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Re-enactors gear up for 225th anniversary of war marchBy TIM WHITMIREAssociated Press WriterCHARLOTTE - With men and women of the National Guard serving everywhere from New Orleans to Iraq, Alan Bowen believes there’s no better time to be celebrating the Overmountain Victory Trail.In the weeks ahead, Bowen and other Revolutionary War re-enactors will once again retrace the path of the patriot militiamen who mustered in the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina in September 1780 and marched to Kings Mountain, S.C., where they won a victory that turned the tide of the Revolutionary War.“One of our big goals is to ... keep the story alive of these men who didn’t know where they were going or what they were doing,” said Bowen, a resident of Cartersvilie, Ga., who is descended from 10 of those colonial fighters. “It was one of the first true National Guard efforts in the United States.”Bowen is commander for this year’s 228-mile trip from Abingdon, Va., to Kings Mountain, which begins Sept. 24 and is scheduled to arrive at the Kings Mountain National Military Park in time for celebrations of the battle’s 225th anniversary planned for the weekend of Oct. 7-9.About 20 to 30 re-enactors will walk about 80 to 90 milesof the trail in period dress, traveling the rest of the way in cars and stopping in communities all along the route to educate citizens about the role their predecessors played in securing America’s independence.“It’s a chronicle of the American experience,” said Mike Dahl, 56, of Knoxville, Tenn., a retired Tennessee state parks employee and, like Bowen, a leader in the Overmountain Victory Trail Association. “What those fellows did, they were all untrained soldiers, they were all volunteer militiamen who went up against each other, laying their philosophies and dreams on the line. That day in Kings Mountain, the dream of independence prevailed.”Celebrations commemorating the Piedmont patriots who marched a separate, eastern branch of the trail from Wilkes and Surry counties in North Carolina, joining the campaign at Morganton, are being held this weekend in Elkin. Other ceremonies and festivals will occur as marchers make their way toward Kings Mountain.The patriot militias assembled in late September 1780, responding to British Maj. Patrick Ferguson's demand that they pledge allegiance to the crown. With the British attempting to bring their southern colonies under control and put down the fight for independence, Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis had charged Ferguson with gathering a militia of colonists loyal to Britain. That summer, Ferguson gathered a force of about 1,000 men from the Carolinas.But Ferguson’s demand was met with anger in the mountains, where the earliest Appalachian settlers possessed the independent, frontier mentality that characterizes the region to this day.The Washington County, Va., militia mustered in Abingdon, in the western partof that state. With most of the men on horseback, they traveled through present-day Tennessee, meeting up with militias at Sycamore Shoals, near present day Elizabeth-ton, Tenn.Continuing south through Western North Carolina, they were joined at Morganton by patriots from Wilkes and Surry county and continued south.By Oct. 7, the Overmountain Men had been joined by other patriot forces from the Carolina plains and Georgia. The combined force surrounded Ferguson’s army of 1,100 loyalist militia and red-coated provincials, who were camped atop Kings Mountain and attacked uphill. On their third charge, they routed the loyalists and killed Ferguson.The victory was a turning point in the war. Cornwallis retreated to winter quarters after Ferguson’s death and the following year saw the patriots seize military control of the Carolinas in a series of engagements. In October, a retreating Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown, Va., ending the war.Isaac Shelby and John Sevier, both leaders in the Overmountain effort, went on to become the first governors of Kentucky and Tennessee, respectively. And Overmountain descendants remain prominent in national affairs to this day — including U.S. Sen. I,amar Alexander, D-Tenn., and President George W. Bush.Last year, Alexander presented Bush with a hand-carved wooden bust of his seventh-generation ancestor, Jonathan “James” Weir, who served in Col. William CampThe Associated PressRe-enactors fire their rifles as they take part in the dedication of a section of the Overmountain Victory Trail on the Burke-McDowell county lines near Marion, in the fall of 2005, Revolutionary War re-enactors will once again retrace the path of the patriot militiamen who mustered in the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina in September 1780 and marched to Kings Mountain, S.C., where they won a victory that turned the tide of the Revolutionary War.bell’s Washington County, Va., militia.This year, trail association leaders plan to present Alexander with a bust of his ancestor, John Alexander, in a ceremony Sept. 25 at Sycamore Shoals State Park in Tennessee.Both busts were carved from wood taken from the Pemberton Oak, a 500-year old tree near the Virginia-Tennessee border that was the muster site of one the Overmountain militias and which fell in 2002.Re-enactors began retracing the steps of the Overmountain Men in 1975, duringheightened interest in the nation’s bicentennial. In 1980, President Carter signed legislation making the Overmountain Victory Trail a national historic trail.Paul Carson, who administers the trail for the NationalPark Service, noted that the trail’s existence depends on community support, since no land is owned in the name of the trail itself.“People, 1 think, feel closer to this trail and ‘their national park’ than they would, say, to a big park that was part of the National Park Service.Much of the trail that the Overmountain Men followed225 autumns ago has been lost to modern development and roads. A Wal-Mart store now stands on the site in Mor ganton where the patriots made their camp.But Dahl estimates about 40 miles of original“roadbed” trail remains — sections that are his favorite part of the trip he has made every year since 1978.«r *“We’re in the woods,there’s no sign of modern development and we truly are following the footsteps of the Overmountain Men,” he said. “Those remnants arethe places where the story is most grounded.”
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The Free Press
Kinston, North Carolina, US
Sun, Sep 18, 2005
Page 29
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