The Battle of Stono Ferry, 20 June 1779

The Battle of Stono Ferry took place 20 June 1779 in South Carolina during the British retreat from an abortive raid on Charleston. Lieutenant Colonel John Maitland was in charge of the large rear guard left by British General Augustine Prevost upon his withdrawal to Savannah. A bridgehead was established on the north side of an area now known as New Cut Church Flats; this was meant to cover Stono Ferry. Three strong redoubts were built, circled by an abatis, and manned by Highlanders and Hessians. It was here that American Major General Benjamin Lincoln chose to lead his main attack. General William Moultrie led a smaller secondary effort to the east against a small group of British soldiers on Johns Island.

Lincoln deployed his troops after a night march of eight miles from the Ashley Ferry, located in the present village of Drayton Hall. Immediately upon their arrival at dawn, they began struggling through thick woods. The Americans advanced in two wings; General Jethro Sumner led his Carolina militia on the right, carrying two guns, while their right flank was covered by a company of light infantry, commanded by the Marquis de Malmady. Continental Army troops, under General Isaac Huger, made up the left wing; they carried four guns into battle. With Huger was a group of light infantry under John Henderson, and it was these troops who, shortly before sunrise, made first contact with the enemy.

The battle began well for the Patriots. They engaged the British positions with small arms and cannon fire for an hour, at which point they advanced to the abatis. Of the Highlanders, two companies resisted until only eleven men were left standing; a Hessian battalion finally broke. Here Maitland shifted his forces in an attempt to counter the larger threat posed by Huger's wing. The Hessians rallied and returned to the fight, and reserves were brought across the bridge. Lincoln chose this moment to order a withdrawal.

At 150 dead and a comparable number missing, Patriot losses had been heavy; among the dead was Andrew Jackson's brother Hugh, felled by heat and exhaustion. Also lost was Col. Thomas Neel. Most of the "missing" were deserters; the British claimed no prisoners from the battle. Huger was severely wounded. For their part, the British lost 150 officers and men, but only one was reported missing.

(Source: Wikipedia)

William Richardson Davie (1756-1820)

William Richardson Davie was born on June 22, 1756 in Egremont Parish, County Cumberland, England, the son of Scottish Presbyterians, Archibald and Mary Richardson. In 1764, the somewhat affluent Richardsons moved to the Waxhaws region near Lancaster, South Carolina, where Mary’s brother, William Richardson, was a prominent Presbyterian minister. Davie had been named for his uncle, and many historians have falsely deduced that William Richardson adopted Davie after the boy came to America. Although that’s not true, the two were close. When Richardson died, Davie inherited 150 acres and a large library. As an adolescent, Davie studied at Queen’s Museum, later Liberty Hall, in Charlotte. In 1776, Davie graduated with honors from Princeton University, then the College of New Jersey.

Too young to take a leading role in the American opposition to British imperial polices, Davie enlisted in the Patriot cause once the Revolutionary War began and fought with considerable courage during the entire conflict. From 1777 to 1778, Davie served under General Allen Jones. (In 1782, Davie married Jones’s daughter Sarah—an unusual match to be sure, for Willie Jones, Sarah’s uncle, was the dean of North Carolina’s Radicals, and later, its Anti-Federalists.) Badly wounded in June 1779 in the Battle of Stono Ferry near Charleston, Davie spent the next several months convalescing and reading law with Judge Spruce Macay in Salisbury. As the fighting in the South intensified, Davie organized a troop of cavalry and returned to active duty. By September 1780, Davie had risen to the rank of colonel, and his subordinates included the future president Andrew Jackson [as a 13-year-old courier]. In December 1780, General Nathanael Greene, commander of Continental forces in the South, appointed Davie his commissary general—a critical yet thankless post.

After the war, Davie settled in Halifax and started a successful legal career. James Iredell, the distinguished North Carolina jurist, ranked Davie alongside Alfred Moore, a future justice of the United States Supreme Court, as one of the two best lawyers in the state. Davie’s most controversial case may have been his defense of three Tory officers charged with treason. Defeated in court, Davie secured pardons for the men from the governor. Elected to the House of Commons in 1784, Davie generally allied himself with the legislature’s conservative faction. Accordingly, he supported sound money and compliance with the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, called for the payment of pre-war debts owed to British creditors, and encouraged the return of confiscated Loyalist property.

Davie’s effective performance in the House of Commons led to his selection as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention that assembled in Philadelphia in May 1787. Davie said little during the debates, seeming to defer to the experienced Hugh Williamson, the de facto leader of the North Carolina delegation. Yet Davie arguably cast the single most important vote of the convention. Serving on the Grand Committee appointed to consider the issue of representation in Congress, Davie voted for the Great Compromise providing for representation based on population in the House of Representatives and for state equality in the Senate. Davie’s vote made North Carolina the only large state to support the compromise, and it helped break the deadlock between the large and small states. Called away on legal business before the end of the convention, Davie did not sign the Constitution.

In North Carolina, however, Davie adamantly supported the ratification of the document. He served in the Hillsborough (1788) and Fayetteville (1789) conventions called to consider ratification of the Constitution. Even though Davie and Iredell led the outnumbered Federalist forces at the Hillsborough convention, delegates voted 184 to 84 against ratification. After the Constitution had taken effect, a second convention in Fayetteville finally approved it.

(Source: North Carolina History Project, John Locke Foundation, ©2007, http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/115/entry)

Col. James Hawthorn

From King's Mountain and Its Heroes, by Lyman Copeland Draper, pub. 1881, P.G. Thomson:

"James Hawthorn was born in County Armagh, Ireland about 1750. His family were early Scots-Irish settlers of the back country of South Carolina, where the mother, two daughters and James, her 12-year-old son, were captured by Indians—the mother and girls were killed. James Hawthorn was at length released. He learned the blacksmith's trade in York district, South Carolina, where he married Mary 'Polly' Neel, a daughter of Colonel Thomas Neel.
"Hawthorne fought in several major battles and an unknown number of skirmishes during the Revolutionary War. He served under Col. Neel in the Snow Campaign in 1775, on Andrew Williamson’s Campaign of 1776, and as a Captain on the Florida Campaign of 1778-79. He served as Lt. Col. under Col. William Hill, under General Thomas Sumter, who fought at the Battles of Rocky Mount, Hanging Rock, Carey’s Ford, Fishing Creek, Fish Dam Ford, and Blackstocks. He took command of Col. Hill’s Regiment at the Battle of Kings Mountain after Hill was wounded. James Hawthorn was Lt. Col. to Col. Thomas Neel prior to Neel’s death in the Battle of Stono. Hawthorn was wounded twice during the war. He died about 1808 in Livingston County, Kentucky."

Col. Andrew Neel

(Commemorative marker at the
Rocky Mount, South Carolina battle site)

Andrew Neel, son of Colonel Thomas Neel, rose to the rank of Colonel after his father fell at the Battle of Stono in June 1779. He was detached by General Thomas Sumter at Clems Branch, South Carolina to command the troops of York and Chester. He afterwards fell in the Battle of Rocky Mount, 1 August 1780.

From History of South Carolina, by Yates Snowden, Henry Gardner Cutler; Lewis Publishing Company, 1920:

“On the 1st of August, Sumter attempted to carry Rocky Mount in three assaults, without success. He then ordered Colonel [Andrew] Neel to storm a loop-holed fortified house in which the British were strongly posted. Neel was killed and the storming party repulsed.”

South Carolina Proprietary Counties, 1682

(click image to enlarge)

In 1682, after the first hard years of settlement, the Proprietors ordered three counties laid out. Berkeley County, centering around Charleston, extended from the Stono River on the south to Seewee Creek (present-day Awendaw Creek) where it emptied into Bulls Bay on the north. Craven County lay north of Berkeley County, and below Berkeley, Colleton County extended to the Combahee River. Later, a fourth county, Granville, was laid out between the Combahee and the Savannah rivers.

(Source: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, http://www.state.sc.us/scdah/guide/countymap2.htm )

The Neel Double Headstone

(click on image to enlarge)

inscription reads:
In Memory of Colo. Thomas Neel who departed this life June 20 1779 in the 40th year of his age.
In Memory of John Neel who departed this life May 19 1778 in the 16th year of his age.

The scepter'd prince the burthen'd slave
The humble and the haughty die
The poor the rich the base the brave
The dust without distinction lie.

(location: Bethel Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Clover, York County, South Carolina)

Col. Thomas Neel (1739-1779)

Thomas Neel was the second of ten children. His father was originally from the Cape Fear coastal area of North Carolina, but had moved to Mecklenberg County as one of its earliest settlers. This family would come to sacrifice more than most for their countrymen and the Patriot cause. From Carolina historian Louise Pettus:

In 1764 he [Thomas Neel] was one of a committee of four to select a site for Bethel Church and became one of its first elders. He was elected to the North Carolina General Assembly to represent Tryon County. In the Assembly he was active in rallying backcountry representatives to gather petitions for building roads and ferrys. He was appointed as a member of the board of trustees of Queen's College in Charlotte. He served as a justice of the peace and as a judge of Tryon County from 1769 to 1772.
In 1772 Neel served on the Boundary Commission that drew the North Carolina-South Carolina boundary line west of the Catawba River. Meantime, he was acquiring land in South Carolina. As soon as the boundary was settled he applied for a South Carolina land grant for 779 acres that had originally been patented in North Carolina. This land was near the Catawba River south of present-day Highway 49 near Buster Boyd Bridge.
Neel's first military experience was in North Carolina Governor Tryon's expedition against the regulators of Alamance County in 1771. Holding the rank of Captain, Neel commanded the Tryon County troops. By 1775 he was a Colonel in command of the militia of both the New Acquisition and Tryon County [therefore serving both North and South Carolina].
When South Carolina declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776, Neel was elected to the First South Carolina Provincial Congress. He spent little time with the Provincial Congress. Instead, he led the militia in what is called either the Cherokee Campaign or the Snow Campaign. The Cherokee Indians were scalping white settlers who were settling on traditional Cherokee hunting grounds. One of those scalped was the wife of Thomas Neel, Jean Spratt. Jean Spratt Neel had long coal-black hair. It is believed that the Cherokees intended to claim her scalp as that of a Catawba Indian, their traditional enemy. Thomas Neel was already in the field at the time of his wife's scalping. Struggling through waist-deep snow, Neel and his men surprised the Cherokee and destroyed many of their towns and villages.
In 1777 and 1778 Neel headed a regiment in the Florida and Georgia Campaigns that operated out of Phillip's Fort in Georgia. His last expedition was the defense of Charleston. Neel was shot through the head and killed in the battle of Stono.
Thomas Neel and Jean Spratt had three sons and four daughters. Daughter Sarah married David Johnston, a Revolutionary soldier with Capt. Jacob Barnett's horse troop. And daughter Mary married Lt. Col. James Hawthorne. Hawthorne fought in several major battles and an unknown number of skirmishes, and was twice wounded during the Revolutionary War. He served under Col. Thomas Neel in the Snow Campaign in 1775, and was Lt. Col. to Col. Neel in that fateful battle at Stono.

All three of Thomas and Jean's sons fought in the Revolution, and like their father, gave their lives for it. Son Andrew rose to the rank of Colonel and was detached by Sumter at Clems Branch as commander of the troops of York and Chester. He afterwards fell in the 1780 battle of Rocky Mount. Andrew's twin Lt. Col. Thomas Neel was killed in 1781. At age 16, youngest son Lt. John Neel was serving in Col. Joseph Hayes' Fifth Regiment when they fell victim to the (literal) butchery of Maj. William Cunningham's Loyalist militia in an ambush at Hayes' Station in 1778. He lies buried next to his father in Bethel Presbyterian Cemetery in York County, South Carolina.