The phrases “Fourth of July “ and “Independence Day” are used interchangeably to note THE date when the American Colonists declared formal independence from Great Britain.
This year marks the 250th anniversary of that official Declaration of Independence, with ongoing celebrations marking the historic moment.
But it took eight years for the 13 Colonies – including North Carolina – to gain independence from Great Britain. What began in New England in April 1775 made a slow march south. Famous battles that took place in North Carolina include those at Guilford Courthouse near present-day Greensboro and Moores Creek near Wilmington.
And while there weren’t any battles fought in Granville County, local historian Mark Pace and WIZS’s Bill Harris agree that the area contributed mightily to the effort.
Indeed, there were folks who lived in North Carolina in the 1760’s and 1770’s who had grown weary of British rule. In 1771, these “Regulators” took up arms against Gov. Tryon and his troops. They didn’t prevail, but Pace said the effort helped establish a pattern in North Carolina where the people didn’t like an overbearing and authoritative government.
“By the time the unrest from New England came, they were ready,” Pace said.
The colony was fairly evenly divided between Patriots and Loyalists – a third were loyal to the Crown of England, a third supported independence and a third were going to wait to see which side prevailed and then side with the winner. Not surprisingly, wealthy landowners tended to side with Loyalists, with smaller farmers feeling a greater economic pinch from all the taxes imposed on them by the British.
The way Pace and Harris figure it, there were about 600 individuals from the original Granville County that served in the American Revolution. Of that number, about 35 lost their lives in the war.
But “service” isn’t limited to donning a uniform and seeing action on the battlefield.
There were key figures from North Carolina who played integral roles during this eight-year struggle for freedom, among them Thomas Person, Gen. Jethro Sumner, Col. Robert Burton and Col. John Williams, just to name a few.
Person was a general in the militia and Pace called him a “driving force” behind independence.
Although he didn’t see much action on the battlefield, Person was in charge of training troops and, as quartermaster general, provided food, weapons and lodging. He ponied up a lot of his own money to the war effort, Pace said, and had a training facility at Goshen, his plantation near what is now Berea in Granville County.
Like Person, Sumner, who lived in present-day Warren County, trained troops. With his “regular army” background, Gen. Nathanael Greene sought his help and Sumner’s brigades fought in South Carolina at the Battle of Eutaw Springs in 1781. Sumner missed out on the famous Guilford Courthouse battle in March 1781, but his remains were re-interred there in 1891 to commemorate his contributions to the Revolution.
Burton hailed from Williamsboro and lived in a home called Blooming Hope, later changed to Cedar Walk. Pace said he was a significant figure in establishing Patriot troops and getting them organized.
Incidentally, Burton ran a distillery and sold livestock, Pace said. There’s a ledger entry from 1774 that notes the sale of a gray mare to a member of the Transylvania Company that helped to settle Tennessee and Kentucky. Who was it? A fellow named Daniel Boone.
Williams, for whom the Vance County community of Williamsboro is named, was one of the signers of the Articles of Confederation, which was used as a framework for governance between 1775 and 1789, when the U.S. Constitution was finally in place.
The Articles of Confederation focused on keeping a federal style of government weak – there was no president, no executive branch, no national army or national tax as part of these articles, Pace explained.
For the period around the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, the government of North Carolina was moved temporarily from Hillsborough to Williamsboro and legislators stayed at Williams’s house.
Williams’s home, Montpelier, was supposed to be “the nicest old home in Williamsboro,” Pace said.
The home burned in 1885, when it was owned by the Bullock family. The home was rebuilt and that home burned around 2000. Williams, Burton and Leonard Henderson, for whom the city of Henderson is named, are all buried on the property.
If you’d like to research your family tree to find out if your ancestors fought in the American Revolution, check out the North Carolina Room at Thornton Library in Oxford. In addition to online research tools like ancestry.com, the North Carolina Room has a five-volume set of the Daughters of the American Revolution that includes information on every soldier they know of who fought in battles between 1775 and 1783.
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