Happy Fourth!

On October 7^th, 1780, the American militia, led by 1100 Overmountain Men from what is today Tennessee, cornered the British at Kings Mountain, South Carolina. In the decisive battle that followed these men changed the course of the Southern campaign for American Independence. The Battle of Kings Mountain was led and fought by backwoodsmen, including the father of Davy Crockett and many of the earliest names in Tennessee history.

Resting site for Big Jim Campbell (William Moore’s is just to the upper left). New gravestones were dedicated in the past fifty years.

Sixty or so years later in a narrow valley, in 1840 and 1843, not far from where our farm is located, down a gravel road, two heroes of that pivotal battle at Kings Mountain were buried in a small church cemetery. (The church has since moved a couple of miles down the road to a minor crossroads.) Less than two hundred graves are found in this out of the way spot. This small plot of land, shaded by large oaks, also contains the graves of veterans from the war of 1812 and those of both Union and Confederate soldiers, and indeed all conflicts up through Vietnam. (That veterans of both sides in the Civil War worshiped together in the same church in the years after the conflict, farmed side by side in this small valley, should offer, without too much deep reflection on our part, hope.)

Later this morning, as we have done for over twenty years, Cindy and I will place flowers on the graves of those two Revolutionary War heroes, Big Jim Campbell and William Moore, to honor their memory.