Ninety Six: The Town Where the Revolutionary War in the South Began

Researching at Ninety Six

by Denise Weimer

Ninety Six was once the most thriving town in the South Carolina backcountry. Now, the national park there encompasses only fields where the town once stood, with nearby earthworks attesting to the second battle fought there during the Revolutionary War and sunken, tree-lined lanes leading only to memories of distant historical destinations. You’d never know some of the most important action of the war in the Southern theatre took place there. To say that it’s haunting is an understatement. It’s a reminder of how fast things change. But I love to resurrect the forgotten past in my novels, so Ninety Six figured prominently in Book Three of Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, A Cherished Betrothal.

As the population of South Carolina moved into the backcountry during the mid-1700s, settlers followed the Cherokee Old Path, which ran from Virginia to the Cherokee town of Tugaloo near present-day Toccoa, Georgia. Eventually, Robert Gouedy built a trading post at a frequently used campground that became the town of Ninety Six.

Why the unusual name? In 1730, Surveyor General George Hunter made a map with the area marked as Ninety Six, the distance believed to lie between the site and the Cherokee town of Keowee (near current Clemson, South Carolina). A dozen major roads and minor trails supposedly converged there. Some of these included the Island Ford Road which ran to a ferry on the Saluda River, Martin Town Road to Augusta which diverged from the Charlestown Road, and the Charlestown Road, which followed the Cherokee Path. The Cherokee Path was tolerable for wagons in summer but impassable in some places in winter. A horseback rider could travel from Charlestown to Ninety Six in six days, but four or five times that long in a wagon.

During the Cherokee War of 1760-61, local militia built a stockade around Goeudy’s barn. From here, the garrison withstood two attacks by 250 Cherokee warriors. In the following few years, French Huguenots established New Bordeaux nearby and Germans, Londonborough.

By the early 1770s, Ninety Six had grown to twelve houses, multiple businesses, an imposing, two-story brick jail, and a courthouse. The jail consisted of a lower level with four rooms and a fireplace and a second-floor, thirty-foot-square room with barred windows where prisoners were held in irons and chains. The top floor was forty-five feet from the ground and accessed through stairs and a trap door. The courthouse was large enough to house two hundred troops. Court cases were heard in April and November of each year.

In the summer of 1775, the South Carolina Regiment of Horse (Rangers) was organized at Ninety Six with nine companies. Many backcountry settlers did not trust the leaders of the Patriot movement, who were mostly wealthy landowners from the coast. Therefore, the provincial government that was formed at the start of the Revolutionary War sent orators to the backcountry to convince the citizens of the need to sign the Association, the agreement to support the Patriot government and militia. Many leaders of the current militia opted to support the Loyalist cause, making Ninety Six the center of the struggle in the state.

The tension in the backcountry was further compounded when the Council of Safety ordered Major James Mayson to march his troop from Ninety Six to capture Fort Charlotte on the Savannah River, about thirty miles southwest of the town. The small contingent of Loyalists there surrendered without a fight, and Patriot Rangers held the fort throughout the war. From there, the Patriots courted the alliance of the Cherokee warriors, who eventually sided with the British. However, Ninety-Six changed hands many times, with the first battle for its control occurring as early as November 1775. The conflict ended in an uneasy truce with the Patriots holding the town.

By the end of the Revolution, the British strategy focused on the Southern colonies. While American General Nathanael Greene secured the Carolinas, Loyalist remnants concentrated at Charleston and Ninety Six. By this time, a formidable star-shaped fort had been constructed, connected to the town by a deep trench. Greene’s soldiers laid siege, cutting zig-zagging earthworks toward the British position, attempting to dig tunnels, and building a wooden siege tower. On June 18, 1781, learning that British reinforcements were on their way from Charlestown, Greene launched a bloody and unsuccessful assault on the star fort of Ninety Six.

After their costly victory, the British reasoned that the isolated outpost would be too difficult to hold, so they dismantled the fort and burned the adjacent town.

A Cherished Betrothal takes place between the summers of 1775 and 1776 at Fort Charlotte and Ninety Six. Patriot Ranger Alexander Morris vowed revenge on the warrior who killed his brother and father. Elspeth Lawrence, a survivor of the same massacre whose sister was taken captive, teaches Cherokee children at her father’s school. She’s never stopped longing for the boy who saved her that fateful day, but when their paths are reunited on the eve of revolution in the South Carolina backcountry, more than her wealthy Loyalist suitor stands in the way. Alex can’t remember the massacre, or Elspeth, but his hatred for the Cherokees he’s been ordered to court as allies threatens to choke out the seeds of love and healing. 

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Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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The Royal Georgia Rangers: The Tradition that Birthed a Book Series

by Denise Weimer

Who were the Georgia Rangers? From my research, I knew scouts often manned forts along the Colonial Georgia frontier even when militia was not called up during times of active conflict. But only when I began digging into this history for my Scouts of the Georgia Frontier Series did I learn of the Georgia Rangers.

Before the American Revolution, Georgia was one of the thirteen original British colonies under royal governance. It was also the farthest south and most exposed to enemies. In September of 1756, prompted by disturbances with the Creek Indians, a group of men from the backcountry petitioned Governor Reynolds to provide a defense for the frontier. He formed the first Georgia Rangers with six officers (a captain, two lieutenants, a cornet, and two quartermasters) and seventy men. He then requested the Rangers become part of the British military.

The new royal governor, Henry Ellis, had to reduce the number to twenty men so he could afford to pay them himself. Finally, in May of 1759, the First Troop of Rangers joined the British military. The Second Troop was mustered in January of 1760. Both troops were comprised of seventy men and five officers. They were to “shoot on horseback and ride full speed thro’ the woods” and provide a barrier against French, Spanish, Creeks, and Cherokees.

Type of blockhouse common in GA forts

When the Cherokees attacked along the frontier as mentioned in my last post about the Long Canes Massacre, the governor ordered the Rangers inland from the coast. An army of regulars, colonists, and Indian allies defeated the Cherokees and destroyed fifteen Cherokee Middle Towns in 1761.

By that year, the frontier forts of Georgia included Savannah (with Fort Halifax); Fort Augusta; Fort Argyle, nineteen miles from Savannah on the Great Ogeechee River; Fort Barrington on the Altamaha River; Fort William on Cumberland Island; and Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island. By the next year, Fort George at the mouth of the Savannah River was added.

After the Cherokee War, the troops in frontier forts dealt with runaway slaves, suspected spies, deserters, and whites on Indian land. They also joined the militia for ceremonial duties, escorted Indian parties and dignitaries, and imposed quarantines.

1763 marked the end of the French and Indian War and the removal of the Spanish and French from east of the Mississippi, and Georgia also received new lands from the Indians. In 1764, the colonies faced a series of increasingly repressive tax laws levied by Britain, culminating with the Stamp Act in March of 1765. This tax on almost all official and some nonofficial papers sparked a rebellion among the fledgling Sons of Liberty in Savannah. As the city waited to see whether Governor Wright would impose the Stamp Act and install a stamp master, a series of protests and threatening, anonymous letters printed in the newspaper ensued, as depicted in Book Four of my Georgia Scouts.

The governor did not know who to trust among the militia, so he called extra Rangers from the frontier forts to act as guards—and to face down their own countrymen threatening to riot. Captain James Powell of the Second Troop and John Milledge of the First Troop were loyal to him. Fort Argyle served as a base of Ranger operations. From there, Governor Wright disbanded the Georgia Rangers on orders from his English superiors in March of 1767.

In June of 1773, Governor Wright reformed a troop of Rangers under Captain Edward Barnard, with three lieutenants, a quartermaster, a surgeon, three sergeants, a drummer, and sixty-five privates “to keep good order, and for the protection of the Inhabitants of the new ceded Lands above Little River” above Augusta. The officers were also justices of the peace. Each private received two pounds a month and had to “victual” himself and provide a uniform of a blue coat faced with red, a red jacket, blue or buckskin breeches, cloth booths, a rifle, two dragoon pistols, a sword, a powder horn, a shot pouch, and a tomahawk. They constructed Fort James on the Broad and Savannah River.

The Rangers from Fort James took part in quelling a Creek Indian rebellion around Christmas of 1773. As late as March 1775, fifty Georgia Royal Rangers still manned Fort James. Many had married Creek women and had settled into local life, far from the call of the governor and ripe for the rebellion of the War for Independence.

Further reading: Militiamen, Rangers, and Redcoats: The Military in Georgia, 1754-1776 by James M. Johnson

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Now available, A Cherished Betrothal, Book Three of the Scouts of the Georgia Frontier:

Patriot Ranger Alexander Morris vowed revenge on the warrior who killed his brother and father. Elspeth Lawrence, a survivor of the same massacre whose sister was taken captive, teaches Cherokee children at her father’s school. She’s never stopped longing for the boy who saved her, but when their paths are reunited on the eve of revolution in the South Carolina backcountry, more than her Loyalist suitor stands in the way. Alex can’t remember the massacre, or Elspeth, but his hatred for the Cherokees he’s been ordered to court as allies threatens to choke out the seeds of love and healing.

 
https://www.amazon.com/Cherished-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0CHMZKBCL/

Long Canes Indian Massacre: The Backstory that Birthed a Novel

Markers for Fort Boone on a lonely backroad

by Denise Weimer

Suppose you lived in the 1700s. You survived an attack by the fierce Cherokee Indians on the edge of the South Carolina and Georgia frontier. And then, when you became an adult, your church and your fledgling country asked you to reach out to those same Indians in an attempt to make them allies. This was the “what if” that hooked me to write A Cherished Betrothal, Book Three of the Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, releasing this month.

The setting is current-day McCormick County, South Carolina, first discovered by white hunters, traders, and drovers in the early 1700s. These explorers described fertile land with wild cherries, persimmons, peas, and canes that grew to twenty or thirty feet. And trees so far apart, deer and buffalo (yes, Eastern buffalo) could be seen from afar, and those herds numbered up to seventy deer and a hundred buffalo each.

During the French and Indian War, families on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, mostly Scots-Irish, were ravaged by Indian attacks. Many made their way down the Great Wagon Road to Waxhaws, South Carolina. The Calhouns, including four brothers (James, Ezekiel, William, and Patrick), their sister, Mary, and their mother, Catherine, were among these. At Waxhaws, they heard the reports of long hunters who had been to the Long Canes district of South Carolina, which abutted the Savannah River and the Georgia colony. The Calhouns were eager to establish a Presbyterian church there.

The Calhoun party arrived in Long Canes in February of 1756 and settled on the east side of Long Cane Creek. Before the end of the year, they crossed the creek and relocated a few miles to the north on the Little River. The land the Calhouns claimed was known as the Flatwoods, a Cherokee hunting ground which they assured the provincial government they had secured permission of the Cherokee leaders to settle. However, according to a 1747 treaty, the land was not legally open for settlement. 

Patrick Calhoun became the official surveyor and later a justice of the peace. Other Scots-Irish settlers followed, some relatives or former neighbors. By 1759, there were up to thirty families in the area.

On the cold morning of February first, 1760, settlers received warning of an attack planned by Cherokee warriors. They prepared to flee sixty miles to Tobler’s Fort across the Savannah River from Augusta, Georgia. Within hours, the first group of a hundred people reached the fort. The second group of about a hundred and fifty in thirteen wagons became mired after recent rains on the east side of Long Cane Creek, only a few miles southeast of their homes. Take note of my photo of flooded Long Cane Creek, which I visited on a research trip the same time of year. I had to cross this on a one-lane wooden bridge built in the 1930s! 

Would you be scared? I prayed the whole way across!

The sounds of the party attempting to cross the creek drew the notice of the hundred braves led by Chief Big Sawny and Chief Sunaratehee. They crossed at another spot, hid, then attacked.

Only a few of the fifty-five to sixty white men could access their guns stowed in the wagons. They held off the attackers for half an hour. William Calhoun saw his daughter Catherine, seven, killed and daughters Anne and Mary, four and two, taken captive. He sent his pregnant wife, Agnes, and their nine-year-old son away on a horse. Five of the Norris family fell in the attack, as well as Calhoun matriarch, Catherine.

A message was sent to the governor from Tobler’s Fort. Two or three days later, Patrick Calhoun returned with the militia and found the bodies of twenty-three people which they then buried in a mass grave. Incredibly, they also found nine children alive who had been left for dead, including Rebecca Calhoun, fifteen, who had concealed herself in the canebrake. In 1765, she married Andrew Pickens, who became a Revolutionary War Patriot leader. 

Many survivors returned to Waxhaws, where Andrew Pickens met Rebecca Calhoun. Incredibly, a group returned to the south fork of Calhoun Creek in October of 1760. This time, Patrick Calhoun built a fort of poplar logs, a blockhouse twenty feet square, and a stone chimney that took up most of one end of the blockhouse. The fort was armed with swivel guns and blunderbusses. He posted a party of Chickasaw Indians posted as guards. Fort Boone also served as a school, meetinghouse, and church.

Patrick Calhoun’s letter from December 26, 1763, when the Creek Indians killed fourteen people along the Savannah River, stated that twenty-seven men and a hundred and three women and children had holed up at Fort Boone for protection.

Not only did the Long Canes settlers return to face two hostile Indian tribes, but in the next decade, when A Cherished Betrothal is set, they faced a war on multiple fronts. They were urged to court the friendship of both Creeks and Cherokees so the tribes would not ally with the British Loyalists during the American Revolution. A clash of multiple cultures loomed in the South Carolina and Georgia backcountry! 

Map that shows Fort Boone

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses. 

NEW this month, Book Three of Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, A Cherished Betrothal:

Patriot Ranger Alexander Morris vowed revenge on the warrior who killed his brother and father. Elspeth Lawrence, a survivor of the same massacre whose sister was taken captive, teaches Cherokee children at her father’s school. She’s never stopped longing for the boy who saved her, but when their paths are reunited on the eve of revolution in the South Carolina backcountry, more than her Loyalist suitor stands in the way. Alex can’t remember the massacre, or Elspeth, but his hatred for the Cherokees he’s been ordered to court as allies threatens to choke out the seeds of love and healing.

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