History Highlights

Scroll down to find articles of interest under each year as we observe the 250th of each.

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1769

Daniel Boone through the Cumberland Gap

It was 250 years ago that Daniel Boone began his first excursion through the Cumberland Gap into the wilderness of Kentucky. He was gone from home for two years hunting and exploring a land rich in wildlife, a land seemingly inviting to the land-hungry colonists east of the Appalachian Mountains. The native Shawnee thought otherwise.

A Spanish Incursion into the Carolina Backcountry, 1567

Part of the challenge of sharing history is knowing when to start the story. Something always came before. And this story comes from 200 years before Daniel Boone first passed through the Cumberland Gap in 1769.

This story from our Becoming America will surprise most people who never suspected a Spanish incursion into the Carolina Backcountry 20 years before the English first landed on the North Carolina coast in the 1580s. Archeology in today’s Burke County, N.C., reveals the story of Joara.

South Carolina Regulators

In 1769, the Regulators of South Carolina stood down. For over three years, citizens had taken the matter of justice into their own hands to deal with horse thieves, cattle rustlers, robbers, burglars, and murderers who had plagued their communities in the backcountry.
In response, Royal Governor Lord Montague sent Joseph Scoffel into the Upcountry to moderate the vigilante Regulators. Bad blood between these two groups later complicated the choices of supporting the revolution or being a Friend of Government in South Carolina’s Upcountry.

The Initials “JS”

By the end of 1769, Daniel Boone had experienced the loss of a season’s work in harvesting deer skins from the Kentucky wilderness as they were confiscated by a party of Shawnee hunters. Boone and his brother-in-law, John Stuart, had been twice captured and twice escaped. The others in their hunting party had abandoned them. During February 1770, Boone and Stuart were hunting and trapping opposite sides of the Kentucky River with plans to join up on a prescribed day. When Stuart failed to return, even after several days, Boone crossed the river and began to search for Stuart. He found the initials “JS” carved in a tree at his campsite, but found no other sign of his brother-in-law. Stuart had disappeared. Boone was joined by his younger brother, Squire, Jr. When Squire departed for home to sell some skins, Daniel, alone in Kentucky with scant powder and shot, no horse, and no dog for companionship explored the countryside far and wide, taking his measure of Kentucky, and ranging as far as the Falls of the Ohio (today’s Louisville).

The disappearance of John Stuart remained a mystery until March, 1775, when Daniel Boone led 30 axe-men on an expedition to mark the 200-mile Boone Trace into Kentucky, a route others could follow for the next 20 years. Boone’s party arrived at the site along the Kentucky River in early April where they would build that outpost on the westering frontier, Fort Boonesborough. Only days later, “the shot heard ‘round the world” was fired on the village green at Lexington, Massachusetts. The Minute Men gathered at Concord. A thousand miles from the wilderness of Kentucky, the American Revolution became a shooting war.

Boston Massacre

On March 5, 1770, tensions between Boston citizens and occupying British soldiers gave way to a deadly confrontation. Since the Stamp Act of 1766 and the onerous Townshend Acts only recently, citizens in all the colonies were increasingly upset to be treated as underlings. Those in Boston were especially dismayed at the presence of British soldiers on their streets. On February 22, a customs officer fired through his window attempting to disperse a mob threatening the store of a Loyalist. He killed an 11-year old boy. During the following days, other fights broke out between Boston mobs and soldiers. But in the late afternoon of March 5, confrontation turned into bloodshed.

Treaty of Lochaber, 1770

Undoubtedly, America was occupied by other people before it was claimed by later arrivals who also wanted it. Some of America’s earliest westward movement began when too many people were crowded along the coast. And that westward movement continued during the colonial period leading up to the Revolution. Even when the population of the American colonies was only 2.2 million in 1770, many among those seeming few, by comparison to today’s population, wanted access to what they saw as the open lands beyond where then-current settlements extended.  

The War of the Regulation Continues

Tensions in the North Carolina backcountry were rising with discontent in the latter 1760s among these citizens who had little and wanted only opportunity. They were being mistreated by the governing colonial elites, who provided poor oversight on the corrupt magistrates, sheriffs, and land agents who preyed on these westering colonists. They demanded better regulation of these government officials. Organizing as Regulators, in September 1770, they marched to Hillsborough, protested the courts, physically attacked Judge Richard Henderson, and dragged the leading administrator from his house by his heels, bouncing his head on every step. The Regulators were emboldened until May 16, 1771, where they were roundly defeated by the colonial militia led by Royal Governor William Tryon at the Battle of Alamance. Six of the captured Regulators were tried and quickly hanged on June 9, 1771. Some of the former Regulators fled west, crossing the mountains and settling in North Carolina’s overmountain region, today’s east Tennessee. When the Revolution came, most of the Regulators stood down. They chose not to fight in support of the colonial elites who were then promoting revolution. These colonial elites at the coast were the same who had provoked them previously and had sent an army to defeat them.

Read “The Battle of Alamance and the Aftermath” and listen to “Terror in the Backcountry, 1771” under “History Highlights, 1771.”

1771

The War of the Regulation

Listen to “Terror in the Backcountry, 1771,” a dramatic telling of the poorly understood events unfolding in the heart of today’s North Carolina piedmont in May and June 1771. These events, perpetrated against North Carolinians by other North Carolinians under the leadership of Royal Governor William Tryon brought to a tragic end the efforts of North Carolina colonists in the backcountry to get their government to do the right thing. They simply wanted the elected officials and the royal governor to rein in the corruption and extortion perpetrated by officials of the colonial government on citizens far from the seat of power and influence in New Bern. The end of the War of the Regulation preceded the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence by four years and the issues were different from those sparking separation from Great Britain, but how the Regulators were treated greatly affected how the American Revolution unfolded in North Carolina. (This audio is 13 minutes with dramatic narration and music.) Click on the arrow to hear:

“Terror in the Backcountry, 1771”

The Battle of Alamance
and the Aftermath

North Carolina backcountry, spring 1771

After several years in the late 1760s of bitter discourse, protest, and, eventually, riots against egregious mistreatment by appointed officials, the farmers on North Carolina’s frontier continued to petition the royal governor and assembly for relief. These “Regulators” called for a better regulation of government. The entrenched powers that be were put off by these backcountry “rabble” and passed the Johnston Riot Act enabling the government to declare Regulators as outlaws and to confiscate property. Indeed, Royal Governor William Tryon convinced the Council to approve his marching the provincial militia in the spring of 1771 into the backcountry to dominate these citizens.  

Tryon had some trouble gathering a militia force; many eastern farmers with Regulator sympathies refused to muster. He was more successful, however, in gathering militia officers and “gentleman volunteers” from among the eastern colonial elites, making up a tenth of his 1,100-man provincial militia.  

General Hugh Waddell marched a separate force from Cape Fear into Mecklenburg County intending to approach Regulator country from the south. He gathered only 250 men, a third of those expected even from Rowan, Tryon, Anson, and Mecklenburg counties. On May 9, Waddell’s camp was surrounded by 2,000 Regulators giving out Indian yells, unsettling Waddell’s men who withdrew across the Yadkin River to Salisbury.  

Tryon arrived in Hillsborough on May 11 intending to oversee the election of the Assemblyman to replace the outlawed Herman Husband. But Tryon became anxious about Regulators amassing to his west. He marched out May 12 camping on the west bank of Great Alamance Creek on May 13.  

Regulators began to assemble opposite Tryon’s camp, the two groups eying each other uneasily over a couple of days. On Thursday, May 16, Tryon marched his men to within 300 feet of the Regulator camp, then grown to between 2,000 and 3,000 men.  

Three Regulators visited Tryon’s camp asking the governor to consider the concerns of the people. Taking them as hostages, he sent one back with his ultimatum to disperse under the Riot Act. After one hour, Tryon fired a cannon to begin the battle.  

Regulators, firing from behind trees, rocks and fences, had initial success against the provincial militiamen standing in close order. But they soon ran low on ammunition and had no organized battle tactics. As Regulators began to retreat from the field, some were captured by pursuing militiamen. The next day, Tryon hanged prisoner James Few on the battlefield without benefit of trial. Perhaps 20 Regulators were killed and nine militiamen. Wounded on both sides may have totaled 150.  

As horrible as was the battle, the real tragedy of the War of the Regulation unfolded through May as Tryon and his militiamen marched west along the Trading Path, terrorizing Regulator communities. Tryon’s militiamen arrested residents, burned fields and homesteads, took horses, and commandeered flour and beeves. Tryon also offered a pardon for taking an oath of allegiance. Some 6,400 men did so, surrendering their firearms.   

Turning north at Jersey Settlement near Salisbury, Tryon marched prisoners tied two-by-two to Bethabara. In early June, the Moravians noted among the volunteers in Tryon’s army were “all the leading men of the country.” After grandly celebrating the birthday of King George III on June 4, Tryon marched his army and prisoners over five days back to Hillsborough.  

Having received at Hillsborough confirmation that he was to report soon as the new governor of New York, Tryon hurried through the trials of the prisoners, encouraging the judges—including Richard Henderson—to return guilty verdicts. In three days, 12 men were found guilty of treason, all sentenced to hang.  

Residents of Hillsborough were compelled to witness the executions on June 19 at gallows built on a hilltop east of town. To demonstrate his mercy and power, Tryon commuted six of those death sentences, but he publicly hanged six men. Tryon departed the next day for New Bern to begin packing for his move to New York.  

Former Regulators were thereafter changed. Some moved away. Many honored their oaths, discouraged. And soon colonial elites, having exploited these citizens, would discover too late they needed these citizens’ support for a revolution.

Lord Dunmore Arrives
as Governor of Virginia

New York, NY, and Williamsburg, Virginia, 1771

Shortly after the riots in Hillsborough in September 1770 in the backcountry of North Carolina, when angry citizens protested their governor’s disregard for their welfare, the citizens of Virginia to the north were grieving the sudden death of their much-loved royal governor, Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt. He had been the governor only since 1768, but in that short time had earned the respect and admiration of the King’s subjects in the oldest of the English colonies to survive its founding in mainland America.  

To replace the heralded Lord Botetourt, Lord Hillsborough, Secretary of State for the Colonies, selected the only-recently-appointed governor of New York. But that governor, John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, did not want to go. He had great opportunity in New York and saw no appeal in leaving it. Why would he want to move to what he considered the backwater colony of Virginia with no social life, no culture, and plenty of disease. Indeed, he argued by letter excessively with Lord Hillsborough concluding the matter in his own favor, but only in his own mind. After learning that his replacement was to be William Tryon of North Carolina, he suggested the fellow would be just as happy in Virginia so he, Dunmore, could stay in New York.  

William Tryon arrived in New York on July 7, 1771, less than a month after hanging six Regulators in the town of Hillsborough, North Carolina. Despite Dunmore’s solicitous entreaties to strike a deal with Tryon, the new governor was sworn in the next day. During the celebration after the swearing in, Dunmore got uproariously drunk, called Tryon a “coward” and “then careered about in the night assaulting his guests.” He ended the evening bawling, “Damn, Virginia. Did I ever seek it? I asked for New York—New York I took, and they have robbed me of it without my consent.”  

Taking his revenge as he could, during the summer while still declaring he would not go to Virginia, Dunmore continued to act as governor in some capacities. In a dubious arrangement, he acquired 51,000 acres around Lake Champlain in a scheme of questionable ethics and legality. He also continued collecting payments for land patents by which he made himself quite wealthy, by colonial measures. Meanwhile, the citizens in Williamsburg heard nothing from their new governor, only bad reports about him, flowing down from New York. 

At last, on September 25, 1771, Lord Dunmore rode into Williamsburg, one year to the day since he had become governor of New York. He was reluctant, bitter, aggrieved. He was no Lord Botetourt, and the citizens knew it. So did Dunmore.  

Among the events early in his administration which best acquainted the citizenry of Virginia with their new governor, Dunmore presided in a court case. It was a salacious and much-too-public affair pitting a “pretty young,” not-yet-21 Kitty Eustace Blair against her bridegroom of a day, the also young Dr. James Blair. The suit regarded the consequences of a marriage not consummated to either’s satisfaction on the wedding night. Stretching the bounds of equity and propriety and further piquing the public’s interest in the matter, the plaintiff, Kitty Eustace, had been (by credible accounts) the mistress of the judge, John Murray, Lord Dunmore, during his time in New York. The court proceedings were made even more colorful by the attorneys involved. Kitty Eustace Blair was represented in part by political opposites, Attorney General John Randolph and Patrick Henry. The defendant was represented by Edmund Pendleton (a son of opposing counsel), George Wythe, Virginia’s first law professor at the College of William and Mary, and Wythe’s star student, Thomas Jefferson. Although the wedding day and fateful evening were in May 1771, Lord Dunmore did not render his decision on the court case for a year-and-a-half, in November 1773, after the defendant had, in fact, died, much too young. Within days of the ruling, Kitty Blair announced an auction on January 1 for her one-half interest in the Blair estate. Thinking that with this case he had somehow recovered his reputation and repaired “the happiness of his government,” Dunmore soon found that he had done the opposite. He had given ample evidence to the rising Whig faction in the colony who believed that, beyond being a simple adulterer, Dunmore intended to rule Virginia as a despot and without regard to interests other than his own.  

What Dunmore needed to boost his popularity in the Virginia colony was a celebrated victory over a perceived threat to the interests and safety of the colonists. In the summer of 1774, he put himself at the head of just such a military campaign.

(To be continued in “1774” with “Lord Dunmore’s War” and thereafter when he burns an American city to the ground in January 1776. Read it now in Before They Were Heroes at Kings Mountain by Randell Jones. www.RandellJones.com )

55 years before 1771 …

“A Pleasure
To Cross the Mountains”

Virginia’s Governor Spotswood and
the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe - 1716

Settlement of the backcountry of the American colonies in the South before the American Revolution was constrained by the Appalachian Mountains. This had been true throughout the first century of occupation by English-speaking settlers. Indeed, the expedition of Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia in 1716 and his Knights of the Golden Horseshoe, was a celebrated moment in exploration. This was the first known expedition to cross over the ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains and to report back to the English settlements that lay on the other side.  

In late August 1716, Spotswood and his party of well-to-do Virginians interested in land speculation made their way west along the Rappahannock River from Germanna near today’s Culpeper. They were accompanied by a few rangers and four Meherrin guides. Near the crest, they cut their way through the woods and ended up crossing into the headwaters of the James River basin, cresting the Blue Ridge at Swift Run Gap. On September 6, they rode down into the Shenandoah River valley where they celebrated their accomplishment with toasts of wine and brandy. They also buried a bottle with a pronouncement claiming the land for King George I, who had only ascended to the British throne two years before in August 1714, following the death of his mother, Queen Anne. (George was the German-speaking prince-elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg, House of Hanover. Although he was King of Great Britain and Ireland, he did not speak English.)  

After a 3-day return trip, the Spotswood expedition reached Germanna on September 10. Afterward, Spotswood presented each of the officers a stickpin fashioned of gold in the shape of a horseshoe with diamonds inlaid. Each was inscribed “Sic juvat transcendere montes,” Latin for “Thus it is a pleasure to cross the mountains.” In legend, if not in their lifetimes, the recipients became known as “the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe.” Despite the promise of this discovery, the mountains remained a prominent barrier to westward movement. The Shenandoah Valley was settled from the north with German, Scots-Irish, and Mennonite families moving south from the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area during the middle decades of the 18th century. It was this settlement pattern into the backcountry of the mid-Atlantic colonies which gave rise to the notation of the “Great Philadelphia Wagon Road” running through the Shenandoah valley.

At Swift Run Gap today, along US 33 near where it joins with Skyline Drive, three markers commemorate the 1716 accomplishment of Lt. Governor Spotswood and his companions. One marker was placed on September 5, 1921, by the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia. (That marker was missing in 2016.) Another commemorative marker containing a poem by Gertrude Claytor was placed in 1934 by the Virginia State Commission on Conservation and Development. The Department of Historic Resources placed its marker in 2004.

Spotswood’s first view of the Shenandoah Valley, 1716

 1772

20 years before 1772 …

The Great Wagon Road

The “Great Wagon Road” is essential to the history of our becoming America. It is the backbone to a story—one of many that can be told, of course—about the backcountry of America’s southern colonies. This one is a story about some of those who were there before and during the American Revolution and how and when they arrived.

The settlement of the southern colonies by European-Americans was not accomplished by a slow eastward movement west from the coastal settlements. Instead, the backcountry of these colonies was overtaken first by settlers moving south from northern colonies where available and affordable land was scarce. During the 1750s and 1760s, settlers of Scots-Irish, German, English, French Huguenot heritage and others moved out of Pennsylvania and into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and farther south along The Great Wagon Road.

Revolting Acts—
the beginning of revolution

by Randell Jones, December 2023

If what we know today about the “Boston Tea Party” is what we learned in fifth grade, we have missed the story. It only got that name in the 1830s after nearly everyone involved was dead. For 60 years it was known as “the destruction of the tea,” and not everyone was proud about having done it. Moreover, seven ships carrying tea were sent to four American colonies during that fall, each port deciding separately how to deal with the arriving problematic tea. Only Boston resorted to violence and only some of the people there did so, but many more than those few suffered for their actions. Not the story you remember?

This December 16, 2023, is the 250th anniversary of the beginning of what Cornell University history professor Mary Beth Norton calls, “the long ’74.” Indeed, the 16 months from the destruction of the tea in Boston to the “shot heard round the world” in mid-April 1775 include “the real revolution” in America. During those months, many proud subjects of the colonies of Great Britain became staunch advocates for independence and equality and also adversaries of a monarch and a presumptuous Parliament. All that remained afterward was the fighting, the seven-year drama of a war to secure independent citizenship. 

Special price for these award-winning books by Randell Jones, recipient of national History Award Medal by National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution and invited member of the Road Scholar Speakers Bureau of the NC Humanities Council for 14 years.
(Click image above to go to RandellJones.com/books-and-dvds for secure online purchase of autographed books.)

 Episode 1 - “The American Spirit, 1780”

Click on the image to watch the 40-min video with images of reenactors, dramatic narration, maps, and original Celtic-inspired music by the Forget-Me-Nots of Banner Elk, NC, from their 2010 CD Bloomings.

This presentation is developed from the research for Before They Were Heroes at Kings Mountain by Randell Jones and from images he captured over 12 years at reenactment events around the Southeast. This presentation is based on his popular talk delivered to audiences during 14 years as an invited member of the Road Scholar Speakers Bureau of the NC Humanities Council.

This is the traditional story of the campaign and battle at Kings Mountain, commemorated today by two units of the National Park Service. The story flows across the landscape lying today in southwest Virginia, northeast Tennessee, Blue Ridge Mountain and piedmont North Carolina, and upstate South Carolina along the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. The battle is commemorated at Kings Mountain National Military Park.