When We Were Greers XIV

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Gathering Storm - The Tide of Revolution Sweeps Over the Carolinas...

...and into the mountains and valleys of the Appalachian highlands. Many Cherokee and Shawnee, infuriated by the continued encroachment of American settlers, became allies of the British during the American Revolution. Bottled up by General George Washington outside of New York City, the British turned their forces and energies southward. Under Generals Clinton and Cornwallis, the British invaded Georgia and South Carolina in 1779 and 1780.

Tory sympathizers arose in the Carolinas and in essence a civil war swept the Colonial South as neighbor turned against neighbor. This maelstrom of the late 1770s and early 1780s engulfed my families - the Greers, Wilsons, Wilcoxsons, Osbornes, Boones, Stansberys and Hollimans.

Walter Edgar's excellent work on the 1780 and 1781 conflict in the Carolinas captures the many battles, skirmishes and clashes that involved this writer's ancestral families. Highly recommended reading for those interested in this period of the American Revolution.

In later articles I will write of Luke Stansbery, a great grandfather, who was captured at the fall of Charleston in 1780 and was incarcerated for a year. James Grantson Holliman, my 4th great grandfather on my father's side of the family, served six months in the North Carolina patriot militia. I have written how the Boones and Wilcoxsons held the Kentucky frontier from the British and Shawnee at Boonesborough. Great grandfathers and uncles in the Osborne line did their share of fierce fighting also, which I also will explore later.

For now we concentrate on Benjamin Greer, my generation's fifth great grandfather. We know that in the summer of 1780, he served as a captain in the militia invading and destroying Cherokee villages in eastern Tennessee. Pension requests on file indicate enlisted men served under Capt. Greer that summer and state the month.


Young chiefs, furious that older chiefs had sold so much of Indian hunting grounds, had thrown in their lot with the British and sent their braves to harass the settler's frontier. Benjamin and others, including our Osborne family, responded.

Search and Destroy

During my Vietnam service in the 1960s, the U.S. Army engaged in what were called 'search and destroy' missions, that is invading suspected Vietnamese communist territory and/or villages destroying suspected arms cashes, food and shelters. Similar tactics were adopted in 1780 when North Carolina militiamen led, on at least one occasion by Captain Benjamin Greer in July and August, swept through a portion of what is now East Tennessee, burning villages and destroying crops and livestock.  Ironically the Cherokee had absorbed a considerable portion of Anglo culture even to the extent of raising hogs and cattle.

The Cherokee, men, women and children, generally escaped into the coves and high mountains hiding from and occasionally harassing the superior Patriot forces. After the violent sweep through villages, the Cherokee returned to their destroyed huts and corn crops, and faced a winter of hunger. Many died as a result, and the Indian threat to the East Tennessee, Southern Virginia and Western North Carolina frontier diminished.

The North Carolina militia then turned its attention to the invasion by Lt. General Earl Cornwallis and his officers such as the infamous Col. Baastre Tarleton and Major Patrick Ferguson.

That incursion of the British and uprising by Tory sympathizers led to the pivotal battle in the Southern campaign - the historic Battle of Kings Mountain.



Next posting - the Battle that Turned the Tide of War