Mammy Kate was concerned about Stephen Heard, a patriot militia officer. She was one of his slaves, and he had been sentenced to death.
But Heard cheated death. In 1894 Heard’s great-granddaughter, Bevelle Comer Hampton—who was the wife of Robert Hampton—wrote down the story that has been shared in the family in what she called A Family History:
The British captured Governor Heard and put him in prison in Augusta. Aunt Kate (a servant) heard of it and went to Augusta to see what she could do for him. She washed for the British officers and got them to let her take washing for the prisoners. In this way she saw Grand Papa & found that he was almost starving so she used to carry him a cake of corn bread concealed in her bosom every time she could get into the prison on any pretext.
She [Aunt Kate] was a very large strong woman and Grand Papa was a small man so hearing one day that the British were going to shoot Grand Papa she took her basket and went into the prison as usual for the soiled clothes. Grand Papa got into the basket and the other prisoners packed the clothes around him and helped Aunt Kate put the basket on her head. She then walked boldly out and Grand Papa made good his escape. He offered Aunt Kate her freedom, but she refused to accept it.
Now that’s a story worth remembering, and the family passed it on for generations.
Is it a legend—an unverified story handed down, passed along in families or communities—or is it true? If the story of Aunt Kate’s rescue of Heard is even partially true, if she helped him escape in some way, Stephen Heard owed her his life. Who was she?
Few records exist of Mammy Kate’s life. She was believed to have been from Africa, though no evidence exists of her birthplace. Public records establish that she was married to a man known as Daddy Jack, also one of Heard’s slaves.
Many parts of the Mammy Kate story are a mystery. Stories abound and sometimes conflict. For example, how did she get to the fort, if she actually did? Did she walk? Did she go by horseback? Peggy Galis, a descendant of Stephen Heard, currently living in Georgia, still marvels at the feat. “The idea that Mammy Kate could find Augusta is so remarkable,” says Galis. “She had to go more than 50 miles. Augusta was then the market center for that area and was where people went to sell deerskins or other things, so there’s a chance she had been there, but it is still amazing that she got there at a time when slaves were purposely kept from knowing where they were so they didn’t escape.”
Yet was Heard even in Augusta? Many accounts state that Heard was captured while fighting in the Battle of Kettle Creek in February 1779, taken prisoner, and put in Augusta’s Fort Cornwallis. But as historian Lee Ann Caldwell, director of the Center for the Study of Georgia History at Georgia Regents University, points out, “Augusta was not in British hands after the Battle of Kettle Creek; it had been re-occupied by the Patriots on the same day. Fort Cornwallis was not built until after Augusta was re-taken by the Loyalists over a year later in June 1780.”
Then when was Heard captured? And where was he held? The fact that he was governor of Georgia from May 1780 to August 1781, during the Revolution, would have made him a prize catch.
And why would Mammy Kate have been nearby? “Perhaps Mammy Kate was a camp follower and traveled with the troops,” says Lee Ann Caldwell. “Many wives or servants accompanied soldiers to war to provide services like washing or cooking. Perhaps she accompanied Stephen Heard as he traveled with the local militia. If so, she might have been in the area when he was captured. Most likely he was riding one of his own horses, Lightfoot or Silverheels, when captured, so his horse could have been there as well.”
If she went, how many times did she visit?
One source, Historical Collections of the Joseph Habersham Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, Volume II, from 1902, suggests that she visited Heard often. It reads, “One of his faithful slaves would bring him food—usually an ‘ash cake’—when she came for the prisoner’s washing, to keep him from suffering hunger.”
Another source, The Official History of Elbert County, 1790–1935 by John H. McIntosh, suggests a single visit: “One morning, carrying on her head a large covered basket, she presented herself at the fort and asked the sentry on duty for the privilege of securing her master’s soiled linen. The request was carelessly granted and the guard offered the information that, ‘The damned Rebel would soon be hung.’”
McIntosh’s and Mrs. Hampton’s versions of how Mammy Kate helped Heard escape are very similar, with Kate sneaking him away inside a basket on her head. Mrs. Hampton’s 1894 document doesn’t say what happened next, but according to Historical Collections of the Joseph Habersham Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, Volume II, “She [Aunt Kate] managed to get his war horse ‘Lightfoot,’ from the enemy.” Perhaps he’d been riding Lightfoot when he was captured and the horse was at the fort?
McIntosh gives a different explanation: “The night previous to this remarkable rescue she [Mammy Kate] brought two of Stephen Heard’s fine Arabian horses, Lightfoot and Silverheels, to the outskirts of Augusta and left them in keeping of a trusted friend of her master.”
As McIntosh tells it, after the escape:
While they were traveling homeward her master turned to her and said, “Kate, you have this day saved my life and I shall set you free.”
“Na, Marse Stephen,” she answered, “You may set me free, but I ain’t gwiner set you free!”
After the Revolution, Stephen Heard acknowledged Mammy Kate when he received a land grant of more than 6,000 acres as payment for his military service. On the estate, which was set in a forest of trees, he built a home he called Heardmont and according to the Heard family descendants also provided Mammy Kate and her husband, Daddy Jack, with a small tract of land and a house on the estate. Was it to reward her for the rescue? Or was it for years of loyal service in the household? Lee Ann Caldwell explains, “Paternalistic owners often showed kindnesses to loyal house slaves. An example is when Mrs. Hampton referred to Kate as Aunt Kate in the family history. Terms such as Mammy, Aunt, or Uncle implied a special, favorable status.”
That’s a status that Mammy or Aunt Kate continues to hold. “When I was growing up I had the wonderful experience of having a woman who was a descendant of Mammy Kate care for me when my parents were at work,” says Peggy Galis. “We used to talk about Mammy Kate a lot. She still remembered the house at Heardmont and she told us where Mammy Kate’s cabin was.”
Galis shares another story passed on through the family about another home on the property. “The house my grandmother and my father grew up in and I visited often was the one Stephen Heard built for his son, Thomas Jefferson Heard,” says Galis. “Interestingly, every house that Heard built after the war had an escape route, a secret staircase, a way to get out to the river.” Heard likely wanted a safe exit for his family in case of an attack, since the house was located on the edge of the area that was settled.
Did Mammy or Aunt Kate’s cabin have an escape route? No records about that have surfaced, but another tidbit about Kate was passed on by Mrs. Hampton:
She [Aunt Kate] used to act as a spy for her master. She would go to the enemy’s camp and eavesdrop there taking with her some little thing to sell as a pretext. Once she heard a Tory say—Stephen Heard must have dealings with the devil. He is obliged to have dealings with the devil else how could he always know what we are doing and what we are going to do. She said she could have told them all about that devil.
Perhaps Kate was also a spy.
After the war, Heard married a second time in 1785 to Elizabeth Darden of Virginia, beginning a new life. His first wife, Jane Germany, and their young adopted daughter (a child of Mrs. Heard’s deceased sister) died during the Revolution as “the result of a cold caught one winter night while escaping from her home to a neighboring fort … for protection from Tories and Indians,” wrote Mrs. Hampton in A Family History.
With his new wife, Elizabeth, Heard lived a long life. Together they had five sons and four daughters.
According to the family story, Mammy Kate and Daddy Jack also had nine children, and when Kate died she asked that each of Governor Heard’s children be given one of her own.
When Heard died in November 1815 without a will, his son John Adams Heard, administrator of the estate, filed official papers with the court that listed all of Stephen Heard’s property. Mammy Kate and Daddy Jack—noted as Jack and Cate—are listed as property.
“The story we always heard,” says Peggy Galis, “is that Stephen Heard tried to grant her freedom but she didn’t accept it. Instead he gave her the land and a place to live. It would have been dangerous for her. At some point she may have been re-enslaved. I try to imagine the loyalty that must have been involved.”
One last sentence in Mrs. Hampton’s document about Aunt Kate states, “When Aunt Kate died she requested that her remains be buried at the masters[‘] feet and if not there, she is buried near him.”
Mammy Kate was indeed buried in the cemetery at Heardmont, where Stephen Heard was also buried. Her grave was marked with a marble headstone bearing her name.
Yet historians still doubt the truth of the Mammy Kate rescue. Did she really carry Heard out of the prison in a basket? Or did she aid his escape in another way? Documents and letters from a variety of sources could clarify the facts, but they’ve yet to be found, if they exist at all.
Others continue to honor Mammy Kate despite historians’ doubts. On October 15, 2011, the Georgia Society Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) held a ceremony at the Heardmont Cemetery in Elbert County, Georgia, to honor the service and memory of Revolutionary patriots including not only Stephen Heard and four others but also Mammy Kate. Wreaths along with bronze SAR medallions proclaiming them as patriots were laid upon their gravestones.
Stephen Heard’s grave marker explains, he was rescued by his servant “Mammy Kate.”
Courtesy of Michael Henderson, Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, Retired
The 2011 Congressional Record honors Mammy Kate.
United States Congress
Was Mammy Kate a patriot? During the Revolutionary War a patriot was a person who opposed the British and supported American independence. There were many ways of fighting the British, including spying or rescuing a prisoner. Some people are satisfied that Mammy Kate was a patriot. “She and anyone in his household would have automatically been considered a patriot since Heard, as head of the household was one,” notes Lee Ann Caldwell.
Mammy Kate’s story is an example of how hard it is to discover the facts of the life of a woman who lived 200 years ago, especially one who was enslaved. Many stories of women’s experiences during the American Revolution were often not recorded in letters or documents. Some such records about Mammy Kate may yet be discovered.
“Ceremony to Honor Patriotic Georgia Slave Woman”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
www.ajc.com/news/lifestyles/ceremony-to-honor-patriotic-georgia-slave-woman/nQMgs
The Official History of Elbert County, 1790–1935 by John H. McIntosh (Daughters of the American Revolution, 1940)
“Stephen Heard (1740–1815)”
New Georgia Encyclopedia