I once marched with the very men who would later curse my name: William Cunningham. In the beginning they persuaded me with promises. They swore I could serve close to home, guard the backcountry I loved, and would not be dragged down to the lowcountry to stand duty for Charleston’s merchants and lawyers. I believed…
The Snow Campaign brought a temporary calm to the backcountry, but the underlying tensions persisted. Loyalist figures like Patrick Cunningham, though defeated and scattered, had already been accused of encouraging Cherokee raids on settler communities as a means of aiding the British cause. When coordinated Cherokee attacks finally erupted in the summer of 1776, striking…
I will never forget that cold, deadly winter of 1775-76. I felt so alone and so far away from my Virginia Home. I was born, Mary Foote in Prince William County. My first husband, William Simpson, died before we were one year married. But then, after months of terrible grief, I saw James Butler, and…
Robert Cunningham, Tory I am Robert Cunningham, descended from Irish stock that crossed the sea to Virginia in the mid‑1600s. By 1769 several branches of our family had pushed into the backcountry of South Carolina, just north of the Saluda River, in the area that would one day be called Laurens County. I built a…
The Cherokee war left a vacuum in the backcountry, and from that vacuum grew the Regulator movement. The “Regulators” were ordinary settlers—farmers, traders, and veterans of the Cherokee War—who banded together to suppress cattle thieves, bandits, and petty tyrants who preyed on isolated homesteads. Figures such as Thomas Sumter, Richard Richardson, and Joseph Kershaw became…
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