Episode 42
Episode 42 - Women of the Revolutionary War! Featuring Eric Barnes from Historyman Podcast
A comprehensive examination of the often-overlooked contributions of women during the Revolutionary War, this episode offers listeners an insightful discourse on the myriad ways women influenced the conflict, particularly in the Southern colonies. Through the engaging dialogue between hosts Amii and Eric, the episode invites audiences to reconsider the historical narrative that has largely marginalized female voices. The discussion is timely, coinciding with Women's History Month, which serves as a backdrop for the exploration of women's roles and their significance in the revolutionary movement. The hosts delve into individual stories of women like Elizabeth Martin, who navigated the challenges of wartime while maintaining her family, and Emily Geiger, whose daring exploits as a messenger exemplify the courage and resourcefulness of women during this tumultuous period.
Throughout the episode, Amii and Eric emphasize the importance of recognizing women's contributions not only to the home front but also to the political landscape of the time. The women discussed herein actively participated in protests, organized support networks, and even took on roles that directly impacted military engagements. By presenting these narratives, the hosts aim to challenge the traditional perception of women's roles in history, advocating for a more inclusive understanding that acknowledges their agency and impact. As the episode unfolds, listeners are encouraged to reflect on the significance of these stories, recognizing the vital part women played in shaping the revolutionary narrative.
The episode concludes with a call to action, urging listeners to seek out and amplify women's stories within the historical record. Amii and Eric's discussion not only enriches our understanding of the Revolutionary War but also serves as a reminder of the ongoing need to advocate for the inclusion of diverse voices in history. By shining a light on these remarkable women, the hosts inspire a deeper appreciation for the complexities of the past and the enduring legacy of women's contributions to American independence.
Listen to more episodes of the Historyman Podcast and visit www.historymanpodcast.com.
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Transcript
Welcome to Wonderland, the podcast where I go down the rabbit hole to research things you may be curious about.
Speaker B:My name is Amie and I'll be.
Speaker A:Your guide on this trip to Wonderland.
Speaker A:Hi there my wonderlings, and welcome to another episode of welcome to Wonderland.
Speaker A:Since this is my March episode, I thought it would be nice to wonder about something regarding women in History since March is Women's History Month.
Speaker A:I knew I wanted to have historiographer Eric Barnes on my show since hearing him on the All About Nothing podcast and then listening to some of his podcasts.
Speaker C:You are listening to History man, where we walk in the footsteps of heroes and proclaim freedom reigns.
Speaker A:Eric focuses on the Revolutionary War and specifically Southern campaigns in the Revolutionary War and I began to wonder about the part women may have played in the Revolution.
Speaker B:I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A: Between: Speaker A: Then in: Speaker A:And when the success of the event became known to other organizations, efforts were made to secure a National Women's history week.
Speaker A: In February: Speaker C:Well, the Carter center, since its founding, had always been devoted to peace and human rights, that the most serious and unaddressed human rights abuse on earth is against women and girls.
Speaker A:For several years after, Congress continued to pass joint resolutions to designate a week in March as Women's History week.
Speaker A: Then in: Speaker A:L109, which designated the whole month as Women's history month.
Speaker A: Since: Speaker A:So now you know where Women's History Month came from.
Speaker A:And before we get to my interview with Eric, I wanted to give just a little history refresher for anyone who needs it.
Speaker A: evolutionary war spanned from: Speaker A:The war grew from anger regarding taxation without representation, among other things, and resulted in the Declaration of independence being penned and signed, eventually establishing the United States of America as a sovereign nation with.
Speaker A: ing of the Treaty of Paris in: Speaker A:So now that everyone's up to speed, let's ask Eric some of your questions regarding women.
Speaker B:I know it's fancy.
Speaker B:We're very fancy.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:Hi, my wonderlings, and welcome back for another episode of welcome to Wonderland.
Speaker B:I am very excited to tell you today I have history man Eric Barnes with me.
Speaker B:Eric is a American historiographer who memorializes the Revolutionary War with a focus on Southern campaigns through writing.
Speaker B:He is a journalist through a blog, a podcast, which I've had the ability to listen to several episodes as I prepared for this one, and a comic book series.
Speaker B:So I'm excited to have Eric on the show.
Speaker B:I heard him once on the all about Nothing podcast, and since I heard him, I was like, I've got to get him on mine.
Speaker B:I've got to find a way to get him on mine.
Speaker B:So, Eric, I'm so glad that you are joining me today.
Speaker B:Before we get into what we're going to talk about today, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Speaker C:Well, I was born at an early age in a hospital so I could be near my mom.
Speaker C:Believe it or not, I am a father, and I'm a former police officer and detective sergeant here in local Columbia.
Speaker C:Richland county was where I retired at.
Speaker C:And when I retired, I went over the school district for a few years and then took care of elderly parents and then got into this, the history side because I knew my wife was getting ready to retire.
Speaker C:I needed to get out from underneath third nose a little bit because she would be looking at me all day and questioning why she married me.
Speaker C:So I needed to get out and do something positive.
Speaker C:So this is.
Speaker C:This is what I did.
Speaker C:I don't like this.
Speaker C:Huh?
Speaker B:She didn't care where you went, but you couldn't be there.
Speaker C:Well, you know, it's always nice to have us have an independent spirit, no matter if it's the man or the wife.
Speaker C:So that's.
Speaker C:That's.
Speaker C:It's worked out well.
Speaker C:And it.
Speaker C:I started off doing a number of things, and the.
Speaker C:The Revolutionary War 250th anniversary is coming up, and I've gotten a little traction on some of the projects that I'm working on, and we're very excited for what we're doing.
Speaker C:Between the podcast for the adults and the comic books for the children and just walking in the footsteps of heroes, I've really enjoyed doing what I do.
Speaker B:So that is really neat.
Speaker B:How did you settle on the Revolutionary War, specifically, as kind of your niche?
Speaker C:Well, I grew up in York county and grew up walking the battlefield of Kings Mountain, and I.
Speaker C:A lot of my relatives are from up in that over the mountain region, and I can trace my roots back to.
Speaker C:To a lot of those people.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker C:And so that resonated with me.
Speaker C:And so I started walking, you know, when I.
Speaker C:When I retired, I started walking a lot of these battlefields again and then started writing a little bit about it.
Speaker C:And then one thing led to another, and the podcasting podcast land took off.
Speaker C:And I was like, well, you know, I can talk a little bit about that.
Speaker C:You know, my background is interviewing people, so I can interview people.
Speaker C:And so it was a natural fit for me.
Speaker B:Well, and I've really enjoyed.
Speaker B:I've probably listened to close to 10 or 12 episodes of history man just in the last week or so, and it's been really.
Speaker B:You've had some really wonderful guests on to speak about their books and just the animation that everybody has in talking about history, like the.
Speaker B:Clearly you and all of those guests are very passionate, and so I'm excited to have that passion on my show today.
Speaker B:I am not as well versed in history, though.
Speaker B:I wish I were.
Speaker B:I took history, you know, in college, but with no specific discipline.
Speaker B:I was a liberal arts major, so I took my fair share of history classes, but no specific discipline.
Speaker B:So I learned a lot in the episodes that I listened to, and the stories, the anecdotes, they were all fantastic.
Speaker B:And I appreciate the fact that you sent me all episodes to listen to that were about women in history, because that is what we want to talk about here today.
Speaker B:You know, Women's History Month is coming up in March, and this is going to be my March episode.
Speaker B:And so I thought this is a really good way to bring Eric onto this show is talking about the role women played in the revolutionary works.
Speaker B:A lot of times we hear the.
Speaker B:The stories of the bravado of.
Speaker B:Of what the men did, and obviously we're very grateful for them because that is why we are here today able to do exactly what we're doing.
Speaker B:But I know that women played an important role, and so do my listeners, and that's what we're going to talk about here today.
Speaker B:I have eight questions from listeners that I'll play the audio for, and then we can just kind of talk about it.
Speaker B:If you have any stories to tell about it, then that's kind of what we're looking for here.
Speaker B:And let me tell you, I was speaking to my niece.
Speaker B:She's.
Speaker B:One of the questions is from my niece, and she is 11, thereabout.
Speaker B:And she was so excited to hear that I was doing this episode because she loves history and she loved the idea of hearing what women did in the Revolutionary War.
Speaker B:So I'm excited to be able to bring that for her specifically, but for all the little girls out there who may listen.
Speaker B:So we will go ahead and get started then.
Speaker B:We're going to start out with a really kind of broad question from Blair in Chesney, South Carolina, if you'll go ahead and play that question for me, Barrett.
Speaker B:What roles did women usually take on during the Revolutionary War?
Speaker C:Wow, that's an excellent question.
Speaker C:You know, when we think about history and who actually writes history, history is kind of covers the.
Speaker C:The broad strokes of history, and very rarely do we get into the detail.
Speaker C:And especially right after the fact, everybody's just trying to, well, what.
Speaker C:What happened at this particular battle, what happened at that particular battle.
Speaker C:But you never hear, in many respects, you hear about the colonels and the generals, but you very rarely hear about all the minutiae, all the little things that had to happen for a battle to occur or for a region to rise up against England or anything like that.
Speaker C:And who were the voices in those communities and that sort of thing.
Speaker C:I like to think in terms of circles of influence, and we all have them.
Speaker C:You have them, I have them.
Speaker C:Everyone we come into contact with have circles of influence.
Speaker C:What kind of influences did the women have at that time?
Speaker C:Well, this was a.
Speaker C:South Carolina was built from an agrarian merchant society.
Speaker C:The farms were huge.
Speaker C:You had plantations and contracts to England, especially down in the low country.
Speaker C:But in the back country, up around Chesney, okay, up around Chesney, they.
Speaker C:It was just small farms.
Speaker C:You slave holding, slave ownership took a back seat to just eking out a living in the back country.
Speaker C:Chesney was right on the borderland of Indian country.
Speaker C:They had Indian raids.
Speaker C:They were constantly worried about, you know, marauding Indians or, you know, and they.
Speaker C:They would establish forts and in houses around there, the women.
Speaker C:But I like to think in terms of what kind of circles of influence did the women have?
Speaker C:Well, they had political influence.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:They had influence in the home, raising the family, especially when their men folk were away fighting.
Speaker C:Well, they still had a family to raise.
Speaker C:They still had to bring in the crops.
Speaker C:They still had to change diapers.
Speaker C:They still.
Speaker C:They didn't have diapers back then, but they still had to say they were still pooping no matter what.
Speaker B:So they were dealing with the poop.
Speaker C:And then you had the influence of the battlefield.
Speaker C:And, you know, I'd like to answer this question in those three circles of influence, knowing that there's plenty of other influences that they would have from a political standpoint.
Speaker C: of Confederation came out in: Speaker C:Let's have an association, the association of Colonies.
Speaker C:Let's bring everybody together.
Speaker C:But what are our colonies saying?
Speaker C: Well, In September of: Speaker C:We want to have a say so in this.
Speaker C:And they actually penned one of the first associational documents that came out of the colonies.
Speaker C:And this is just a group of women sitting around the Tea Party having a Tea Party.
Speaker C:And they sent in to the newspaper their association of Associational document, which basically said, you know, we are for.
Speaker C:We think what's happening in Boston is terrible, and we are for the tariffs that are being placed on tea.
Speaker C:And we are.
Speaker C:We.
Speaker C:We will, you know, adhere to that.
Speaker C:And that is our protest against the English government, the British government.
Speaker C:And so they sent that into London by courier, by ship, and.
Speaker C:And then they got ridiculed in the newspapers over in England a couple months later.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:But they stepped up and they.
Speaker C:They had their say and they.
Speaker C:They pinned the document, and they actually pinned their autographs to that document.
Speaker C:That was their protest.
Speaker C:So from a political standpoint, they were some of the very first that stepped up and said something in.
Speaker C:In relation to the revolution, in relation to the tea.
Speaker C:The tea tax.
Speaker B:And they have known that they'd have been ridiculed.
Speaker B:And they.
Speaker B:They were like, we're going to do this anyway, and we're putting our name to it, even though we know that in England we may potentially be mocked for this.
Speaker C:And they were mocked, and they suffered as a result of that, and ridiculed.
Speaker C:In fact, I think one of the cartoonists in.
Speaker C:In London said that the Americans need to, you know, rein their women in or something like that.
Speaker C:So it was.
Speaker C:It was.
Speaker C:It was.
Speaker C:It was really condescending in a lot of ways.
Speaker C:But these women, they stepped up and they did that.
Speaker C:They.
Speaker C:One of their.
Speaker C:Iredell county in North Carolina is named after the man who helped them out, who was kind of a big proponent of what they did and helped them send that message over to England.
Speaker C:So that was pretty good.
Speaker C:So from a political standpoint, that was one circle of influence they had from a home standpoint.
Speaker C:Let's talk about the Martintown women.
Speaker C:And these, these women down in Martintown, South Carolina, they moved to South Carolina.
Speaker C:And then the husband, Abram Martin, died at the hands of.
Speaker C:When he was out surveying some land over in Georgia, the Indians came up and killed him.
Speaker C:So Elizabeth Martin had to raise that family and her extended family for the most part by herself.
Speaker C:And they would build cabins around the main cabin that her and her husband had built.
Speaker C:She had like nine sons.
Speaker C:And when the Revolution came around, she was like, if I had been able to have more, I would have been glad.
Speaker C:Glad to have more to send them off to the Revolution.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:But she was the aunt of John Marshall, one of our first Supreme Court justices and a founding father of this country.
Speaker C:But she was a, I mean she, she ran that home and, and she was a devout patriot.
Speaker C:A British soldier came up to her after one of her kids got killed in a battle.
Speaker C:And he bragged about how she, he saw her, his brains splatter on the, on the battlefield.
Speaker C:And he made the comment, and if I can, if I can read her what she said, she said he could not have died in a nobler cause.
Speaker C:And so that was, you know, that was pretty, that was pretty good.
Speaker C:She, she lamented the fact that she didn't have more sons to, to contribute to the cause.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:But her daughters in law, they realized that the, the Americans were trying to take Augusta and 96 at the same time.
Speaker C:And, and the road between those two was Martintown Road coming right through her area.
Speaker C:So she ended up, her and her daughters in law ended up seeing both sides of the army come through.
Speaker C:Well, they heard that a messenger from the British army was coming and they decided that, well, they are trying to get reinforcements to the British side and this is going to affect our husbands and our, you know, and her sons, so we need to do something about it.
Speaker C:Well, the daughters in law, they realized that they could dawn their husband's uniforms and they went out and held up the messenger and his guards took the messenger took the message and ultimately ended up taking it back to Nathaniel Green and affecting and giving him that information, that vital information.
Speaker C:Little side note, those same British officers who were delivering the message ended up at their house later on that morning and did not recognize them because they were out of the uniforms and they actually fed them breakfast that morning.
Speaker C:So it's so they not only held them up, delivered the message to Nathaniel Greene, but fed the enemy breakfast the next morning.
Speaker C:So those are.
Speaker C:Those are some good things.
Speaker C:And that was from the home side and from the battlefield side.
Speaker C:You know, in the north, they talk about Molly Pitcher, who was a.
Speaker C:She volunteered to be on the cannon crew up there in the.
Speaker C:In the Northern campaigns.
Speaker C:Here in the Southern campaigns.
Speaker C:We had a friend of hers who moved down here to the south in the Watauga settlements, over the mountain settlements.
Speaker C:She moved down here expressly to make gunpowder because there was a large amount of sulfur, there was a large amount of bat guano, which was huge in nitrates, and there was a large amount of pine tar in the mountains of North Carolina.
Speaker C: them with gunpowder there in: Speaker C:And she did this.
Speaker C:This was her family secret, and she did this.
Speaker C:Her husband wasn't really.
Speaker C:I mean, he was involved with her, but he was fighting as well.
Speaker C:But this was her enterprise.
Speaker C:And she would sell it, not wholesale.
Speaker C:I mean, she would sell it, not retail.
Speaker C:She would sell it wholesale to people she knew.
Speaker C:She actually had to bring the gunpowder down on a big truck in her wagon, hand it over to the people.
Speaker C:So she knew she was actually selling it to the patriot side.
Speaker C:I thought that was.
Speaker C:That was.
Speaker C:That's a pretty cool story from the battlefield standpoint.
Speaker C:You have Rebecca Mott, who is from one of the founding families of South Carolina.
Speaker C:Rebecca Bruton Mott.
Speaker C:The Brutons were merchants in Charleston.
Speaker C:When the British took over Charleston, they ran her out of her house in Charleston.
Speaker C:So she ended up in Georgetown.
Speaker C:They arrested her husband, and so they ended up having to move again.
Speaker C:They moved to some land that she was able to.
Speaker C:That she got when her brother had died on a shipwreck around Fort Mott, which is right at.
Speaker C:Just north of St.
Speaker C:Matthews, South Carolina.
Speaker C:She moved there.
Speaker C:There was no house on that.
Speaker C:There was a old overseer's house on that property.
Speaker C:She moved the family and extended family in there, built a house, and as soon as she got her house built, the British moved in, threw her out of the house again.
Speaker C:So when the Americans army came.
Speaker C:When the American army came with Francis Marion and light horse Harry Lee to, you know, engage the British at her house that was fortified now, she gave them a.
Speaker C:An arrow that is used to burn things.
Speaker C:So they used it in ships.
Speaker C:You could fire it out of a musket.
Speaker C:And she gave the arrow, presented the arrow to Light Horse, Harry Lee and Francis Marion and said, burn my house.
Speaker C:This is a brand new house.
Speaker C:Burn my house.
Speaker C:Get.
Speaker C:You know, the British are here.
Speaker C:They're not supposed to be here.
Speaker C:I want, I want you to burn the house.
Speaker C:And she did, or they did, and.
Speaker C:And then they put out the fire.
Speaker C:So they didn't burn the house down, but the British surrendered.
Speaker C:And then she fed them dinner afterwards.
Speaker C:So she fed them all dinner.
Speaker C:So I don't know what it is, you know, this.
Speaker C:They can not only fight the British, but at the end of the day they can actually feed them.
Speaker C:So it's, it's an interesting.
Speaker B:That's the starting of Southern hospitality as well.
Speaker C:That's exactly right.
Speaker C:And another one on the battlefield, I think about Emily Geiger, where she, Nathaniel Greene, used her as a messenger to try to get to Thomas Sumter.
Speaker C:She went out in the middle of the night, she evaded the British, then all of a sudden got caught by the British at Fort Granby, which is Casey, modern day Casey now.
Speaker C:She got caught.
Speaker C:She realized she still had the message on her.
Speaker C:She memorized the message, ate the paper.
Speaker C:And then.
Speaker C:So when the woman came in to search her, she didn't have anything on her and they had to let her go, but she had memorized the message and she got it to Thomas Sumter and that message was, you know, delivered.
Speaker C:She.
Speaker C:She accomplished her mission and that helped in, in the, in the efforts there.
Speaker C:Shortly thereafter, 96 was abandoned and they started moving back.
Speaker C:The British started retreating or evacuating back to.
Speaker C:Towards Charleston and they, they were steadily being pushed back to Charleston.
Speaker C:So those are some, you know, between the political, the, the home and the battlefield.
Speaker C:I think, I think there's, there's a pretty good, pretty good circles of influence that you find the women in the American Revolution, especially in South Carolina.
Speaker B:I say got.
Speaker B:That's really interesting information.
Speaker B:I had heard of some of them just from listening to your podcast with the folks who have written books about them, and some of them were new.
Speaker B:So the story about Emily, that's really entertaining and I'm going to have to look that up more in depth later.
Speaker B:The women that you just spoke about it sound like largely maybe came from influential families.
Speaker B:The next question that we have is from Emmaline, who is from West Columbia, and her question is about class and station in the roles that it played.
Speaker B:Will you play that question, Barrett?
Speaker C:Do women do different things to help the war effort depending on how much.
Speaker B:Money their families had?
Speaker C:Yeah, if you're talking about the class or Their station in the community, you know, from all walks of life.
Speaker C:You had women stepping forward, certainly the social construct.
Speaker C:And this is probably, I'm using words that are probably bigger than our guest questioner there.
Speaker C:But you know, the world dictates to us, our class and our station in many respects.
Speaker C:And from a spiritual level, we are created equal in the eyes of God, right?
Speaker C:He knew us before we were born.
Speaker C:The Scriptures say that God knows every hair on our head.
Speaker C:And the Presbyterians in the backcountry and the spiritual leaders of the time often reinforce those doctrines to the colonists.
Speaker C:You see evidence of that doctrine in the Declaration of Independence where we're all created equal.
Speaker C:We're endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.
Speaker C:Among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker C:So that was a spiritual nod.
Speaker C:It's embedded in the Constitution where you as an individual are held accountable.
Speaker C:I can't as a cop, as a former law enforcement officer, when I was a law enforcement officer, I can't arrest a whole group of people and hold them all accountable for that group action.
Speaker C:I have to, I'm arresting individuals and bringing evidence against those individuals, evidence that can be questioned and held up to scrutiny to, by a jury.
Speaker C:So you're held accountable as an individual.
Speaker C:And so what, what did people do since then?
Speaker C:Well, they retarded that, that whole idea of individual accountability.
Speaker C:And they, they have said, you know, and, and when we say all men are created equal, they've retarded that and said, well that's men, that's not women, or that's men, that's not enslaved or that's not a Native American.
Speaker C:We're talking about, we're just talking about Anglo Saxon men, right?
Speaker C:Well, that's not it at all.
Speaker C:They retarded that whole viewpoint.
Speaker C:So when we talk about social constructs, there's a difference between what we accomplished in the American Revolution is we threw off all of that class and we said, hey, government is by the people, for the people.
Speaker C:So but to your question from a class and, and how that pertains where people were in, in the community, where your people in, in Charleston were, the social elite, people like Rebecca Mott, they had a lot of money.
Speaker C:They certainly showed their prowess at Fort Mott.
Speaker C:And you had Ms.
Speaker C:Elizabeth Martin, she certainly came from a very well to do family, but they were eking out a living in the, in the back country of South Carolina.
Speaker C:But you had, you had other people.
Speaker C:And I'm thinking in terms of Andrew Jackson's mom, Elizabeth Jackson, she certainly was, you Know, off the boat out of Ireland, Scotland, and they were eking out a living up in Lancaster, South Lancaster County, South Carolina.
Speaker C:She lost her whole family.
Speaker C:She lost her husband several years before the Revolution, and then she steadily.
Speaker C:The Revolution actually took her, took her sons, all of them, except for Andrew.
Speaker C:And then she was trying to hold her family together, her nephews, her nieces, because her sister died.
Speaker C:And it was just a tragic, tragic story.
Speaker C:And she ends up going down to Charleston to check on her nephews, and she ends up dying of a disease.
Speaker C:But her heroic efforts to try to hold that family together is nothing short of inspirational and life changing for Andrew Jackson.
Speaker C: ded up fighting them again in: Speaker C:Keeping them in a third world country impoverished.
Speaker C:And so those are some, you know, from all walks of life.
Speaker C:You had, you had women stepping up in for the cause, stepping up as patriots, stepping up for individual freedom.
Speaker C:And it's something to be very proud of in South Carolina.
Speaker C:It really is.
Speaker B:It is.
Speaker B:And it sounds like Ms.
Speaker B:Jackson definitely instilled some great values and morals into Andrew to continue that on.
Speaker C:She did.
Speaker C:She actually wrote the last thing she wrote him.
Speaker C:And if you don't mind, I'll say a little bit, I'll talk a little bit about that.
Speaker C:The last thing she wrote him was avoid quarrels as long as you can without yielding to imposition, but sustain your manhood always.
Speaker C:Never bring a suit of law for assault and battery or for defamation.
Speaker C:The law affords no remedy for such outrages that can satisfy the feelings of a true man.
Speaker C:Never wound the feelings of others.
Speaker C:Never brook wanton outrage upon your own feelings.
Speaker C:And if you ever have to vindicate your feelings or defend your honor, do it calmly.
Speaker C:If angry at first, wait till your wrath cools before you proceed.
Speaker C:Now, I'm certain that we can say that in a.
Speaker C:In a more succinct fashion today, but.
Speaker C:But, you know, those are good words.
Speaker C:Those are, those are wit.
Speaker C:That's wisdom that's passed on to her son.
Speaker C:And knowing that she may not live to see him again, and she didn't, that's crazy.
Speaker B:Crazy to think about to, to leave as her legacy to him.
Speaker C:That's right.
Speaker B:We'll move right along then.
Speaker B:So we've talked about a couple different ways.
Speaker B:Now that different women have played their part in the Revolutionary War, especially down here in the South.
Speaker B:This next question is from Cheyenne, from well east over originally.
Speaker B:But Irmo, these days, what is a.
Speaker C:Surprising way women were involved in the Revolutionary War?
Speaker C:Well, I'm amazed by all the stories that.
Speaker C:That women have.
Speaker C:Have played in the American Revolution, especially here in South Carolina.
Speaker C:We talked a little bit about Emily Geiger just now, the messenger that helped Nathaniel Greene and took a message to Thomas Sumter.
Speaker C:We have Mary Dillard from the upstate learning that the British were about to attack General Sumter.
Speaker C:And she forded a flooded river to warn them and then got back in time to get her baby that she had to tie up on the bedpost.
Speaker B:On the bedpost.
Speaker C:She heard about that.
Speaker C:They were getting ready to attack and they were in her house actually.
Speaker C:And so they went, you know, they went to sleep or whatever.
Speaker C:She knew what was getting ready to happen.
Speaker C:She tied her baby to the bedpost, took out in the middle of the night, swam or forded a flooded river, went over to General Sumter's camp, warned him, and then got back in time to get her baby before he.
Speaker C:Before the baby started making all sorts of noise.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:But what happened was they actually.
Speaker C:I think she actually got involved in the battle and.
Speaker C:And the British realized what was going on and actually burned the house down.
Speaker C:And she freaked out over the baby.
Speaker C:And I may be messing this story up a little bit.
Speaker C:I don't think I am, but I might be messing it up a little bit.
Speaker C:She got back, the house was burned down, but the neighbor had taken control of the baby, so.
Speaker B:Oh, you know, because the baby was tied to the bed was.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:So it's crazy.
Speaker C:I mean, you think about.
Speaker C:You didn't have phones back then.
Speaker C:You didn't, you know, you got around by foot or horse.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker C:And if the soldiers show up at your house, what are you going to do, you know, and your, Your brother or your, Your cousins or people, you know, that are fighting on the other side, you've got to.
Speaker C:You, You've got this information that actually will save their lives.
Speaker C:What do you do?
Speaker C:And so she was caught in between a rock and a hard place because she had the responsibilities of a mother.
Speaker C:And so kudos to her.
Speaker B:And that says a lot.
Speaker B:You know, I've got a.
Speaker B:Well, he's 13 now.
Speaker B:But for her to be willing to say, I've got to do this, I got.
Speaker B:I can't stay here.
Speaker B:I have to let them know.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:Even knowing that it means Tying her baby to the bed like that because she, you know, like, there are already bad guys in your house.
Speaker B:Like, you know, that there's some level of bad going on.
Speaker B:Like, I'm.
Speaker B:I've got to do this.
Speaker B:So I.
Speaker B:I think that definitely says a lot for what's going on there.
Speaker B:Goodness gracious.
Speaker C:It's not a choice between.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:It several bad choices and you gotta.
Speaker C:You gotta make your decision which bad choice is the right choice, you know?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:That's tough.
Speaker C:And, and you know, also to keep in mind, when we think about babies and mothers, we think in terms of, you know, early 20s, late teens, early 20s.
Speaker C:Some of these women were having babies 15, 16, 17 years old.
Speaker C:And, you know, and we're talking.
Speaker C:We would look at them now as they saying, oh, they're teenagers or whatever.
Speaker C:These are, these are, these are tough women.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:This is not for the faint of heart, their life in the back country or during this time of the Revolutionary War.
Speaker C:And so kudos to him.
Speaker C:And they are, they are.
Speaker C:They deserve our respect and our admiration.
Speaker B:I agree.
Speaker B:And that really is a surprising way to contribute to their effort.
Speaker B:Cheryl had a.
Speaker B:Cheryl from Columbia, South Carolina, had a similar question, but about more specifically, something women might do.
Speaker A:Did any women actually take up arms.
Speaker C:And fight on the front lines?
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Well, so when we think about young boys and we think about women, and we've talked a little bit about that, the spies, messengers, caretakers, that sort of thing.
Speaker C: int Pleasant that occurred in: Speaker C:There's the story of Ann Bailey, and they called her Mad Ann Bailey.
Speaker C:Mad Ann Bailey.
Speaker C:And she deserved every bit of that moniker.
Speaker C:They killed her husband.
Speaker C:Point Pleasant was a.
Speaker C:Was part of Lord Dunmore's war, and it's considered maybe one of the first outbreaks of the Revolutionary War.
Speaker C:It was kind of.
Speaker C:Kind of an offshoot or whatever, but they were trying to eke out a living and establishing their ideas of independence and freedom in the back country of Virginia.
Speaker C:Of course, West Virginia became West Virginia at the start of the Civil War, but at that time, it was Virginia.
Speaker C:Well, they were going up against the Indians, and it was a.
Speaker C:It could have gone either way.
Speaker C:Isaac Shelby said this was.
Speaker C:This was a tough fight.
Speaker C:And if.
Speaker C:And they were fighting from Virginia to the Ohio River Valley.
Speaker C:I mean, it was several different points in here.
Speaker C:Well, they.
Speaker C:The Indians killed Ann Bailey's husband, and instead of taking it and just Trying to eke out a life.
Speaker C:She decided to take up her musket and her, and her knife and she went on the warpath herself.
Speaker C:And she became the fear and the dread of the women, I mean of the Indians in that area.
Speaker C:And they called her Mad Ann Bailey.
Speaker C:She was considered a fiery woman.
Speaker C:They actually, at Point Pleasant, they actually have statue, a monument up to her because that was, I mean, she made her presence known.
Speaker C:She became a schoolteacher later on raising her kids.
Speaker C:And then she's buried on the property of her son.
Speaker C: But you know, she died around: Speaker C:1832, somewhere in there.
Speaker C:But she was a schoolteacher at the.
Speaker C:After the Revolutionary War.
Speaker B:I bet no one spoke out of place in her classroom.
Speaker C:I don't think they did.
Speaker C:I really think, I really think that she was.
Speaker C:People had to hold their tongue around her because she, she told it like it was.
Speaker C:I understand she was a fiery red headed woman.
Speaker C:And, and, and, and every bit of what that, what that gives you the, the vision that gives you, in the, in your mind.
Speaker B:So, so where, and this is of an offshoot of that.
Speaker B:Just out of my own curiosity, were they having to fight Native Americans at the same time that they were fighting the British?
Speaker B:Like were, were colonialists fighting two separate places in some situations?
Speaker C:Right, right.
Speaker C:The, the over the mountain men certainly were doing that.
Speaker C:That, that was a, if you talk to the historians here in South Carolina, especially in those 96 area up around Greenville, all that was Indian territory.
Speaker C:And that was, that was a big issue for them, the over the mountain men.
Speaker C:Their big issue was the Indians are on the warpath.
Speaker C:We can't leave our family in order to go take on the British regulars because we got the Indians and the, the British were actually funding the Indians, giving them gunpowder, giving them, you know, whatever things of value that they wanted to make those, make those happen.
Speaker C:They had alliances.
Speaker C:There was a lot of geopolitical intrigue going on between the Cherokee and the British and it had ramifications all the way down the Blue Ridge Mountains, all the way down the Appalachian Mountains from Pittsburgh all the way down.
Speaker C:And this is all offshoots of the French and Indian War from several years prior, where, you know, supposedly all these taxes were as a result of the French and Indian war.
Speaker C:So it's a cascading event that happened.
Speaker C: ng to take over Charleston in: Speaker C:That they were getting a land force to attack from North Carolina into South Carolina and then using the Navy.
Speaker C: t didn't work out for them in: Speaker C:But yes, to answer your question, they were fighting the Indians.
Speaker C:In fact, they had to go through when the, when they came up through, go down to Kings Mountain, they had to leave a significant portion behind because they were expecting Cherokee raids.
Speaker C:And, and some of those men didn't want to leave their families at the, you know, so those are, those are some of the, the questions that they are.
Speaker C:Some of the, the realities they had to deal with.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker B:Well, thank you for that explanation.
Speaker B:I didn't realize that in my history lessons that they were doing, but both at the same time.
Speaker B:All right, so let's keep moving along here.
Speaker B:The next question that we've got is coming from Jenny in West Columbia.
Speaker B:What's the most heroic feat by a woman during the Revolutionary War that you know of?
Speaker C:Oh, wow.
Speaker C:Well, you're asking me to pick and who's your favorite?
Speaker C:Each one of those.
Speaker C:Well, I like Elizabeth Jackson.
Speaker C:I like Elizabeth Jackson because she had, what she did in this life reverberates even today in regards to the presidency.
Speaker C:And so I really like her.
Speaker C:But I think one of the things that stood out to me the most and probably has the most romantic air about it was the story of the moors M o o r e out of the over the mountain regions.
Speaker C:We just talked about how they had to make decisions of.
Speaker C:And it was almost a lottery system.
Speaker C:Okay, you know, we've chosen you for this battle.
Speaker C:You stay behind you, you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker C:Mr.
Speaker C:Moore was, was chosen to go down to Kings Mountain and he ends up getting hurt.
Speaker C:I mean, he was wounded in Kings Mountain and so badly that they had to put him up in a, in a house down at the North Carolina, South Carolina border.
Speaker C:Well, all the, all the fighters came back across the mountains, over into Virginia and they're all in the local taverns, the local houses, and they're all talking, you know, talking about what a great battle it was, what a great victory it was.
Speaker C:Ms.
Speaker C:Moore shows up and goes, where's my husband?
Speaker C:And they go, well, we had to leave him down in a house because he was so badly wounded.
Speaker C:And she said, what?
Speaker C:So she made the two week trip back across the November mountains of the Appalachian region by herself, came down and made the same trek that those 900 soldiers, 900 militiamen made.
Speaker C:She made it by herself to find her husband, get him, care for him, take him back home.
Speaker C:That is moxy.
Speaker B:It is.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And you said November, like literally the month of November in the mountains.
Speaker C:That's right.
Speaker C:That's right.
Speaker C:And you know, and to know that it was when they made the trek the first time to go down to Chase Ferguson, to get him at King's Mountain, there was already snow on the mountains.
Speaker C:They had.
Speaker C:They had shoestring, they called it shoestring depth snow across the mountains.
Speaker C:When they came down the first time.
Speaker C:Well, by the time they came back, it was several weeks later.
Speaker C:You know, it's even colder at that point.
Speaker C:So they came down in September, October.
Speaker C:When they got back, it was the end of October.
Speaker C:She came down in November.
Speaker C:So, you know, it's cold.
Speaker B:Really liked him.
Speaker C:She must have.
Speaker C:Well, you know, it.
Speaker C:It's the frontier.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:We don't have all the.
Speaker C:The things that we have today in society.
Speaker C:It took a good couple to eke out that living right.
Speaker C:Otherwise it was exponentially harder.
Speaker C:And so, you know, that love was.
Speaker C:Was built in trust and built in the.
Speaker C:The hard core parts of life.
Speaker C:So kudos to them.
Speaker C:It's a, It's a great story that I love and, and hopefully y'all.
Speaker C:Y'all share some of that, so that's really sweet.
Speaker B:We'll move right on along.
Speaker B:So we've talked about a lot of, really some names that I've heard before, some notable women.
Speaker B:This next question is from Emmaline, again in West Columbia, who was the most well known woman in the war and.
Speaker C:What did she do?
Speaker C:Yeah, you know, so much of the Southern campaigns are lost to history.
Speaker C:We're just now reviving those.
Speaker C:The historians here in South Carolina, where we talk about how we didn't start the Revolutionary War, but certainly it ended here in South Carolina.
Speaker C:But historically speaking, Molly Pitcher is probably one of the best known fighters because she was a cannoneer.
Speaker C:She manned the cannon in the Northern campaigns.
Speaker C:And the cannon at that time were kind of a new technology.
Speaker C:And if you put too much powder in those cannons and they weren't forged correctly, they could blow up.
Speaker C:That certainly happened and killed a couple of enslaved people here in Charleston.
Speaker C:But it was a dangerous thing.
Speaker C:And if you didn't swab those, can those the cannons correctly and cool them down and get all the gunpowder out of there, they could actually blow up on you.
Speaker C:So Molly Pitcher is actually one of the best known fighters but here, you know, in South Carolina, I'd break it up between the low country and the upstate.
Speaker C:And in the low country, I would have to say, you know, you're talking about fighters, you're talking about somebody carrying muskets and that sort of thing.
Speaker C:And, and I, I think you, you try not to, you're going to have to be careful in who is considered a fighter and who's not considered a fighter.
Speaker C:In so much of the, the military back then considered people who picked up the musket, those were the only fighters in the army.
Speaker C:But what we know is that the army of today had engineers, right?
Speaker C:We had a whole staff of people who fed the people, right?
Speaker C:You have a whole corps of medical people.
Speaker C:When you think in all of those cores, all of those parts of the modern military are considered soldiers, right?
Speaker C:So back then, Martha Bratton, when they had the battle at Huck's defeat up in York County, Martha Bratton was helping all the wounded soldiers.
Speaker C:And certainly you saw that with Elizabeth Jackson, she was helping all of those soldiers that were hacked to death up at Buford's massacre.
Speaker C:So they were considered, you know, in modern terms, they would be considered soldiers, they would be considered part of the army.
Speaker C:And so I would have to list those as some of those women.
Speaker C:Kate Berry was pretty formidable.
Speaker C:She was whipped by a British soldier who was trying to elicit out of her information about her husband and his company of Rangers, Patriot Rangers.
Speaker C:And she refused to tell him despite the fact that she was whipped pretty harshly.
Speaker C:So much so that after the war all the Rangers wanted to, or set it up to where Mr.
Speaker C:Barry and that British officer were in the same room.
Speaker C:And they were saying, go ahead and kill him.
Speaker C:Go ahead and take out your, you know, mete out your punishment on him.
Speaker C:And he, I think he, he took a three legged stool and hit him over the head or something, but he didn't kill him.
Speaker C:But she was known as the matriarch or the, the queen of that Ranger company.
Speaker C:And they just kind of said that she was, it's almost like the homecoming queen of that company.
Speaker C:It really is, because they took her under their wing and she was forever in their debt.
Speaker C:And she actually mobilized all the militiamen in that community to help out Andrew Pickens and Morgan at the Battle of Cowpens, in that great victory at Cowpens.
Speaker C:And she was responsible for a lot of those men showing up because she was so well known and well thought of because of her bravery during that time when she wouldn't give up her husband.
Speaker B:So Is that not about Kate specifically, but you talked a little bit about Ms.
Speaker B:Jackson and some of the others.
Speaker B:Was it common that the women would take on the role of nurse, that they would be the ones to try?
Speaker B:And I know we talked about early the women feeding officers and things like that, but was that a common thing for them to do is to take on this additional responsibility of medical care, of.
Speaker B:Of nourishment, of grooming, of all of that, of these armies that were around?
Speaker C:Yeah, I don't know if you could say that across.
Speaker C:I mean, it's such a big broad brush in that regard.
Speaker C:Certainly women took care of the families.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And they had to deal with all the boo boos and everything that went all around went on with that.
Speaker C:But like, for.
Speaker C:For Martha Bratton, she brought with her from over in Scotland and Ireland, she brought with her an understanding of herbs, an understanding of medicine, rudimentary, obviously, but she had a certain amount of that knowledge passed down to her.
Speaker C:In fact, her children became doctors as a result of that.
Speaker C:But for her especially, she had that skill set already, and she was looked at as someone who had the healing properties or had the healing knowledge.
Speaker B:Okay, so the next question here we've got is actually from Barrett, also of West Columbia, S.C.
Speaker B:are there any notable.
Speaker C:Women that were involved in the colonial.
Speaker B:Efforts from South Carolina?
Speaker C:Well, we certainly have talked about those already which talked about Martha Patton or Mary Patton, who made the gunpowder up in the over the mountain regions and brought it down into the upstate to hear Martin Mangello talk, perhaps she made trips all the way down as far as Camden and maybe even a little further down in some Scotch Irish settlements down here and gave the.
Speaker C:The gunpowder to them.
Speaker C:Martha Bratton we talked about, she stood up to a sickle was actually placed on her neck, and they threatened to kill her if she didn't give up the whereabouts of her husband.
Speaker C:And then they locked her and her kids in the upstairs attic, and we're going to come back the next day and burn the house down.
Speaker C:She.
Speaker C:She got word to an enslaved person by the name of Watt, who was held in such high regard that they even gave him a grave, a marked grave, later on.
Speaker C:But Watt found Mr.
Speaker C:Bratton and they actually came back and defeated Christian Huck at Williamson Plantation, right down the street, right down the road.
Speaker C:But then the British showed up later, and they knew that she had gunpowder hidden on the farm.
Speaker C:And she heard them coming and so she blew up the gunpowder before they could get to her.
Speaker C:So she.
Speaker C:She was a.
Speaker C:She was a Woman of.
Speaker C:She was a staunch woman.
Speaker C:She.
Speaker C:She had some starch in her.
Speaker C:In her, in her makeup.
Speaker C:Elizabeth Jackson, we've talked about quite a bit.
Speaker C:Kate Berry is a good one.
Speaker C:Dicey Langston stood in front of a British soldier who was threatening to shoot her father.
Speaker C:And they were living right in the midst of a loyalist community, and so they were always being looked at.
Speaker C:Her brothers had been.
Speaker C:Were patriots.
Speaker C:And her brother had left a rifle at the house, an extra rifle that he had.
Speaker C:And he's.
Speaker C:And he gave her a password that if somebody comes by looking for this rifle and they give you the password, then, you know, give him the rifle.
Speaker C:And so some guys showed up and said, your brother left something for us.
Speaker C:And so she went and got the rifle and she asked him what the password was.
Speaker C:And he goes, I don't have a password.
Speaker C:And she goes, well, I still have the rifle.
Speaker C:And she pointed it at him.
Speaker C:He said, I still have the rifle.
Speaker C:So they said something to the effect of, well, you got to be his sister.
Speaker C:So, you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker C:And it all worked out.
Speaker C:But she had some moxie to her as well.
Speaker C:We talked about Emily Geiger, we talked about Dicey Langston.
Speaker C:Well, that's who.
Speaker C:We talked about, Dicey Langston just now, Rebecca Mott, we talked about her.
Speaker C:And then Libby McNamee was on a podcast with me and talking about Susanna's midnight ride.
Speaker C:And Susanna was a young lady who actually worked in a tavern that was at a crossroads that everybody would come, and the British ended up in the crossroads or in the tavern talking about how they were getting ready to capture Lafayette before the Battle of Yorktown.
Speaker C:Well, this woman realized what was going on, realized that it was important, and so she left the tavern in the middle of the night, found Lafayette, warned them, and saved Lafayette's life.
Speaker C:And as a result, Yorktown.
Speaker C:Lafayette was instrumental in the Battle of Yorktown, where we won the decisive victory, where Cornwallis was defeated and gave up his sword.
Speaker C:And for the most part, that was the last.
Speaker C:It wasn't the last battle, but it certainly was the downfall of Cornwallis and the beginning in.
Speaker C:And one of the ends of the Revolutionary War and probably because she helped save Lafayette's life.
Speaker C:You know, a woman, right?
Speaker C:Yeah, Cool stuff.
Speaker B:I guess that, that's a.
Speaker B:That's a theme that we've kind of heard throughout.
Speaker B:You know, some of these women literally were just there, and I suppose that the people around them took them no account, paid them no mind, and they took advantage of that short sighted thought and were able to warn the people that needed to be warned in some very instrumental ways.
Speaker C:Yeah, they didn't.
Speaker C:They didn't.
Speaker C:They weren't wallflowers.
Speaker C:None of them were wallflowers by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker C:They didn't just go about life and think, oh, I don't have a.
Speaker C:I don't have a say so in this.
Speaker C:You know, I'm a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker C:One of his quotes is, you know, it's not the critic who counts.
Speaker C:It's not the man who points out where the strong man stumbles.
Speaker C:It's the man who's in the arena.
Speaker C:And certainly these women saw themselves as being in the arena of the American Revolution.
Speaker B:Well, I'm glad that they were there.
Speaker B:We have just one final question, which, honestly, we've talked a lot about.
Speaker B:It may just be some of the same people that we've talked about, but this is the question from my niece in Chesnee, South Carolina, and she's very excited to hear this answer.
Speaker B:Is there a woman who isn't talked about or credited enough for her role in the revolution?
Speaker B:So an understated hero, maybe?
Speaker C:Well, you know, from my perspective, the Southern campaigns are never talked about enough.
Speaker C:And if we start digging into the Southern campaigns and some of these women that we have, none of them are talked about enough.
Speaker C:You know, it's.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:It's crazy how much we have lost and how much from a historical standpoint.
Speaker C:And so much of it is, if it's not written down, it didn't happen.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So, you know, you got the generals.
Speaker C:Like I said, the beginning of the podcast, you got the generals and the colonels.
Speaker C:They got a lot of books written about them.
Speaker C:They got a lot because they were writing dispatches and writing notes to and sending messages and stuff.
Speaker C:There's a lot of.
Speaker C:Lot of things that came from them.
Speaker C:But what you don't hear are the women who maybe, you know, push their sons out the door, you know, and said, hey, you need to go do this.
Speaker C:Or they, they.
Speaker C:They gave a pertinent bit of information to the right person at the right time.
Speaker C:Or like the women of Edenton, North Carolina, they decided from a political standpoint, well, we're not going to sit on the sidelines.
Speaker C:We want to have a say so, too.
Speaker C:We want to have a voice.
Speaker C:And they.
Speaker C:They stepped up and signed their names to.
Speaker C:To that piece of paper and not only just kept their voices in their community, they sent it over to England to let them know what they thought, you know, and so it's These.
Speaker C:These women, these stories that we have out of the Revolution, a lot of them are lost.
Speaker C:The history.
Speaker C:Thank goodness we have some.
Speaker C:Some historians that are digging out some of this stuff.
Speaker C:We.
Speaker C:We find a lot of those in the pension applications that came around in the.
Speaker C: The middle: Speaker C:And you find some of them are widows who were trying to get the pensions for their husbands who fought in the war.
Speaker C:And they're detailing what happened.
Speaker C:There's a guy, and these are stories that you don't know.
Speaker C:These are all intricate stories, and every person has their own experiences, right?
Speaker C:There's a guy, a free man of color, a free black man out of Barnwell county, name of Isham Carter.
Speaker C:Isham Carter is the son of a black gentleman and an Indian mother.
Speaker C:He goes off to war, and he fights at Stono Ferry, at Savannah, and at Charleston as a cannon mate.
Speaker C:So he's working on the cannon, and there's a bunch of people that work on each individual cannon.
Speaker C:They're loading the cannon, they're hauling canisters, ammunition up, they're swabbing things down.
Speaker C:They're doing all the things they need to do with this cannon.
Speaker C:That cannon crew is.
Speaker C:Is upwards of 12 to 16 people.
Speaker C:So he's part of that cannon crew.
Speaker C:Well, he goes through and he gets.
Speaker C:He gets.
Speaker C:He made the choice to join the patriot side, right?
Speaker C:And.
Speaker C:And he did.
Speaker C:Then he gets captured at Charleston.
Speaker C:Well, he ends up marrying a woman after the war, and they settle down.
Speaker C:And I think they actually settled down in another state or whatever Those.
Speaker C:Those experiences.
Speaker C:And she actually, you know, he makes a pension application, not for himself as much as for his wife, and trying to make sure that she's taken care of.
Speaker C:And that's not really an answer to your question, because I feel like we've.
Speaker C:We've answered a lot of those women and stuff, but everybody has their experiences.
Speaker C:And a lot of these experiences we don't know anything about.
Speaker C:A lot of these heroic things that happen, we just don't know anything about it.
Speaker C:And there's a lot of tragedy.
Speaker C:And anytime we have with war, you know, and you start thinking, then you start tying into the infectious diseases and smallpox and all of that stuff.
Speaker C:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker C:That just brings up another layer of tragedy that occurs during the revolutionary wartime and during the midst of all of these particular people.
Speaker C:One woman that stands out in my mind is the Catawba Indian, Ms.
Speaker C:New River.
Speaker C:Okay?
Speaker C:And dadgummit.
Speaker C:Ah, she was a.
Speaker C:She was a chieftain out of the Catawba Indians.
Speaker C:And during peacetime, she actually was the leader of the Catawba Indians.
Speaker C:And during wartime, they kind of ceded over that responsibility to her husband, Major new River.
Speaker C:But they took in, and this is in part and parcel because of her leadership.
Speaker C:They took in Thomas Sumter and all those partisans who were the only thing left against the British.
Speaker C:When the British came into Charleston and moved up into Lancaster county, they were the only force that in its Sally New River.
Speaker C:They were the only force that stood between the British and taking over all of South Carolina.
Speaker C:Sally new river, the chiefess of the Catawba Indians said, no, we're taking them in.
Speaker C:They are our friends.
Speaker C:And the Catawba Indians were with us from the beginning all the way to the end of the American revolution.
Speaker C:And it was part and parcel to her leadership in the Catawba combination.
Speaker B:Oh, that is interesting.
Speaker B:I think Haley's gonna love to read more about chieftis New River.
Speaker B:I think that she's gonna be very excited about that.
Speaker B:And I know you said.
Speaker B:And we'll kind of start winding down now.
Speaker B:I know I loved.
Speaker B:You said an answer to the question that you didn't feel like southern people were talked about near the southern campaigns were nearly talked about enough.
Speaker B:And there Revolutionary war started all up in Boston, Philadelphia, all of those.
Speaker B:And that's what you hear in school and everything when you're learning about the revolutionary war.
Speaker B:I mean, other than some of the.
Speaker B:The big ones from the South.
Speaker B:But you mentioned that people are still kind of putting together some of the stories, some of the anecdotes, some of what actually happened during that long time period of the Revolutionary war in the south.
Speaker B:Where.
Speaker B:How are y'all doing that?
Speaker B:What goes into that?
Speaker C:Well, the 250th Commission, South Carolina, 250th Commission.
Speaker C:And the legislature has set aside a whole bunch of money to do research and to.
Speaker C:And to come up with these different projects they are doing.
Speaker C:They're putting money into education.
Speaker C:Not only education for the children, but education for the.
Speaker C:About the free and enslaved people back then, about the women.
Speaker C:They are like my comic book series, have.
Speaker C:Actually are funding a lot of that.
Speaker C:And they're saying, we want you to include those stories of the children of the.
Speaker C:Of the women of the free and enslaved of the British loyalists.
Speaker C:We want to hear the total tapestry of what happened in the American Revolution in South Carolina.
Speaker C:In South Carolina, there's a.
Speaker C:There's an author called Jack Parker, John Parker wrote the book Parker's guide to the revolutionary war in South Carolina.
Speaker C:In it, he.
Speaker C:He says that there's over 580 battles, skirmishes, engagements, and really just petty feuds that are coming out of that time.
Speaker C:And I say petty feuds, they.
Speaker C:They ended up killing each other.
Speaker C:So I mean, it's, it's.
Speaker C:It's not petty by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker C:But 580, when you start thinking about that number and comparing it to any other colony, the closest to us is New Jersey as far as the amount of battles.
Speaker C:We literally, when they moved, when the British moved out of the north and they came south, they felt like they could keep South Carolina as a colony, much like Ireland, okay?
Speaker C:And so this whole push to keep all this geography in south and North Carolina was because they wanted to keep South Carolina as kind of a puppet government for their colonial interest.
Speaker C:They wanted to take our raw goods and turn them into textiles or whatever over in Great Britain and sell them to the empire, sell them to the world, right?
Speaker C:So we wanted to keep us that way and keep us subjugated in that way.
Speaker C:So they wanted South Carolina because it was the most prosperous at the time, basically because of those raw goods, and that was important.
Speaker C: rds the end of the world from: Speaker C:Five hundred and eighty battles, skirmishes, engagements, feuds were fought here.
Speaker B:And so you talk about some of those, I guess, in the comics.
Speaker B:Tell me a little bit more about that or tell our listeners a little bit more about the comics.
Speaker C:So our comic book series, we're going to do the.
Speaker C:We've done the Rise of Thomas Sumter, which occurs in the Catawba River Valley, going all the way up into North Carolina.
Speaker C:But, you know, our stories are primarily in South Carolina.
Speaker C: ed out of his house in May of: Speaker C:And then he goes and he pushes back in York county after he finds friends in the Catawba Nation.
Speaker C:He pushes back against the.
Speaker C:The British at Huck's Defeat, the Battle of Huck's Defeat, which is Williamson's plantation in York County.
Speaker C:From there he goes to Fairfield county and takes on Rocky Mount, an outpost there just across the watery river.
Speaker C:He takes on the British again at the Battle of Hanging Rock, which is a significant place in Lancaster County.
Speaker C:From there he goes right before the Battle of Camden.
Speaker C:He goes with a contingent of forces and they go down and raid or defeat a group out of called Carey's Fort.
Speaker C:It was a supply outpost, beats them there.
Speaker C:And then when Gates loses At Camden, Sumter is taking all of his supplies and all of his army and all of his prisoners up the west side of the Wateree River.
Speaker C:Camden is defeated.
Speaker C:Gates is defeated at Camden on the east side of the river.
Speaker C:And Sumter is hanging out there in the wind.
Speaker C:And he doesn't have anybody to keep the.
Speaker C:The British army from crossing the river to get him.
Speaker C:And they ultimately did get him up around Great Falls, South Carolina, a place called Fishing Creek, which is right there at the dam.
Speaker C:I don't know if you know anybody about the Rocky Creek Dam, but it's up right there at Fishing Creek, right there above Great Falls.
Speaker C:So that's, that's the six, first six series.
Speaker C:Then we do the Unlikely Heroes, which is Martin Town.
Speaker C:We're just completing one on Fort Thickety in Cherokee county.
Speaker C:And we're starting a series on the rise of Francis Marion and then another series, the Rise of Andrew Pickens.
Speaker C:And should.
Speaker C:We should have all those completed by.
Speaker C:Our deadline is about January or February of next year, but we'll see.
Speaker C:We're pushing to make it happen.
Speaker B:Do you write those?
Speaker B:Do you write the dialogue or.
Speaker C:I do the research and I write the dialogues.
Speaker C:We try to weave in several stories like our comic book or graphic novel on Buford's Massacre.
Speaker C:It's called Buford's Quarter.
Speaker C:I wrote those.
Speaker C:And we, we intertwined Ms.
Speaker C:Jackson into that story because Andrew Jackson actually at the end when Buford's Massacre happens, that's about when they started.
Speaker C:They decided that they would sign up for the American army around that time and fought under William Davy.
Speaker C:But I intertwined several different stories within there.
Speaker C:We've got the Catawba Indians.
Speaker C:We've got Ishmael Titus, who was part of the Cleveland's Devils.
Speaker C:He's a black gentleman out of Wilkes County, North Carolina, came down and fought at Camden.
Speaker C:So we talk a little bit about him.
Speaker C:He fought at Kings Mountain.
Speaker C:He fought at Guilford's Courthouse.
Speaker C:He was a real war fighter.
Speaker C:You don't hear about people like that.
Speaker C:But he was there and he was.
Speaker C:He was.
Speaker C:He did his part and we are free because of that.
Speaker C:And you know, because of people like that.
Speaker C:Everyday people like you and me.
Speaker C:Not necessarily.
Speaker C:You know, we hear about the colonels and the generals, but we don't hear about the everyday people.
Speaker C:Ishmael Titus was certainly one of those everyday people, but we talk about those and we're excited about the comic books that are coming up.
Speaker B:That is exciting.
Speaker B:I will have to.
Speaker B:And we can touch base in email.
Speaker B:I'll have to get your two favorite, I think, because I will order two of those two give away as a.
Speaker B:Or to a lucky listener who shares and likes and interacts with this episode.
Speaker B:But I want to be sure I give them the two that you think are the best.
Speaker B:Best.
Speaker C:I know you'll definitely send you unlikely heroes, which is the women heroes down in Martintown.
Speaker C:We'll definitely put that out there for you.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:That's perfect.
Speaker B:All right, so I don't have any other questions.
Speaker B:I don't have any other questions from.
Speaker B:From my listeners on this one.
Speaker B:Is there anything that you'd like to say to everybody or any questions that you have?
Speaker C:Well, this is what I ask.
Speaker C:Ask all of my podcast episodes.
Speaker C:I have my podcast for the adults and the comic books for the.
Speaker C:For the children.
Speaker C:But I ask all my podcast guests, what does liberty mean to you, Amy?
Speaker B:Part of me was worried that you were going to ask me that, because I had listened to just so many in a row.
Speaker B:And I think liberty to me is different than maybe liberty would have been to my four mothers.
Speaker B:You know, life was different back then for a woman in general.
Speaker B:But what it means is it let them fight for more so that I could have more, and it lets me fight for more so that my daughters and granddaughters can have more.
Speaker B:And we can do it all without oppression, that we can have everything that we need, that we desire.
Speaker B:That's good.
Speaker B:That we can be good in the world and do that without oppression from the government.
Speaker C:That's a fantastic answer.
Speaker C:And the beauty about that is our government, the way we have set that up, the way we have set the government up, is that the individual does have freedom to do that, but that freedom came at a cost and continues to be something that we have to make sure that we are on the front line to preserve, because there are always those forces out there that are trying to take it away.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C:I appreciate that.
Speaker B:I appreciate that.
Speaker B:I appreciate you.
Speaker B:I appreciate you coming on.
Speaker B:I'm very excited to get this episode out, and I think that there are a lot.
Speaker B:There are a lot of people who will just love this.
Speaker B:This history lesson that we got today.
Speaker B:So thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today.
Speaker C:Well, thank you.
Speaker C:There's a lot to be proud of as Americans and South Carolinians, so thank you.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Well, guys, I really enjoyed speaking with Eric, and I learned so much.
Speaker A:I hope that you enjoyed this as much as I did.
Speaker A:And if you have a hankering for more history, be sure to check out Eric's History Man Podcast.
Speaker A:Until next time, be safe, be kind and stay curious.
Speaker A:Welcome to Wonderland Podcast.
Speaker B:It's copyrighted by Amy Gland and is.
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Speaker A:This episode was recorded in part in the Big Media Home Studio and in part in the welcome to Wonderland Recording Closet.
Speaker A:Any thoughts or opinions expressed as part of this production are those of the hostess and left for life indicated.
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Speaker A:Nope.
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Speaker C:SA.
