In Elbert County, Georgia, there is a small stream named War Woman’s Creek, a name that keeps alive the memory of Nancy Hart, a legendary Amazon warrior of the frontier. Some would argue that the Nancy Hart story is primarily legend because nothing about her exploits appeared in print until fifty years after the Revolution. This time lapse certainly would allow for imagination to color the memories of those who knew Nancy Hart, but beginning in the 1830s, sound historical research that has not been contradicted laid a basis of fact about Nancy.
Nancy Morgan was born about 1735 on the Pennsylvania frontier, and her family, like so many other frontier families, followed the wall of the Appalachian range of mountains south to the Carolinas. There she married Benjamin Hart. By 1771 they had moved across the Broad River into Georgia. By this time the couple was well on their way to having eight children, all of the family living in a one-room cabin with a loft in which the children slept.
Often legends depict all frontier women as beautiful, but life on the frontier was hard, and Nancy’s face and figure showed the effects of a difficult life that included many hours of hard work every day, as well as bearing a large number of children. A contemporary described her as “cross-eyed, with a broad, angular mouth, ungainly in figure and rude in speech, standing about 6 feet in height and rather muscular.” Nancy’s speech was called “rude” in the polite euphemism of the eighteenth century; today, it would be called crude or vulgar. Nancy, by all accounts, could curse like a mule skinner. Despite being cross-eyed, she was a good shot and contributed to the family larder by hunting alongside her husband.
A BRITISH SOLDIER had to complete seventeen distinct steps to load and fire one shot from his musket.
When the Revolution began, Benjamin became an officer in the Georgia militia. For the first three years of its course, the war was fought primarily in New England and the mid-Atlantic states, but beginning in 1778 the war moved south. The British thought they might split off a section of the colonies and keep them under Royal control, even if they were to lose New England. The presence in the southern colonies of a large number of Loyalists, or Tories as they were called by their Patriot neighbors, supported British hopes for success. By 1780 the situation of the Patriots was becoming severe. The British had captured Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, forcing the only large Patriot army in the south to surrender. The victorious Royal army then moved inland toward the frontier, sweeping west and northwest, hoping to wipe out all support for the cause of independence. These successes encouraged the Tories and persuaded many fence-sitters to go over to the British side. So many people came flocking to the Royal standard that, at times, there were more Americans fighting against independence than there were fighting for it. Under these circumstances the war in the south became a bitter struggle between former friends, neighbors, and even relatives. In many ways the War for Independence had become a civil war. The Hart family was in the middle of this sort of conflict.
While her husband led the Patriot militia from their area into the field to fight, Nancy tried to help the cause by going on a mission to gain desperately needed information about the British plans. Nancy took on the role of a half-wit peddler and entered the British lines at Augusta, Georgia, selling pies. She was so convincing a half-wit that no one paid her any attention, and she gathered the desired intelligence.
Even when her husband was away, the Hart cabin was open to Patriot scouts and spies, who always found Nancy ready to offer a meal, a roof over their heads, and a corn-shuck mattress on the loft floor. This sort of activity did not escape the notice of the British and their Tory allies. In 1781 six of the Tories paid Nancy a fatal call.
Hoping to disrupt the Patriot militia, the Tories made a raid out of Augusta into the neighborhood where the Hart family lived. Some militia members were killed, and others escaped into the woods. In the late afternoon the Tory party reached the Hart cabin. Benjamin and the older boys were still working in the cornfields, so only Nancy and the girls were at home.
Riding into the yard, the raiding party demanded food. When Nancy argued that the family barely had enough to feed themselves, the raiders shot a turkey that was standing in the barnyard and ordered her to cook that. Cursing, Nancy called her oldest daughter and loudly told her to go to the spring for more water. Quietly, she told the child to go to the field and warn her father and brothers so they could gather some of the neighbors. Nancy, of course, worked as slowly as she could to give the men time to gather.
While waiting for the turkey to roast, the Tory raiders began to relax with a jug of homemade whiskey, a commodity found in almost every frontier cabin. As the level of the liquid in the jug went down so did the level of alertness displayed by the men. While moving about the cabin preparing food, Nancy began to slip their guns out the window, where another of her children took them. Several of the weapons had been spirited away when one of the Tories saw Nancy with his musket in her hands. He shouted a warning to the others and Nancy, unhesitating, shot him through the heart. Dropping the empty musket, she caught up another and put another raider on the floor. Quickly, another weapon was in her hands.
“Stay still or you are all dead men,” she said. There were more men on their feet than there were muskets still in the room, but no one wanted to find out who would be left standing after the last shot had been fired. The standoff ended when Benjamin and several neighbors arrived.
The discussion of what to do with the prisoners ended when Nancy gruffly said, “Hang them.” Within a few minutes all the surviving Tories were swinging at the end of a rope, victims of the rough justice often meted out on the frontier.
In the 1950s a rail line was being built through the area once occupied by the Hart cabin. Archaeologists excavating the site in advance of the construction crew were surprised to find human bones. At the conclusion of their work, they had recovered parts of six skeletons. There had been six members of the raiding party. Nancy Hart truly deserves her reputation as “The Georgia War Woman.”