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On the evening of July 11, 1780, a small force composed of British Legion dragoons, mounted infantry of the New York Volunteers and Loyalist militia made camp at Williamson's Plantation in South Carolina. Some of the officers took quarters in the house for the night. The troops bivouacked in a lane between two wooden fences. Thinking the surrounding territory was pacified, they posted inadequate guards, and so their first warning of the approach of a large force of rebel militia was a deadly volley of musket fire which jolted them from sleep, some time between 4 a.m. and dawn.¹

The fences restricted their movements and turned the lane into a killing field. One participant claims the ensuing battle was finished in five minutes, though most say it lasted as long as an hour. Some accounts say quarter was denied to those Loyalists who tried to surrender. Detail vary wildly from writer to writer but all agree that the skirmish was brief, brutal and decisive, with up to three quarters of the Loyalists being killed on the spot. Only twelve Legion dragoons and as many militia managed to escape. The commanding officer of the Loyalist party, Captain Christian Huck of the British Legion, lay among the dead, his life ended by a rebel sharpshooter.²

Huck is another of the archetype bad-boys of the Revolution, and highly colored anecdotes about him abound. The real man is as elusive as the spelling of his name, which appears as "Huck," "Hucke," "Hook," "Huik," "Houk," "Hoeck," "Huyck," and other variations. "Huck" has become the accepted modern spelling -- that is how he spelled it himself -- but you often find "Hook" being used by contemporaries who would have only heard the name spoken, which suggests that is how it was pronounced.

A few contradictory eyewitness accounts of "the battle of Williamson's Plantation," also called "the battle of Huck's Defeat," survive, but beyond that, Huck's active military career is essentially undocumented. Information on his early life is equally rare, restricted to a few one-line mentions in documents and newspapers. The only evidence of his birth comes from an inspection roll, which states he was born in Germany, about 1748. He must have immigrated to America as young man, for he studied law in Pennsylvania with Loyalist pamphleteer and satirist Isaac Hunt.³

By 1776, he had an established law practice in Philadelphia. In November of that year, an advertisement appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette, instructing parties interested in purchasing a certain piece of land to contact "Christian Hook, Attorney at law, dwelling in Front street, near the City Vendue House, in Philadelphia[.]" Real estate seems to have been his specialty. A year earlier, the Gazette had carried another notice of property for sale, with Huck handling the transaction. (At that time, his home or office was located on Second Street in Philadelphia.) Neither item is specific about whether he owned the properties, or was acting as an agent for others, but the wording seems to imply he owned them.⁴

Whether his main income came from law or land speculation, he seems to have been successful. In addition to the Front-street house, Huck owned "A Lot on Germantown Road, about one and a half miles from the city, about 75 feet front, and 180 feet deep." This property was seized from him by the rebels, and sold at auction in 1780, at which time it held only "the remains of a brick kitchen." Also seized and auctioned were three large tracts of land "lying over the Blue Mountains" and an estate in the county of Northhampton. (The latter may have been his home rather than an investment property, since it is described specifically on the auction announcement as his "estate.")⁵

Remaining loyal was a dangerous, at times even fatal, decision. Huck's fellow lawyer, Isaac Hunt, narrowly escaped being tarred-and-feathered for the "crime" of defending a client unpopular with the mob, and was eventually forced to leave the country. Huck must have been more circumspect, but he was not necessarily inactive. At least once in 1776 he is known to have provided an advance warning to other Loyalists who were slated for arrest and deportation.⁶

He was still in Philadelphia when the British army took possession of the city in autumn, 1777. A second-hand mention, supposedly taken from a contemporary journal, describes him as having found a place in Howe's "Tory entourage" over the winter. The army withdrew to New York the following spring, at which point Bass comments that Huck "deserted his law practice...to follow the British to New York." "Desertion" is hardly the appropriate word, since he had no choice in the matter. On May 13, The Pennsylvania Packet had published a proclamation proscribing a long list of local citizens as traitors:

Alongside Huck's name on the proclamation appeared the names of several other men who would eventually serve with the British Legion. [See a complete list of names on the writ.] ⁷

Driven into exile, his established life and property gone forever, Huck changed his profession from lawyer to cavalryman. Even before the British evacuation in June, 1778, he joined Emmerick's Chausseurs. Bass says he took command of the Bucks County Light Dragoons that summer, but a muster roll shows him still with Emmerick's as late as January, 1779. Emmerick's Chausseurs were disbanded in 1779, at which point a company was formed under Huck and listed as "put under the Orders of Lt Col'l Tarleton but not to be incorporated with the Legion."⁸

Huck's company headed south with the Legion, as part of Sir Henry Clinton's expedition into the Carolinas. A contemporary (rebel) journal claims they were part of the force that attacked Abraham Buford's command at Waxhaws, but I haven't been able to confirm this. After the fall of Charleston, when Lord Cornwallis set up a chain of in-country forts, Huck's company was detached to Rocky Mount, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Turnbull.⁹

In a letter to Lord Cornwallis dated June 16, Turnbull reported having news of "a party of Rebells who had sallyed forth from the Iron Works and had gone into the settlement of Mr. Floyd [a Loyalist militia leader] and his company and were tearing everything to pieces." In response, he sent out Captain Huck and a mixed party of dragoons, provincials and militia. In a later report to Sir Henry Clinton, Cornwallis detailed another object of the mission: "having heard that some of the violent rebels, about thirty miles in his front, had returned to their plantations, and were encouraging the people to join them, [Turnbull] sent Captain Huck of the legion, with a detachment of about thirty or forty of that corps, twenty mounted men of the New-York volunteers, and sixty militia, to seize or drive them away."¹⁰

The progress of that patrol is shrouded in (not to mention clouded by) legend. There are dozens of anecdotes delineating Huck's "atrocities" as his passed through the country, but many of them seem to have been created in the 19th century. Given that his profession, property and (apparently comfortable) way of life had been stolen from him by the rebels, it is easy to envision Huck as a bitter man with no charity to waste on vigilantes -- but I very much suspect that his company would have needed supersonic horses to cover the ground needed to perform all the feats of nastiness which have been attributed to them.

On June 11, Huck's force apparently burned either the Fishing Creek Presbyterian church or the dwelling house of its minister, Rev. John Simpson, or both (accounts differ). Simpson was a notorious rebel, and was off fighting with Thomas Sumter at the time. This particular incident also comes with an odd footnote. Due to the peculiar way it was retold by Edward McCrady, it almost certainly provided the inspiration for the infamous church-burning scene in The Patriot:

The Rev. John Simpson, a Presbyterian minister of Irish descent, a native of New Jersey, had, some years before, succeeded the Rev. William Richardson in charge of the congregations of Upper and Lower Fishing Creek....On Sunday morning, June 11, Huck and his party took their way to the church, where they expected to find the pastor with his assembled congregation, determined, as was believed at the time, to burn both the church and the people by way of warning to other "disturbers of the King's peace."¹¹

The emphasis is mine, and even the worst versions of the story don't claim that Huck did more than burn an empty building. (In fact some accounts say that Huck only burned Simpson's house, not the church itself.) There are two contradictory stories about the burning of the manse, but in both cases the only victim was Simpson's (apparently extensive) book collection. Richard Winn, a partisan colonel who took part in the battle of Williamson's Plantation, simply comments in his memoir of the event that "This same Huck...burnt the meeting house of Rev'd Mr. Simpson who was at the head of a large Presbyterian congregation." Out of this single event grew generations of stories about how Huck rampaged around the countryside burning churches by the dozen, and also that he possessed some sort of fanatical dislike of Presbyterians.¹²

It is well documented that, on June 18, Huck's detachment burned Hill's Iron Works in modern York County. In his June 16 report to Cornwallis, Turnbull said, "I have taken the liberty to order Captain Huck to destroy the Iron Works. They are the property of a Mr. Hill, a great Rebell." In an earlier report, he had stated that "a Party of Rebels had Sally^d forth from the Iron Works and had gone into the settlement of Mr. Floyd and his company and were Tearing everything to pieces." In addition to serving as a "refuge for runaways", the foundry was of critical importance to the local inhabitants. In addition to its legitimate work of forging farm tools, it was being used to provide the rebels with musket balls and rifles. Cornwallis later reported -- a tad over-optimistically, as it turned out -- that its loss was a key element in putting "an end to all resistance in South Carolina."¹³

There are a multitude of other anecdotes about Huck's mission. One story has him assembling a town meeting and haranguing the citizens on the dire consequences of rebellion while his men are busy stealing their horses. Given that he was a lawyer, the haranguing part may seem plausible, but while one source recounts this story with Huck as the speechifying dastard, another tells precisely the same tale about Major James Wemyss. Faced with such improbable parallelism, this reader can only wonder which version, if any, holds the original grain of truth. Some of these "generic" tales are no doubt total fabrications, created or adapted to arouse public sentiment at a particular time -- and for that, they proved an extremely effective tool.¹⁴

Another legend about Huck is that he was notable for his profanity, with his lasting reputation as "the Swearing Captain" most famously supported by an anecdotal comment:

"he was so profane as to say that, 'God Almighty was turned Rebel; but if there were twenty Gods on their side, they should all be conquered.' "¹⁵

This snippet of unjustified optimism -- supposedly uttered at the same town meeting at which the horses were stolen -- is an especially popular quote with late-19th century writers, who like to bring it forth as the ultimate proof of his innate villainy.

Other stories have Huck doing everything from letting his men chase women around with swords or reaping hooks (which always makes me think of Captain Hook from Peter Pan) to stealing shoe-buckles. There's also a report that one of the women he encountered, Martha Bratton, formed the intention of serving him and his officers a dinner of poisoned food, but got cold feet in the end and didn't follow through with the plan.¹⁶

Whatever they got up to along the way, Huck and his men arrived at Williamson's plantation on the fateful night of July 11, 1780. Through carelessness or overconfidence, Huck neglected to post adequate guards around his camp. As Tarleton puts it, without charity, "Captain Huck neglected his duty, in placing his party carelessly at a plantation, without advancing any pickets, or sending out patroles." (Having taken advantage of such carelessness by the rebels at Moncks Corner, he obviously had no sympathy to waste on one of his own men who made the same fatal error.)¹⁷

Over the previous days, while Huck's company were riding their patrol, several of Thomas Sumter's subordinates had been gathering a militia force to attack him. One of them, Richard Winn, says that recruiting wasn't easy because "Both officers and men seemed loth to engage the horse as they had cut Buford's men to pieces so shortly before." Eventually, he found about 130 men willing to make the attempt, and they set out on Huck's trail. Having, apparently, gathered up a considerable force along the way (some writers claim they had more than 500 men for part of the march) and then lost most of it again due to late-onset nerves, they arrived near Williamson's Plantation about "an hour before day break" with roughly the original 130 men.¹⁸

Winn goes on to recount how the force split up, surrounded the Loyalist encampment by stealth, and opened fire on the sleeping Loyalists. Hearing the shots, Huck ran out of the house and made it as far as his horse. Some accounts say he lived long enough to attempt to rally his disorganized command before he was shot from the saddle. According to Winn, "We was in full possession of the field in five minuits without the loss of a single man, either killed or wounded. As I am well convinced, the enemy during the action never fired a single gun." The rebels did have one casualty, but again according to Winn, "being a little advanced before the rest [he] was, I was informed, killed by one of his own party."¹⁹

As usually happens, there are several other eyewitness accounts of the skirmish, and no two of them tell the same story. Some versions claim the Loyalists were already up and preparing to break camp when the attack came, and that Huck was making a final appeal to Mrs. Williamson to convince her husband and sons to turn themselves in. (Dyed purple by 19th century historians this tale usually involves considerable melodrama.) The version recounted by James Collins has Huck's men mounting and forming up in time to meet the attack. A Loyalist officer, presumably Huck himself, shouts, "Disperse you damned rebels, or I will put every man of you to the sword" before being fatally shot and tumbling from his horse. In line with this version are various mentions of the Loyalist forces charging their attackers with bayonets, only to be stymied by the rail fences.²⁰

A particularly odd (and almost certainly untrustworthy) eyewitness version is provided by Joseph Kerr, who filed a pension claim in the 1830s. Kerr says he entered Huck's camp a few days earlier as a spy, but was recognized by some of the Loyalists and interrogated by Huck. Finding no solid evidence that Kerr was a rebel, Huck promised to let him go provided he swore an oath of allegiance. Kerr agreed, but later escaped and led a party of rebel militia back to the camp. In Kerr's version, the rebels surrounded the Loyalists at close range and each took aim at a sleeping man. They waited for a signal, then fired a mass volley. More than ninety Loyalists were killed, essentially without resistance, including Huck. One modern writer accepts the tale verbatim, despite the fact that Kerr -- who was twenty when the incident happened and in his seventies when he filed for the pension -- claims Huck's defeat took place after the battle of King's Mountain, and seems totally confused in what he remembers.²¹

There is endless disagreement on the details of the skirmish, but nearly everyone concurs that Huck was shot in the head or neck during the fighting, and toppled dead from his horse. His death left Lieutenant Benjamin Hunt, who had served with Huck since his days with Emmerick's Chausseurs, as the senior Legion officer, but command devolved on a militia lieutenant named John Adamson. Despite a claim that "Huck's lieutenant" died of his wounds, both men survived the battle. (Adamson, who was thrown from his horse and impaled on a pine sapling, may have appeared to witnesses to be dying.) In Winn's version, "Lieut. Hunt of the British horse, in trying to escape on his horse received a wound and finding that he could not get off, raised a flag and delivered himself up to me, a prisoner to Winn." Later in the day, "Lieut. Hunt gave his own parole and was also bound that the men should not take up arms during the war or untill exchanged, after Lieut. Hunt's applying and getting an order for three wagons to carry his wounded to Rocky Mount which was the nearest British post."²²

In seeming contradiction to that, Loyalist military surgeon Uzal Johnson wrote that Hunt and one dragoon managed to escape into a nearby swamp, and make their way to the camp where Johnson was stationed. This is one of those cases where a surfeit of "eyewitness" accounts confuses the issue rather than clarifies it, but Michael Scoggins, historical researcher at Brattonsville, has come to my rescue with a missing bit of information. It seems that Hunt accompanied the wounded part way to Rocky Mount, then made his own way to Johnson's camp.

Johnson recorded Hunt's version of the skirmish in his journal the following day. Hunt told him that the attack came at 4 a.m. without any advanced warning, and Captain Huck was shot through the neck while trying to lead a small party of men out of the rebel trap.²³

When word of the disaster filtered back to Tarleton -- who was in Charleston when it occurred -- he protested the use of his men in small, vulnerable detachments to Lord Cornwallis, and in a private note to John André, sniped angrily that:

"I have had the mortification to hear that 70 men of the Legion have never been kept together -- Detachment after Detachm't either by my Lord Cornwallis or my Lord Rawdon to the great Detriment of the Corps -- & a very ill requital for their service during the Campaign -- In short they have meant to defend the Frontier as a man would do who being placed in a House and ordered to defend it had lopped off his arms & legs & placed them in different windows and Apartments -- In like manner detachment is equally disheartening & useless."²⁴

Despite the validity of that complaint, it is generally agreed that Huck's bad decisions in laying out his camp played a bigger role in his downfall than the size of his detachment. Since the skirmish which ended his life is the only record of his military performance, there is no way to judge if those decisions came from a moment's overconfidence or if he had been driven by circumstances into a profession for which he was inherently unsuited.

Essentially nothing is recorded about him except the vitriol of his enemies, which makes it equally impossible to gain any insight into his personality. Without a balanced view, there is no way to guess which of the stories about him should be toe-tagged as "probable," "unlikely" or "oh, don't be ridiculous." Assuming Joseph Kerr's confused memories can be believed at all, his account of how Huck refused to arrest him without proof of his guilt may provide a clue that the lawyer was still alive inside the cavalryman. The coldness of Tarleton's account -- he makes no excuses for Huck's mistakes and seems to view the incident purely as a tactical setback -- would seem to imply that he remembered Huck as a subordinate but not as a friend. Isolated snippets like those are intriguing, but they offer no overall picture. Huck, the man, is lost; all that remains behind are multi-generational tales starring a cartoon-ish villain in a green coat.²⁵

The survivors of Huck's company were given to Captain David Ogilvie, who commanded them for the rest of the war. Lt. Hunt managed to get through the war, and was still with the British Legion when it was taken onto the regular Establishment. He retired to the half-pay list in 1784.²⁶

I was recently introduced to a particularly macabre footnote in Huck's story. As was customary at the time, Huck and his men would have been buried somewhere close to the battle site. In 1839, a local celebration of the battle recorded that "Huck...lies buried where he fell, and his dead soldiers sleep around him." Unfortunately, it seems that situation may not have been the final word, for another source from a few decades later noted that "...in subsequent years, Dr. Simpson took up Hook's skeleton -- preserved it -- the two ball holes were in it -- & the skeleton was taken first to Alabama, & subsequently to California." I'd really like to disbelieve this particular bit of nastiness, but Michael provided a long list of convincing details in support of it. So it seems Huck's enemies, or rather their descendants, wouldn't even grant him a decent burial. His final "resting place" may have been in a medical lab, serving as a gruesome teaching tool for generations of local doctors.²⁷

[Thanks to Don Gara, who supplied the Pennsylvania newspaper extracts and muster roll information, as well as alerting me to the mention of Huck in Anne Ousterhout's work; to Marianne Gilchrist, who searched the IGI unsuccessfully for information on Huck's birthdate; to Nan Cole for finding it in Emmerick's muster roll, and to Michael Scoggins for sending me a wealth of additions and corrections to the original version of the article.]

Notes:

¹ The summary in this and the following paragraph is an average of various different accounts. The time of the attack is given as 4 a.m. in Uzal Johnson, Uzal Johnson, Loyalist Surgeon, ed. Bobby Gilmer Moss (Blacksburg S.C.: Scotia Hibernia Press, 2000), p43. Other accounts say near dawn or around daybreak. Michael C. Scoggins, who has been studying the battle for several years, comments, "The preponderance of evidence places the Whig attack at sunrise, about 6 AM (not 4 AM as Johnson and Allaire stated), just as the Tories were waking up, fixing breakfast, saddling their horses, etc. Huck most likely was out of bed by then and making one last appeal to Mrs. Williamson to have her husband and sons 'brought in.' He had earlier done the same with Mrs. Bratton and Mrs. Adair." For the troop distribution see for instance, Joseph Johnson, Traditions and Reminiscences Chiefly of the American Revolution in the South (Spartanburg, S.C.: The Reprint Company, 1972), p336-7: "The main road passed close to this house, and being fenced was a lane before it; here the sentinels were placed along the road, while those not on duty slept in their tents, and the officers in the house." Richard Winn, "General Richard Winn's Notes," The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 43 (1942): 205 recounts another version. On the lack of sentinels and casualty report, see Cornwallis to Clinton, dated July 15th: "Lord Rawdon likewise inclosed to me a letter from Lieutenant-colonel Turnbull, at Rocky mount, on the west bank of the Watersee, thirty miles from Camden, who reports, that having heard that some of the violent rebels, about thirty miles in his front, had returned to their plantations, and were encouraging the people to join them, he sent Captain Huck of the legion, with a detachment of about thirty or forty of that corps, twenty mounted men of the New-York volunteers, and sixty militia, to seize or drive them away. Captain Huck, encouraged by meeting with no opposition, encamped in an unguarded manner, was totally surprised and routed. The captain was killed, and only twelve of the legion, and as many of the militia, escaped." Quoted in Banastre Tarleton, A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America (London: Printed for T. Cadell, in the Strand, 1787), Note C, p121. [ back ]

² Winn says the battle was over in five minutes. Henry Lumpkin, From Savannah to Yorktown (San Jose: toExcell, 1987), p83, says it lasted a little over an hour, "and cost the British 25 to 50 killed, several times that number wounded, and 29 captured." In a letter to de Kalb, dated July 17, 1780, Sumter cites British casualties "Kild upon the Spot, was one Col., one Capt. & Twelve others; one Majr., one Lt. & Twenty-Seven others taken prisoners, Since Which the Number found Dead a Mounts to Twenty-one; the Loss very considerable among the Dragoons." See Walter Clark, ed., The State Records of North Carolina, 26 vols. (Goldsboro, North Carolina: Nash Brothers, 1886-1907), 14: 505-7. At the other end of the spectrum, in a later report to Clinton (August 6, 1780), Lord Cornwallis downgraded his original estimates, this time saying "The affair of Captain Huck turned out of less consequence than it appeared at first: The captain and three men of the legion were killed, and seven men of the New-York volunteers taken. See Tarleton, p127. See John S. Pancake, This Destructive War (University, AL: University of Alabama Press; 1985), p83-84, for lack of quarter being granted. Also M. A. Moore, Sr., The Life of Gen. Edward Lacey, with a List of Battles and Skirmishes in South Carolina, During the Revolutionary War (Spartanburg, S.C.: Douglas, Evins & Co., Express Office, 1859), p10, states "A few [Loyalists], on their knees, begged for quarters; the Patriots refused this to Maj. Ferguson, (a Tory,) and put him to the sword[.]" [ back ]

³ The November 1778 inspection roll for Emmerick's Chausseurs, available through the National Archives of Canada (RG 8, C Series, Volume 1891, reel C-4222), gives his birthplace as Germany and his age at the time as thirty. See Anne M. Ousterhout, A State Divided; Opposition in Pennsylvania to the American Revolution (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), p158, for the information on his education. Unfortunately, she does not provide much in the way of details. Her wording seems to imply that Huck and Hunt studied law as classmates, but they may have simply attended the same school or apprenticed under the same lawyer. Alternately Huck may have been Hunt's apprentice. [ back ]

⁴ One advertisement ran in The Pennsylvania Gazette (27 Nov. 1776). The other, in the issue for April 12, 1775, reads in part, "Christian Huck, living in Second street, Philadelphia, has for private sale, TWO Thousand Three Hundred Acres of LAND, situate[d] in the county of Berks...Said Christian Huck will sell all or any parcel of said lands for ready money or short credit, on very low terms, giving security; he is also willing to exhange all or parcel of said lands for other lands or houses in or near Philadelphia." This suggests he was the owner rather than an agent. [ back ]

⁵ The auction announcement reads in part: "WHEREAS the Estates of...Christian Hook...late of the county of Philadelphia, having been in due course of Law forfeited and seized, to the use of this State:...WE...DO HEREBY GIVE NOTICE, that the Interests and Estates of the said...Christian Hook...in the following Tracts or Parcels of Land, viz....A Lot on Germantown Road, about one and a half miles from the city, about 75 feet front, and 180 feet deep with the remains of a brick kitchen thereon,...The Sales of which will begin, at the Court House at Philadelphia, on the twenty-first day of June next[.]" See The Pennsylvania Gazette (17 May 1780). An earlier announcement, in the October 6, 1779 issue of the Gazette, announced the sale of the other tracts of land. Curiously, the estate in Northhampton wasn't sold until October 27, 1788. (Early American Imprints, First Series, # 45314). [ back ]

⁶ See Ousterhout, p158 and elsewhere in the same chapter for information on Hunt. [ back ]

⁷ Robert D. Bass, The Green Dragoon; The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson (New York: Henry Holt and Company; 1957), p47. John F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania, in the Olden Time ed. Willis P. Hazard, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Edwin S. Stuart, 1905), 1: 366. The Pennsylvania Packet (13 May 1778). [ back ]

⁸ Bass, Green Dragoon, p46-47. Muster roll for Emmerick's Chausseurs, dated January 5, 1779. Sample muster rolls showing Huck's presence in the Chausseurs can be found at the On-Line Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies [see links]. Their collection of documents on the regiment also provided the quotation regarding the disposition of Huck's company when the Chausseurs disbanded. The original muster and inspection rolls are in the National Archives of Canada (RG 8, C Series, Volume 1891, reel C-4222). [ back ]

⁹ Bass, Green Dragoon, p84, gives their assignment. Winn, p205, says Huck was involved in the skirmish with Buford. [ back ]

¹⁰ The Turnbull letter is quoted in Robert Duncan Bass, Ninety Six, the Struggle for the South Carolina Back Country (Lexington, S.C. : The Sandlapper Store, 1978), p203. For Cornwallis to Clinton, see note 1, above. [ back ]

¹¹ Edward McCrady, The History of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-80 (New York: Russel and Russel; 1901), p591. [ back ]

¹² Winn, p204. Moore, p6, says that Huck "burned down Parson Simpson's dwelling-house" rather than the church. Johnson/Moss, p43n says Huck burned "a number of Presbyterian Churches and Manses containing the ministers' libraries," but cites no specific cases. So pending further information, I'd have to say that his score in the church-burning department adds up to a grand total of one. And everyone seems to agree that the Rev. Simpson was off fighting with Sumter's partisans at the time, so it was rather a fair cop. [ back ]

¹³ Cornwallis's view on the ironworks is quoted in Bass, Ninety Six, p203. Winn, p204, also discusses the incident. Turnbull's comments are from PRO 30/11/2/158-159, quoted in Michael C. Scoggins, Huck's Defeat: The Battle of Williamson's Plantation (unpublished essay, for the York County Culture and Heritage Commission, 2002), p11. [ back ]

¹⁴ For the Huck version, see for instance Walter Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict that Turned the Tide of the American Revolution (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2001), p73-74. The same story is told with Wemyss in starring role in Robert Duncan Bass, The Swamp Fox, The Life and Campaigns of General Francis Marion (Orangeburg, South Carolina: Sandlapper Publishing Co., Inc., 1974), p52. Scoggins, p12 says the Huck version took place at Walker's Crossroads shortly after the burning of Hill's ironworks. Having a defined time and place renders it more believable, though the primary source seems to be telling a story he'd heard about rather than something he'd witnessed. Still, I'm willing to give Huck the benefit of the doubt -- perhaps he really was that clever. The absolute archetype of these generic tales must be "nasty officer faces off against spunky rebel wife and tells her she's in dire trouble if she doesn't call her husband home from the rebel camp. She figuratively or literally spits in his eye, affirms her adherence to the Cause in stirring prose, and -- despite said officer's villainous reputation -- lives to tell about it." Ferguson has his Mrs. Lytle. Wemyss has Jean James, and in Huck's case, the heroine of the tale is Martha Bratton. Bass turns the Wemyss/James variant into a particularly good campfire yarn. [ back ]

¹⁵ Lorenzo Sabine's Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, with an Historical Essay, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1864), p552-3, and Benson Lossing's The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, 2 vols. (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Caratzas, 1976), 2:659, each quote the "god" line, which first appeared in William Hill, Col. William Hill's Memoirs of the Revolution, ed. A. S. Salley, Jr. (Columbia, S.C.: Printed for the Historical Commission of South Carolina by the State Company, 1921), p9. [ back ]

¹⁶ The "reaping hook" story comes from an eyewitness account by William Bratton Jr., who was seven when the incident occurred, but the surviving version is one he dictated to his son decades later. It bears suspicious structural parallels to an equally popular Wemyss anecdote. See comments above on generic/parallel tales. Just about every book discussing Huck's defeat tells some version of it. The anecdote about Martha Bratton's murderous intentions appears in several tellings, including Proceedings of a Celebration of Huck's Defeat at Brattonsville, York District, S.C., July 12th, 1839 (Yorkville, S.C.: Tidings from the Craft, 1895), p6-7. [ back ]

¹⁷ Tarleton, p92-93. [ back ]

¹⁸ See Winn, p205, for the comment on Buford. Counting heads on either side of the skirmish is an exercise in chaos theory. Estimates of the number of participants on each side vary wildly, anywhere from 100 to 500. The official numbers on the British side are given in Cornwallis's report to Clinton, see above. It is generally assumed that Huck had recruited a few more militia along the way, bringing his numbers up to the 100-120 range. Rumors of a much larger force -- anything up to 1000 men -- were apparently circulating among the rebel militia, though I have seen no accounts which claim this as anything beyond wild speculation. There is even more variation in the rebel accounting, since a large group seems to have formed, with the majority of them falling away again before they actually reached Williamson's -- or perhaps several groups formed, and became a loose consolidation for the battle. Michael Scoggins feels Winn's estimate of Huck's strength at 130-135 is close to the mark. Scoggins, p13-14, provides a summary of all the conflicting numbers available to choose from. [ back ]

¹⁹ Winn, pp205-6. [ back ]

²⁰ John Buchanan, The Road to Guilford Courthouse (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1997), p114, quoting James Collins' autobiography. Also Edgar, p82, quoting Collins. The bayonet charge is recounted in McCrady, p597. [ back ]

²¹ John C. Dann, ed., The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War for Independence (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980), pp358-361, gives Kerr's full pension claim. Astoundingly, Edgar appears to accept the story verbatim. [ back ]

²² Hunt's presence in Emmerick's Chausseurs comes from the disbanding order, see the On-line Institute. Winn, p206, has the account of Hunt's capture. Hill, p10, says that Huck's lieutenant "was wounded & died afterwards; considerable number of privates the number not known, as there were many of their carcasses found in the woods some days after." British reports list Hunt as the only Legion lieutenant sent out with Huck. Michael Scoggins provided the information on Lieutenant Adamson. [ back ]

²³ See Johnson/Moss, p43, for the account of Lt. Hunt's escape. The fill-in clarification comes from Michael Scoggins via email. [ back ]

²⁴ The letter is quoted in Bass, Green Dragoon, p89. [ back ]

²⁵ See Dann, p361, for Kerr's story. Tarleton's summary is linked above. [ back ]

²⁶ Muster roll information is supplied by Don Gara. Hunt was commissioned in the regular army with a number of other Legion officers on December 25, 1782. See List of All the Officers of the Army for 1783-4. [ back ]

²⁷ Proceedings of a Celebration of Huck's Defeat, p5. Draper Manuscript Collection at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Volume 11, Series VV, pp333 (11VV333). Email from Michael Scoggins. [ back ]