The source on fortifying the churches is my Way family history which you keep
asking about but which I have already described. I wrote the following on
page 141, "When the American Revolution came, the churches at Dorchester and
Beech Hill, as well as the one in Midway, Georgia, were closed and fortified.
The British burned all three."
While I have some 900 footnotes in my book, it is a family history and I did
not feel the need to document every historical statement and have no footnote
there. In my research I traveled three separate times in a motor home up and
down the Eastern seaboard from Salem, MA and Boston to Savannah, Sunbury,
Midway, and Hinesville, GA. In Boston I researched in the NEHGS headquarters
for days, in the Boston Public Library, etc; in the Philadelphia Free Public
Library, in the state archives and libraries of VA, NC, SC, GA, TX, and in
the historical associations of VA at Richmond, in SC at Charleston, and in GA
at Savannah. I went twice to the DAR Library in Camden, SC,and twice to the
A.S. Salley Archives in Orangeburg, SC. I visited more courthouses than I
would like to think about in SC, GA, and TX. I also went to Salt Lake City.
Since I live in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, I have spent many
days in the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the DAR Library, and
the Federal Bureau of Land Management. Finally, although I had already
visited Great Britain six times in either a personal or official capacity,
beginning as an undergraduate student, and had seen all of that country I had
ever planned to, I recently undertook still another trip there solely to
research the Ways and the families they immediately married into in America,
the Sumners and Mavericks.
I don't know where I picked up the info on the fortifying of the churches,
but I am sure it is accurate. It may have come from brochures passed out by
the state park rangers in Old Dorchester State Park and the Old Sunbury State
Park, or from local, county and state histories. A.S. Salley wrote a lot on
the subject. But any standard history of the American Revolution would
address the military campaigns. The same might be said of a biography of
Lord Charles Cornwallis, of the best cavalry officer of the British
Empire----young and arrogant Sir Banastre Tarleton----and of a biography of
the "Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, or of the US General Nathaniel Greene, a
Rhode Island Quaker who proved to be an exception to the rule that Quakers
did not fight.
I tossed out my comment on the fortifying of the churches because I feel that
Americans have too one-sided a view of the American Revolution, one
strengthened by such items as the recent popular Mel Gibson movie, The
Patriot. It was good enough that I saw it again when it re-ran on television.
The hero played by Gibson is based on the Swamp Fox and the villain is based
on Tarleton. It was a little much, however, when the German director of the
film showed the Tarleton character locking up a church full of men, women,
and children in SC and torching them. Whatever their faults, 18th century
British gentlemen officers did not act like 20th century Nazis.
If Tarleton had carried out such an atrocity against a church full of British
subjects, you may be sure there would have been a parliamentary inquiry, his
career would have been finished, and probably that of his commanding officer,
Lord Cornwallis, as well. As it is, Tarleton did not die at the hand of the
Swamp Fox at the Battle of Cowpens as was depicted in the movie. He rode on
to Monticello in Virginia to scare off Governor Thomas Jefferson and others,
and accompanied Cornwallis at the surrender at Yorktown to George Washington
in 1781. Tarleton, far from being disgraced, later successfully ran for
Parliament.
As for Cornwallis, his career was not even ended by the disastrous
development at Yorktown. After I retired from the diplomatic service, I was
a Fulbright scholar in India where I learned that Cornwallis commanded around
Madras, Bangalore, and Mysore in the south. Of course there, he did not have
to contend with the likes of Marion and Greene.
Since Mr. John Sinclair Quarterman is partly of Scottish origin, as am I and
my partner, Susan Sinclair Grady, Virginia Commissioner of Clan Sinclair,
USA, I might point out the influence of the Scots and Scotch-Irish on the
Revolutionary War fighting in the south. For five years the war had been a
gentlemanly affair in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States. Sir Henry
Clinton then invaded the South and ordered Cornwallis to hold it, the idea
being to then open peace negotiations and give away only the North while
holding on to the South.
The war turned ugly in the South in part because of so many Scots, who fought
on both sides. There were more Revolutionary War battles fought in SC than
in any other state, but all in the closing months of the fighting. It also
turned ugly because of the personality of Cornwallis. Having a personality
somewhat like U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, he was not temperamentally
suited for garrison duty or "holding." He liked too much to attack and
destroy.
Once again, my book: A. Dane Bowen, Jr., Ph. D. (Ivy League in History),
Henry Way (1583-1667) and Descendants: Pioneering Four Centuries across
America, Baltimore, Md., 2001, 488 pp. size 8 and 1|2 x 11. The 25-page
index, in four columns, 10 font, has some 5,950 name entries. It was so well
received that it quickly sold out. The publisher will not reprint less than
50 additional copies. I am unwilling to take the risk of ordering so many
more. If your list members and\or others can put together an order of 35
books at $50 apiece, I will order another 50!
Since the book is copyrighted, copies were deposited in the Library of
Congress and will presumably become available there. However, I can tell you
from experience that the last time I looked, the Quarterman book about three
years after its publication was still not available there. I only first saw
it at the public library in the county seat of Liberty Co., GA, Hinesville.
I later bought a copy.
Dane Bowen