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Avenging Francis Bradley, the Mecklenburg Marksman: A Family Story
As I summarized in The ‘Battle at McIntire’s Farm’, on October 3, 1780 Lord Cornwallis sent Maj. John Doyle on a foraging party north…
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The “Battle at McIntire’s Farm”: Joseph Graham as Historian of the Revolution
On September 25, 1780 as Lord Cornwallis entered North Carolina he was harassed by “a few light troops” commanded by Col. William R. Davie[1]…
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A ‘Heavenly Harvest’ of Vulnerable Women in North Carolina: Tory Troops as Sexual Predators
Strong in the memories of North Carolina veterans of the Revolution were images of Tory (Americans loyal to the British government) terrorists, mounted on…
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North Carolina Patriot Women Who Talked Back to the Tories
On January 10, 1776, the British governor of North Carolina, Josiah Martin, then bobbing on the HMS Scorpion off Wilmington, appointed just over two…
Absolving David Fanning—from Dreck to Rumph
I keep promising myself to write on how David Fanning, the Tory guerrilla turned British colonel, became a psychotic murderer off the battlefield in…
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Fanning’s Bloody Sabbath as Traced by Alexander Gray
On March 10, 1782, Colonel David Fanning led a band of vengeful Loyalists on a path of slaughter and arson in northern Randolph County,…
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John Butler’s “Want of Good Generalship”
I plan to write about how the Tory guerrilla David Fanning changed after being made a Loyalist Colonel and given his own red coat,…
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Fanning Outfoxes Marion
When news of Lord Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781 arrived in southeastern North Carolina well into November, the war there did…
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The Tryon County Patriots of 1775 and Their “Association”
On August 14, 1775 some North Carolina colonial men, possibly as many as four dozen or so, met at the Tryon County courthouse. That…