1783.
On a final note to this comment, I definitely agree that some of the most vicious and brutal events took place in 1781. Events around Augusta (some of which are mentioned in this article) were among the worst. Indeed, probably the most vicious of all were the actions of Bloody Bill and his men. Mostly out of frustration at having lost the war and watching as their friends were being persecuted. IMO of course.
Wayne,
You really need to consider expanding on this topic (book?) – great stuff!
Yes Gary, the ‘low grade civil war’ you refer to is pretty much the same time as the banishment and confiscation acts I mentioned above. In the very first session of Georgia’s legislature under the 1777 state constitution they listed a number of acts necessary to get things going. The first was “An Act defining treason”. The 3rd was “An Act for the expulsion of the internal enemies of this state.”
Once the initial laws and regulations were in place, the legislature met again early in 1778. This time their focus was on an act of attainder and confiscation. On the 19th of April they attainted a large number of property owning Loyalists declaring them guilty of “high Treason and for the Confiscating their Estates, both real and personal”.
These banishments and confiscations definitely set the stage for a seriously bitter conflict. Loyalists fled their homes to the frontier or to East Florida where they joined into Loyalist militia and began a border war on the southern frontier. Under the direction of Daniel McGirth and Thomas Browne, the loyalists (some referred to as Scopholites) plundered the lower counties in Georgia fairly constantly until late in 1778 when Archibald Campbell first invaded at Savannah. At that point, the previously displaced Loyalists began moving back into Georgia. But they were not yet ready to regain their homes. Had to wait until 1780 for the British to occupy the back country.
As to the Civil War comparison, most people show that neighbor vs neighbor in the southern theater met this description. A bitter conflict sometimes even splitting families. However, for my money, the description that truly meets comparison to the Civil War comes in 1780. At that point, the British brought in regiments of Provincials mostly from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. These regiments were given occupation duty and rode patrols to try and regain control over the rebelling Patriots. Just imagine that, an army of Yankees coming south from New York to try and put down rebellion in South Carolina and Georgia. 🙂
I really appreciate when someone writes on a subject that I have heard little or nothing about. Any psychological analysis of Carr would be woefully incomplete with such a lack of personal history on him, his life and his circumstances but I would love to hear an evaluation of the man. He doesn’t sound like the typical sociopath.
I kind of had to laugh when you wrote “Even a month after the surrender at Yorktown, Paddy Carr remained as unrelenting as ever.” The war didn’t end at Yorktown, why would he stop? More disturbing is that he is still killing in 1790.
It seems I recall reading about some Loyalist brothers with a similar reputation to Mr. Carr. You may be into a very interesting and specialized field of research, psychopaths unleashed by the Revolutionary War.
Thank you for a great article. I hope to be reading more from you.
Wayne,
Thanks for your most interesting article on Paddy Carr. It really emphasizes in so many respects that a “civil war” did indeed pervade the landscape of our country long before The Civil War. Having lived in NJ, upstate NY and Pennsylvania most of my life I am more familiar with the history of the vicious bloody civil war killing occurring in these areas. Of particular note: The Mohawk Valley fighting 1777-1783 including the savage Battle of Oriskany in which former valley neighbors slaughtered one another promiscuously. The Cherry Valley, Wyoming Valley, Schoharie and Minisink fighting/massacres – 1778 – along with the notoriety of personalities like Joseph Brant, John and Walter Butler are all prevalent in northern frontier American Revolutionary War history.
Thanks again for the very good read.
John Pearson
Wayne, I notice that F. Brevard McDowell gave a lecture in 1894 (see Charlotte OBSERVER for April 29, 1894) in which he said that Carr killed by his own hand as many as 118 men. He says Carr pointed to the 9 hanging after King’s Mountain and said, “Would to God that every tree in the wilderness bore such fruit.”
What an excellent article on KM. I also like the bit on Col Cleveland’s wife immediately below the bit on Paddy Carr.
“It is recorded that the sons of Col Cleveland captured two troublesome Tories in Wilkes County, and note being persuaded in their own minds, what to do with them, sought the advice of their mother, who was smoking her pipe at the time. After giving a few puffs, she answered: ‘What would your father do?’ ‘He’d hang-em’, said one. ‘Well, do what your father would do.’ The old lady continued to peaceably smoke her primitive pipe and the boys hung the men, and thus carried out the wishes of their parents.”
Hershel, how about giving me a shout at ly******@ya***.com
Any idea around what year Carr was born?
Hello and thank you for sharing this research. I have the following notes in my Paddy Carr file:
Military warrant 93.241, 160 acres, in favor of the minor child of a deceased warrior in “Capt. PADDY CARR’s Company of Creek Volunteer’s, Creek War.”
“said warrant having been assigned by Thomas C. Carr, guardian of said minor…” A copy of this warrant is available on the GLO site.
The Library of Congess has a hand colored portrait of Paddy Carr. It can be viewed in the McKenney & Hall Collection.
The John Roger’s Vinton papers, Duke.edu/Rubenstein, mention “Paddy Carr and the friendly Creek Indians.” I do not have any further details.
Perhaps this offers an insight into Paddy Carr’s family associations? The land warrant was issued in June 1864, the land grant property being located in Roseberg, Oregon.
Do you think this Capt. Paddy Carr is a son or grandson of Paddy Carr of the article?
I have looked at the Creek Interpreter and it stated that he was the son of an Irish immigrant, possibly Thomas, but nothing concrete.
My apologies, Wayne. What was I thinking? I merged notes from two separate Patrick Carr files just prior to making my earlier post.
Hello, Robert. The Georgia Historical Magazine published two of Patrick Carr’s letters (Patrick of Revolutionary fame) and introduced him as being an Irishman who lived for many years in Jeffersonville County, Georgia. I believe he was buried in his home county in 1802.
Again, Wayne, I am do sorry for muddying the waters here. There is a absolutely nothing in my notes that would connect Patrick, “Terror to the British Loyalists” with Paddy Carr, the Creek indian Chief. I posted my earlier comments in haste.
Respectfully, yours,
KjK
I believe the identity of the murdered Loyalist after the battle of Ramsour’s Mill was possibly my direct ancestor, Captain Lewis Lineberger. On page 575 of a book of my family history called “Our Kin” which has been digitized and located at (https://archive.org/stream/ourkinbeinghisto00hoff/ourkinbeinghisto00hoff_djvu.txt) there is an account of Lewis Lineberger’s murder which names Pat Carr as the killer. The story differs somewhat from the account given here but based on the location and the similarities of the story I do believe this is the same event. I really enjoy reading and studying articles such as this. It is much appreciated.