James Williamson b. 1713 Scotland, d. March 31, 1806
Buried Bethesda
Church Cemetery, York County, South Carolina
Father of
George Williamson, Rev. War Vet. (served at Valley
Forge, PA)
b. 1753 Amelia
Co, Virginia
d. 1799 Dinwiddie
Co, Virginia http://www.edavidarthur.net/GeorgeWilliamson/GeoWilliamson.htm
Grandfather of
Charles Williamson, Vet. War of 1812
b. 1793 Dinwiddie
Co, VA
d. 1860 buried
Blandford Cemetery Petersburg, VA http://www.edavidarthur.net/CharlesWilliamson/CharlesWilliamson.htm
Great-Grandfather
of Elizabeth Green Williamson, wife of William Epps Overby,
and 2nd Great-Grandmother of E. David Arthur.
James
Williamson is David Arthur’s 5th Great-Grandfather.
James
Williamson lived in Pennsylvania and moved to Amelia Co. VA around 1730,
sometime after 1753 he moved to York Co. SC. He purchased 300 acres on November
22, 1766, which was later the battlefield of “Huck’s Defeat”
Quoted from
below:
“Huck then
proceeded a quarter of a mile southeast of Bratton's plantation to the
neighboring house of an elderly Whig named James Williamson, where he and his
approximately 115 men made camp for the night. The five prisoners were secured
in a corncrib to await execution.”
Huck's Defeat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Huck's Defeat |
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Part of the American
Revolutionary War |
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Belligerents |
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Commanders and leaders |
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Strength |
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About 250 militia |
35 dragoons, 20 New York Volunteers and about 60 militia |
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Casualties and losses |
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1 killed and 1 wounded |
Majority killed, wounded, or captured |
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Huck's Defeat or the Battle of Williamson's
Plantation was an engagement of the American Revolutionary War that
occurred in present York County, South Carolina on July 12, 1780, and was one
of the first battles of the southern campaign to be won by Patriot militia.
Background
In May 1780,
the British captured the only significant American army in the South at
Charleston, South Carolina and quickly occupied four vital courthouse towns:
Camden, Cheraw, Georgetown, and Ninety Six. Believing the Whigs had been
crushed in South Carolina, Sir Henry Clinton abrogated the terms of surrender,
which had allowed parolees to remain neutral for the remainder of the war.
Under terms of the proclamation of June 3, 1780, Patriots or Whigs (as they
were commonly known) were compelled to either take an oath of loyalty to the king
or be regarded as "rebels and enemies of their country." Clinton then
departed for New York, leaving Lieutenant General Charles, Earl Cornwallis in
command of the British army in the South.
In the absence
of civil government in South Carolina (Governor John Rutledge had fled to North
Carolina when Charleston fell), backcountry Whigs selected their own leaders to
continue the fight against the "senseless cruelty of the Tory
militia" and the "cruel and contemptuous treatment of the populace"
by British Legion commander Lieutenant Colonel Banastre
Tarleton.
Preliminaries
A member of the
British Legion threatens to kill Martha Bratton if she does not reveal the
whereabouts of her husband. (Mid-nineteenth century illustration, Harper's Weekly).
Around the
first of June 1780, the British army established a fortified outpost at Rocky
Mount on the upper Catawba River, near the North Carolina border, and placed a
garrison there under Lieutenant Colonel George Turnbull, a career British
officer who commanded a British Provincial regiment called the New York
Volunteers. In early July, Turnbull ordered Christian Huck, a Philadelphia
lawyer and a captain in Tarleton's British Legion, to find the rebel leaders
and persuade other area residents to swear allegiance to the king. A native of
Germany, Huck was one of many Pennsylvania Loyalists whose property was
confiscated after the British evacuated Philadelphia. He was then banished from
the state and joined the British army at New York. Huck was a remarkably poor
choice for this assignment because he held a great deal of bitterness toward
the Whigs in general, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in particular. During
an earlier incursion into what was then called the Upper District between the
Broad and Catawba Rivers (modern Chester County, South Carolina), his troops
had murdered an unarmed boy, reportedly while he was reading a Bible, and burnt
the home and library of Rev. John Simpson, a Whig leader and influential
Presbyterian minister. A week later, Huck and his men invaded the New
Acquisition District (roughly modern York County, South Carolina), and
destroyed the ironworks of William Hill, another influential Whig. Residents
who had only wanted to be left alone had then joined the Patriots.
After destroying
Hill's Ironworks and putting the rebel garrison there to flight, Huck convened
a compulsory meeting of the remaining male residents of the New Acquisition
District (mostly men too old to fight), and proclaimed that "God almighty
had become a rebel, but if there were twenty gods on that side, they would all
be conquered." Huck then stated that "even if the rebels were as
thick as trees, and Jesus Christ would come down and lead them, he would still
defeat them," following which he and his troopers confiscated all the
men's horses. Actions like these quickly earned Huck the nickname "the
swearing captain" and further angered the Presbyterian inhabitants of the
backcountry. After witnessing Huck's tirade, one resident, Daniel Collins, told
his wife, "I have come home determined to take my gun and when I lay it
down, I lay down my life with it."
Huck's style in
the Catawba River Valley was to rough-up backcountry women, confiscate food and
horses, and generally threaten prison and death to any who dared resist the
British. This simply encouraged more men to join the rebels, who were
organizing a militia brigade under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter. On July 11, 1780, Huck raided the home of the partisan
leader Captain John McClure on Fishing Creek in present-day Chester County,
caught his brother and brother-in-law with newly made bullets, and sentenced
them to hang as traitors at sunrise the next day. Huck's detachment, consisting
of about 35 British Legion dragoons, 20 New York Volunteers, and 60 Loyalist militia, then
advanced once more into the New Acquisition and arrived at the plantation of
another Whig militia leader, Colonel William Bratton, later that evening. Shortly thereafter, one of Huck's
soldiers put a reaping hook to the neck of Col. Bratton's wife, Martha, in an
unsuccessful attempt to discover Bratton's whereabouts. Huck's
second-in-command, Lieutenant William Adamson of the New York Volunteers,
intervened and disciplined the offending Loyalist soldier. Huck next arrested
three elderly neighbors of the Brattons, including
Col. Bratton's older brother Robert, and told them they too would be executed
the next day.
Huck then
proceeded a quarter of a mile southeast of Bratton's plantation to the
neighboring house of an elderly Whig named James Williamson, where he and his
approximately 115 men made camp for the night. The five prisoners were secured
in a corncrib to await execution.
Battle
With
intelligence provided by John McClure's younger sister, Mary, and a Bratton
slave named Watt, the loosely organized Patriot forces swarmed after Huck.
About 150 arrived in the vicinity of Williamson's plantation that night,
commanded by experienced militia officers. After
a brief reconnaissance and some discussion, they agreed to attack Huck from
three directions simultaneously.
Huck's security
was extremely lax. Shortly after sunrise, at least two of the Patriot groups
managed to attack simultaneously. The British and Loyalist troops were caught
completely by surprise; many were still asleep. The partisans rested their
rifles on a split rail fence, from which "they took unerring and deadly
aim" at their opponents as they emerged. Huck mounted a horse to rally his
troops and was shot in the head by John Carroll, who had loaded two balls in
his rifle. Some of the Loyalists surrendered while others fled, hotly pursued
by Whigs seeking vengeance. Tory losses were very high. Tarleton later reported
that only twenty-four men escaped. Patriot losses were one killed
and one wounded; the five prisoners were also released from the corncrib
unharmed.
Importance
Although the
numbers engaged were small, the importance of the skirmish was immediately
clear. As South Carolina historian Walter Edgar has written, "The entire
backcountry seemed to take heart. Frontier militia had defeated soldiers of the
feared British Legion." Volunteers streamed in to join the partisan militia
brigade of General Thomas Sumter.
Edgar has called Huck's Defeat "a major turning
point in the American Revolution in South Carolina." It was the first of
more than thirty-five important battles in South Carolina in late 1780 and
early 1781, all but five of which were partisan victories. This chain of
successes was essential to the major Patriot victories at King's Mountain and
Cowpens.
Samuel
Williamson, mentioned below, was the Son of James Williamson (My 5th
G-Grandfather) and the brother of George Williamson (My 4th G-Grandfather).
Quoted
from: http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1119&context=anth_facpub - Be sure to read this detailed account of
the Battle and Battlefield.
"Local
tradition long held that the lower portion of James Williamson’s 300-acre tract,
the portion where Samuel Williamson lived until he sold the property to William
Bratton in 1787, was the location of the Huck’s Defeat battlefield. Dr. George
Howe recorded this tradition in his History of the Presbyterian Church in South
Carolina. Quoting an old manuscript history of Bethesda Presbyterian Church
written by Rev. John Stitt Harris, Howe stated that “Samuel Williamson’s name
is recorded in history as having resided on the battle-ground of Houck’s
defeat, and having killed the first man slain in that battle.” Reverend Harris was the husband of Agnes
Bratton, the daughter of Colonel Bratton’s son Dr. John Simpson Bratton
Sr."
"On
November 22, 1766, Rebecca Kuykendall sold this 300-acre tract to James Williamson
Sr. During the period of the Revolutionary War, James Williamson and his family,
including his five sons Adam, George, John, Samuel, and James Jr., were living in
a two-story log house on this property. According to period accounts,
Williamson’s house was located 300-400 yards southeast of Colonel William
Bratton’s house, on a branch of the South Fork of Fishing Creek known locally
as “Becky’s Branch,” after Rebecca Kuykendall."
“Historical
documentation indicates that the James Williamson family settled 300 acres on
the South Fork of Fishing Creek in 1766. At the time of the Battle of Huck’s
Defeat
in 1780, Williamson’s plantation included a two-story log house, a corn crib,
and a stable or barn, as well as several fruit tree orchards and several fields
of oats and wheat, located on the southern end of the property. Accounts of the
battle indicate that the action began several hundred yards south or southeast
of the Williamson home and moved in a northwest direction, with the final phase
of the battle taking place around the Williamson house as Whig militiamen
engaged mounted troops of the British Legion cavalry. Casualties from the
battle (most of whom were British or Loyalist) were buried on site in an
unknown number of graves, possibly on the southern end of the property.”
Huck's Defeat - Williamson's Plantation, 1780 - An American
Revolutionary War print by Don Troiani 
From the 1952 SAR Application of Leon Rosenborough
Download
this page as a PDF http://www.edavidarthur.net/JamesWilliamson/HucksDefeat.pdf