Thomas Brown: Georgia's Rev War Villian

by Denise Weimer

We’ve all seen movies depicting the French and Indian War and the Revolution in America that make us wonder if Hollywood isn’t sensationalizing the violence. When researching the Revolution in the South for my Scouts of the Georgia Frontier Series, I found that not only would the Colonial back country be the last place we’d want to live, but the heroes and the villains are often hard to tell apart. Case in point: Thomas Brown. Brown made trouble from South Carolina to Florida and is such a bad dude that he shows up in A Courageous Betrothal, A Cherished Betrothal, and A Calculated Betrothal!

The son of a Yorkshire shipping company owner, Brown settled Brownsborough northeast of Augusta, Georgia, with plans to become a gentleman farmer. But by September 1780, he’s a lieutenant colonel commanding British loyalists who attempt to hold Augusta against militia Colonel Elijah Clarke. Wounded in both thighs, Brown refuses to give up under siege. Upon learning five hundred British from South Carolina march to his aid, he (or another lieutenant colonel) orders thirteen prisoners hanged from the porch of the Mackay Trading Post. One biography specifies he requested them hung from the stairway banister so he could watch them die from his bed. The other prisoners are turned over to Indian allies to be tortured.

But let’s rewind to August 2, 1775. Thomas Brown has attended a Sons of Liberty meeting, where he’s refused to sign their Continental Association document. He’s followed home by an angry mob, tied to a tree, partially scalped (and not by Indians), tarred and feathered. A blow to his head fractures his skull and leaves him with lifelong headaches and a dependency on laudanum. A fire lit under his feet claims two of his toes and leaves him with the lifelong nickname “Burntfoot Brown.”

A revenge-bent Brown wants to rally Loyalists in South Carolina, but the governor advises him to wait on the arrival of British troops. Under threat of arrest, Brown flees to Florida, where he plies Governor Patrick Tonyn with his master plan to harass Georgia and South Carolina militia with a company of rangers supported by Indians. He’s commissioned lieutenant colonel of the Florida Rangers in 1776 and proceeds to bring havoc to the back country throughout the war.

When we examine our villains, we often discover that a villainous act created them. What about you? Do you know of a local Rev War example where one side created its own enemy?

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 mother of two young adult daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Colonial Log Cabins in the South

by Denise Weimer

The first structure a settler hastily constructed at a Colonial- or Federal-era homestead site in the Southeast was usually a log cabin. Georgia woods used for this purpose included hardwoods, poplar, pine and cyprus, with cyprus more common in South Georgia. Settlers from Georgia’s Piedmont up to the Appalachians mostly used pine. Sometimes a settler might use poplar, which was lighter and easier to square, for the main beams, and pine for the rest of the house.

Basic cabins were built quickly, usually with a dirt floor and a clay-over-log chimney. The outside of the logs might even be left rounded with the bark still on. Size of a cabin could range from 15x12 to 30x18. 16x20 was also common. Suitable trees longer than twenty feet were difficult to locate, transport, and handle.

Log houses featured a more permanent design. The logs were hewn square or "skelped" with a broad axe and adze and notched with a crosscut saw. The chimney would be brick or stone. Later, an addition, or second "pen," could be built on the end of the house opposite the chimney. The breezeway connecting the two sections was called a dogtrot. Lots of work and living went on in that covered but cooler section.

The Elijah Clarke house shows double pen design.

Since log houses and cabins were made of untreated, air-dried wood, the logs would shrink as the house settled. The spaces were chinked...packed with a mixture of straw and mud or clay, or clay, sand, and horse hair. In places where the gap between logs was too large, sticks could be wedged in prior to chinking. Raised foundation construction helped keep the wood dry and reduce rot and insect damage.

Carefully crafted notches were cut at the corner of each log, thus eliminating the need for nails. Nails were costly and heavy to transport to the construction site. When notching, a settler could choose between several styles: saddle, half dove tail, and full dove tail. The saddle notch was mostly used by Cherokee and Creek Indians, while European settlers favored the other styles because they locked the logs more firmly in place. Half dovetail notches were the most stable.

Cabin floors were often swept dirt or sand. If a constructed floor existed, it might be made of hewn and hand-split planks which were pegged to the floor joist. The earliest type of flooring that appeared in log construction was known as puncheon. Logs were split in half with flat side up. Puncheons were short, thick, split or hewn-log pieces of timber roughly finished on one or more surfaces and laid directly on the ground. As time went on, puncheons were replaced by 1¼”–thick boards, tongue-and-grooved and planed by hand.

Hand-cut shakes of oak or chestnut composed the roof. In cold weather, animal skins or wooden shutters on wooden or leather hinges covered the windows.

Log cabins abound in my Colonial- and Federal-era stories, The Witness Tree, Bent Tree Bride, and The Scouts of the Georgia Frontier Series.

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 mother of two young adult daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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The Rev War’s Trio of Villains in the South Georgia Swamps

by Denise Weimer

My November book release, the fifth novel in my Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, A Calculated Betrothal, took me to an entirely different setting—the South Georgia swamps. I’ve never written a novel set among the snakes and gators, and during the Revolutionary War, South Georgia was a strange place, indeed…a sort of no-man’s land between the Georgia Colony and East Florida, which was controlled by Great Britain. Few settlers bode in those flat pinewoods and murky bogs. Instead, planters north of the Altamaha River, where my story takes place, allowed criollo cattle (cattle of European origin born in the New World, like the Pineywoods Spanish breed) to roam and forage, herded by using brands and a series of wilderness pens.

As you can imagine, the East Florida Rangers with their Seminole allies coveted a stronghold from which they could launch invasions into the more populated coastal, middle, and northern portions of the state, starting with the settlements at Darien (Scots-Irish) and Savannah. That made Fort McIntosh on the Satilla River and Fort Barrington/Fort Howe (Barrington when under British hands, Howe when under Patriot) of great value. Multiple attempts were made on these forts by both sides, and the East Florida Rangers frequently raided cattle as well as goods and slaves from plantations along the border.

Among the leaders of the East Florida Rangers were three men with fearsome reputations—Colonels Thomas “Burntfoot” Brown, William “Bloody Bill” Cunningham, and Daniel McGirth. All were involved in the attack on Fort McIntosh on February 17, 1777, as depicted in A Calculated Betrothal.

Thomas Brown – In August, 1775, Brown refused to sign the Patriot Association and was abused, tarred, and feathered by the Sons of Liberty. The fracture to his skull gave him chronic headaches, and the roasting of his feet over a fire gave him his nickname, “Burntfoot.” He rallied Loyalists in the South Carolina backcountry but fled arrest, convincing East Florida Governor Patrick Tonyn of his “Southern strategy” to use rangers and Indian allies to subjugate Georgia and Carolina.

William Cunningham – A native of Ninety Six, South Carolina, William had not yet earned his “Bloody Bill” moniker by 1777. In fact, he started out on the Patriot side, opposing his cousins, Robert and Patrick Cunningham. But a misunderstanding when he attempted to resign led to him being hunted until he fled to Florida.

McGirth's flight - Joel Chandler Harris book

Daniel McGirth – Another South Carolinian who came to Florida with a burning zeal for revenge, like Cunningham, McGirth started out as a Patriot. As the story goes, an officer ordered him to give up his (very fast!) horse, Grey Goose. When he refused, he was court martialed, whipped, and imprisoned. He escaped on Grey Goose. The Patriots told the story differently, and theirs included words such as horse thieving and desertion.

All three of the men went on wreak havoc in the backcountry from Georgia to South Carolina, earning reputations as villainous and barbarous as any movie portrayal could be. While they bring some serious pressure to bear on my hero and heroine, Tabitha and Edmond also face much more personal enemies in the guises of Loyalist father and son landowners...

 

The death of her titled husband abandons Tabitha Gage on an isolated South Georgia plantation on the eve of revolution, left with only a log cabin on unsettled timber land.

Sergeant Edmond Lassiter comes to the aid of the dark-haired beauty fending off cattle rustlers. The Patriot scout and Loyalist widow are surprised by their shared values. When Edmond learns the same man who ruined his family is after what little Tabitha has left, he convinces her they should work together to make her land profitable—all while fighting off the British from East Florida and her greedy neighbor, who sabotages their every effort to succeed.

Releases tomorrow! https://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0D577ZJ1B/

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 mother of two wonderful young adult daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

Connect with Denise here:

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