Individuals marked with a red dot are direct ancestors of Mary Jane Thomas
For privacy reasons, Date of Birth and Date of Marriage for persons believed to still be living are not shown.

Hicks, Hoyt {I1055} (b. ABT. 1901, d. ?)

Source: (Birth)
Title: LDS Web Site

Death: --Not Shown--

Death: --Not Shown--

Event: Type: Fact1
Place: of Limestone County Texas.

Death: 17 AUG 1929

Death: 22 JUL 1981

Death: OCT 1885

Death: 29 APR 1916

Death: 10 APR 1890

Death: 1873

Death: 20 JAN 1946

Death: 1882

Death: 13 NOV 1880

Death: 28 JAN 1889

Note: "Tie up overcoats, pick touch-holes, fresh prime, and be ready to FIGHT!"

This quote was said by Ben Cleveland at the Battle of Kings Mountain. He said this as the Americans were going out to fight the British. He said this to prepare his men for the battle. The effect it had was it made the Americans aware of how badly Cleveland wanted to win this battle. The Americans surrounded the British and took six hundred prisoners.

******
http://www.angelfire.com/il/ClevelandFamilyChron/ColBen.html
Deeds of Glory:
A Biography of Colonel Benjamin Cleveland
Part One
By Vikki L. Jeanne Cleveland

No one who knew Benjamin Cleveland in his formative years could have been too surprised that he would eventually earn a nickname like "Terror of the Tories." This future Revolutionary hero and his brothers were considered "a reckless lot" by their neighbors in Orange County, Virginia, and Ben in particular exhibited a raw courage that few his age possessed. Even drunken rowdies bent on destruction could not intimidate him.
"Home Alone" long before Macauley Culkin popularized the concept, Ben was one day visited by a group of hooligans who "playfully" began tossing Cleveland household belongings into a fire. Ben quickly reached for his father's rifle.
"Gentlemen," he said firmly, "do you see this?"
Yes, indeed they did. They also saw the threatening attitude of the young boy before them.
"We'd better be off," one of them wisely announced. "We don't know what this excited child might do."
Born May 26, 1738, to John and Elizabeth Coffey Cleveland, Benjamin Cleveland was raised in Orange County, Virginia, about seven miles from the mouth of Blue Run. Some sources have maintained that Ben was born and lived on the famous Bull Run Creek in Prince William County. However, W.W. Scott in his History of Orange County, Virginia asserts that "the fact of [Ben's] birth in Orange seems incontestable. There are Orange County records showing that Ben's father owned six hundred acres of land in Orange County in 1734. Cleveland's Run, about a mile northeast of Barboursville in Orange County, was named for Ben's family. As Baptists, they were probably members of the old Blue Run Church there."
Unfortunately, youthful exuberance frequently tinctured the reputation of the Cleveland boys. A letter by H.M. Stokes, written in 1843, described the brothers in general and Ben in particular as being "immoral." They always seemed to be losing their money in ill-advised gambling pursuits. Much of their time was spent at the race track, and much of their time at the track was spent fighting. When Ben played cards, his unbeatable strategy was to accuse his opponent of cheating, knock the man down, sweep the pot into his own pocket, and walk away. No one dared to challenge him. Even as a young man, he presented an imposing figure about six feet tall and approaching three hundred pounds. He carried his size well, however, and several who knew him spoke of his "martial bearing," his athleticism, and his "iron constitution." Ben himself proclaimed that his muscular power was limited only by the strength of his bones.
Ben's limited formal education included only the rudiments of "reading, writing, and arithmetic to the rule of three." In truth, Ben possessed an "excellent mind" and a "naturally vigorous intellect," but several sources have taken great pains to mention his inadequate education. John H. Wheeler in his history of North Carolina even mentioned that Ben had a speech impediment that prevented his entering political life. Former South Carolina Governor Benjamin F. Perry, Ben's namesake, disputed such claims. Governor Perry's father had been one of Ben's close friends and neighbors, and the governor himself described ben as "a great man by nature." Because of the absence of schools, academies, and colleges in colonial America, Governor Perry explained, "A scholar in the backwoods of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina was a rare thing. Most Revolutionary patriots in this area were illiterate, and justice was never done to their services and memories as would have been in more literate areas."
In 1758 Ben married Mary Graves, daughter of Joseph Graves. Although Mary was described as having a "weak intellect," she was also "a very amiable young lady who exercised great influence over [Ben] in moralizing his future conduct."
Apparently the transformation was a gradual one. The newlyweds had to settle on Joseph Graves's plantation because Ben's "habits and pursuits" had prevented his accumulating any property of his own. On the other hand, Ben's father-in-law "had a good living consisting of a tolerably good plantation, and a smart bunch of Virginia born negroes, and plenty of other good property." During the harvest season, Ben invited his neighbors to help on Joseph's plantation, rewarding them with plenty of liquor and fiddle music. The day's work usually ended in debauchery.
During the early years of his marriage, Ben fathered three children. However, only two of them, Absalom and John, were by Mary.
Colonel William C. Martin, one of Ben’s close personal friends, wrote the following to noted historian Lyman Draper:
“When young, back in Virginia, Benjamin Cleveland, though married, had an illegitimate daughter [Jemima]. She married a man named Evan Edwards; they moved ‘to the west’ and had several children, and were poor. Cleveland asked [my] father, who knew Edwards, to ask his daughter to come to him and he would help her. I knew her in Virginia but had no idea she was Cleveland’s daughter until he wrote me. I sent word to her and she came from Powell Valley to Tugaloo, where Cleveland was then living. The Indians had killed her husband, and she was in dire circumstances. I went to Cleveland and told him that his daughter was nearby, and Cleveland wept. Said he did not know what to do--that he was afraid of his wife and his son, John. John was a large and terrible man and held a rod of terror over all around him. Cleveland did tell his family though, and they said they would receive the daughter as one of their own, which they did. By then her children had been moved down, and she settled near Cleveland’s home. She was quite a respectable woman, remarried, and did well.”
In an effort to break Ben’s cycle of bad habits and associations, Joseph Graves encouraged moving both himself and an extended Cleveland family westward. In 1765 England had opened new land in the province of North Carolina, and new settlers were needed to push the Indians farther west. In 1769 Joseph Graves, Ben and his family, and Ben’s brother Robert moved to an area called Roaring Creek in what was then Rowan County, North Carolina. Roaring Creek is a northern tributary of the Yadkin River near the foot of the Blue Ridge. Rowan County evolved into Surry County before becoming present-day Wilkes County.
With the assistance of his father-in-law’s servants, Ben started a farm and devoted his attention to stock raising and hunting. He later relocated on the northern bank of the Yadkin. His new plantation was called “Round About” because of the horseshoe shape of the land which was situated in a loop of the Yadkin river that ran “round about” Ben’s place. The name is somewhat prophetic, for later Ben would be known as “All Around About Cleveland” when his weight increased to over four hundred pounds.
Despite his good intentions, Ben had a strong aversion toward “the drudgery of farm life.” He focused his energies on hunting and exploring the wilderness in search of pelts and furs, which he would sell easily in the eager markets of Salem and Salisbury. He also enjoyed hunting deer ar night by torch light, a kind of hunting called “fire hunting.” Daniel Boone, his neighbor on the Yadkin and a fellow horse breaker and huntsman, regaled Ben with stories of the “promised land” in Kentucky and the glories of the long hunt. Images of this hunters’ heaven consumed him, and early in the hunting season of 1770, Ben began his own long hunt with companions Jesse Walton, Edward Rice (sometimes spelled Wryce), Lewis Bond, and William Hightower.
Probably this friendly band was bond for Kentucky, but they were misdirected somewhere along the way. After traveling for over one hundred miles before stopping to take furs and pelts, they camped, according to different reports, either on the Nolichucky River in eastern Tennessee or on the Little Tennessee River in southwestern North Carolina.
Visiting them in this camp one day were apparently friendly Indians, with whom Ben and his friends smoked the inevitable peace pipe before proceeding with their mission’s purpose. However, at the Cumberland Gap, the mountain pass where Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee meet, the hunting party was plundered by a hostile group of Cherokees.
Though Ben offered food and a pipe of peace to the Indians, his hospitality was rejected. The Indian leader furthermore declared that the “goodly amount” of furs and pelts taken by the white men belonged to the Cherokees. After issuing an order to get out of Cherokee country at once, the Indians took all the furs, horses, and rifles--except one old shotgun and a few charges of powder and shot.
The hunters had no choice but to begin their long trek home afoot, followed by Jesse Walton’s faithful dog Toler. A “fortunate shot” from the old gun killed a deer, but the meat did not last long enough. After existing for several days on berries and joints of cane, the men had to kill Toler and use him for meat.
Finally, in a state of near starvation and with nothing to show for their long hunt, Ben and his companions arrived safely in the settlements.
Ben, however, was not one to let bygones be bygones, and in the spring of the following year (1771), with the help of some well-chosen friends, he returned to the place where the Cherokees had robbed him. Big Bear, a friendly Indian chief, furnished him with an escort to visit several towns and assist in recovering Ben’s stolen property.
Although Daniel Boone’s legend has been the one perpetuated throughout history, certainly Ben possessed the same pioneer spirit and fearlessness as Boone. Even before Ben was involved in Revolutionary campaigns against them, Indians respected him for his courage, skill, and determination. Supposedly Ben could track down wild beasts as well as his bloodhounds could. As expert in woodcraft and the art of Indian warfare, he could also scent the red man in the air.
Ben is mentioned as a hunting buddy in Daniel Boone’s “definitive” biography by John Bakeless, but there is no record that he ever went on a long hunt with Daniel. Still, it is possible that Ben did explore into Kentucky some time in 1772-1773. Surely no Indian threat would have deterred him.
Back home in the settlements, Ben was making friends and influencing people through his new vocation: surveying. He was by trade a house carpenter and builder, but surveyors were in great demand in North Carolina as people claimed land and built their homes. So Ben studied the profitable enterprise of surveying. Some researchers have maintained that his studies did not begin until after the war, but more have asserted that Ben was surveying throughout the 1770’s. He had served as a tax collector for the part of Surry County that later became Wilkes, but it was the more favorable associations he made with his surveying that, perhaps, led to his being chosen to serve as the area’s first representative in the legislature (1778) and then the state senate (1779).
Even as the area was prospering, however, there were mounting troubles with the British. By 1774 Ben was becoming excessively outspoken in his denunciations of British policies concerning the colonies. When news of colonial taxation by King George and the Parliament reached the Yadkin Valley, Ben was among the first to resent the threatened tyranny.
North Carolina State Archives Military Troop Returns show a “Field Return of Regiment of Militia for Surry County at a General Muster,” dated June 28, 1774. Listed in this record were Jesse Walton as captain, Benjamin Cleveland as lieutenant, and William Jerrell as ensign along with three sergeants, three corporals, one drummer, and eighty privates who were not listed by name.
By 1775 local tempers were reaching the limits of restraint when neighbors and friends of the Upper Yadkin Valley traveled to Cross Creek (now Fayetteville) to sell their surplus products and to purchase supplies of iron, sugar, salt, and other necessities. Before they were permitted to make these transactions, however, the colonists were compelled to make an oath of allegiance to the king. When Ben heard of this blatant act of tyranny, he swore he would “dislodge the scoundrels” and raised a select party of riflemen to march upon the Loyalists and scatter them.
Ben’s mission continued as he scoured the countryside and captured several Loyalist outlaws, one of whom he executed. The villain in question was a man named Jackson, who had set fire to the home and fully-stocked storehouse of Ransom Sunderland, one of the many Surry County inhabitants who were “devoted friends of American liberty.”
On September 1, 1775, Ben was offered the position of ensign of the North Carolina Line under the command of Colonel Robert Howe, but he declined the honor, preferring to serve with the militia in his own locality.
During this time, Ben was also chairman of the Surry County Committee of Safety, a committee formed by citizens. William Lenoir served as secretary. Surry County citizens on the committee included Joseph Winston, Jesse Walton, John Hamlin, Samuel Freeman, Benjamin Herndon, Charles Lynch, John Armstrong, James Hampton, Richard Goode, George Lash, David Martin, and Charles Waddle. According to historian John H. Wheeler, the resolutions of this committee breathed “a determined resistance to oppression and formed a government simple and effective for the protection of the citizen.”
By the summer of 1776, the British had enticed the Cherokees into open hostilities with the colonists. Fighting had flared in several locations as British agents tried to divert the patriots’ mental and logistical focus. Working as a colonial scout on the western frontier, Ben took his men to Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River, from where they ranged the scope of the frontier in a display of force for the Cherokees. Ben’s activities caused the Indians to have second thoughts about being associated with the British, and the tribes smoked the long pipe of peace with Ben and his friends.
This peace was only temporary, however, and by the autumn months the Indians were agitated again into ravaging the frontier. This time General Griffith Rutherford led a strong force against the Cherokees, and Ben and his men joined the campaign in the Surry Regiment under Colonel Joseph Williams and Major Joseph Winston. William Lenoir, Ben’s lieutenant, frequently spoke of the hardships and privations the troops had to endure in this service. Often low on provisions, the company had few blankets and no tents. The men were dressed in mended clothing made of a crude material derived from the field and forest. They were often harassed on their march by ambush parties, and all shared in the skirmishes and bushwackings of the campaign because there was no official general engagement.
General Rutherford had begun with two thousand men before Ben and his volunteers added to their strength. In South Carolina General Andrew Williamson was pushing toward Indian Territory with a similar force. Although the activities of North Carolina and South Carolina were not coordinated, the combined forces succeeded in complete devastation of practically all Cherokee towns and crops from Sugartown in Lesser Towns to Chota in the Overhills Towns (in what is now Tennessee). Driven back across the mountains where they remained, the defeated Cherokees paid for their continuing association with the British with the Long Island Treaty of the Holston and the Treaty of Dewitt’s Corners in South Carolina.
During the fighting, Ben’s excursions ranged into South Carolina and the Tugaloo Valley. Years later he would say that he had whipped the Indians in the place where he was determined to live.
Ben was promoted to captain November 23, 1776. He also attended the legislature, not as a member but as a citizen using his influence for the division of Surry County and the formation of a new county for the better convenience of the Upper Yadkin settlements. Wilkes County was subsequently formed.
While securing the country around Cape Fear, Ben and his men engaged in the Battle of Moore’s Creek and captured and executed several outlaws while burning many Loyalist towns. “Cleveland’s Bulldogs” were earning Ben a reputation for brutality in partisan warfare characterized by “inhumanity, summary hangings, and mutilation.” On some occasions he would hang Tories by their thumbs until they confessed to British movements--thus creating a local expression “hanging one by his thumbs.” While Ben did resort to the severest measures of punishment againt Tory outrages and maraudings, he still had a commanding influence over many and caused them to abandon their Loyalist associations and unite with the patriots. According to a writer of Ben’s time, “Cleveland was literally all things to all people. By his severities he awed and intimidated not a few, restraining them from lapsing into Tory abominations; by his kindness, forbearance and even tenderness, winning over many to the glorious cause he loved so well.”
Ben’s fiercely loyal mountain men were “untrained but hardy and accurate of fire.” Admirers and countrymen called them “Cleveland’s Heroes” or “Cleveland’s Bulldogs,” but to the British and the Tories they were “Cleveland’s Devils.” According to Ben, each of his men was equal to five ordinary soldiers. Ben summoned them to his side by walking into his elevated Round About yard and sounding a huge hunting horn.
Tory depredations were considered worse than those of the Indians. Though by today’s standards some might think Ben was excessive in his punishment of the Loyalists, the colonists victimized by Tory aggression and brutality realized that Ben was administering “an eye for an eye” justice at a time when there was no dependable centralized means of law enforcement. Many Tories in North Carolina and South Carolina joined the British only for plundering and robbing. They had no political or moral principles and cared nothing for king and country. These Tories particularly enraged Ben.
In 1778 Ben was made colonel of the militia. Despite his reputation for brutal justice (or perhaps because of it!), he was appointed justice of the Wilkes County court and placed at the head of the Commission of Justices. Regarded as one of the most popular leaders of the mountain section of the state, Ben was easily elected to the state’s House of Commons during this year.
Even while Ben was busy with these affairs of county and state, he was active in sending scouting parties into certain mountain regions to break up Tory bands infesting the frontier. One detachment of Cleveland’s Bulldogs caught a Tory desperado named Zachariah Wells and brought him to Hughes Bottoms, about a mile from Round About. Here thirteen-year-old James Gwyn and a colored boy were at work in a cornfield when Ben joined those who had taken Wells prisoner. The band of freedom fighters included Ben’s two sons, his brother Robert, and Lieutenant Elisha Reynolds.
Needing something to hang Wells with, Ben borrowed the plow lines from James Gwyn’s horse. James, innocent of the ways of war, was shocked at so summary an execution and begged his neighbor not to hang the poor fellow who looked so pitiful and was suffering from a former wound.
“Jimmie, my son,” Ben explained gently, “he is a bad man. We must hang all such [damned men].” Captain Robert Cleveland was cursing “at a vigorous rate” as he prepared the wincing, squirming prisoner for execution. Ben was not unaffected by the boy’s naive pleas, and tears flowed down his cheeks as he adjusted the rope around the neck of Zachariah Wells. The big-hearted colonel regretted the necessity of hanging the trembling culprit, especially in front of young Jimmie, but he also knew that the lives of the Yadkin River patriots would be much safer and they would all sleep more peacefully when the country was rid of such vile desperadoes. Wells soon dangled from a convenient tree, and his body was buried in the sand and loam on the bank of the Yadkin.
Wherever Ben travled, he remained vigilant for any glimmer of Tory influence. Once, upon seeing a weedy cornfield, he said to the man standing there, a man named Bishop, “Are you a Tory or a patriot?”
“Sir,” Bishop replied, “I am just a plain farmer.”
“Well, that being the case,” Ben told the plain farmer, “the next time I find so many weeds in this corn, you will be given thirty lashes!”
From this particular episode, we can understand why some of Ben’s neighbors considered him dictatorial. Nevertheless, from then on, the Bishop cornfield was the cleanest anywhere!
Perhaps Ben was despotic in nature, and certainly he was severe on Tories, but his strong patriotic nature preserved the western Carolinas from British and Tory ascendancy. In 1779 his abrupt justice was further demonstrated by his handling of two hoodlums, James Coyle and John Brown, who had terrorized the entire country between Wilkes County, North Carolina, and Ninety-Six, South Carolina. After their spree of rape, murder, robbery, and plundering, they were eventually caught and brought before Ben, who was so incensed he wanted to kill them himself. He thrust his sword at Coyle, but a glancing blow broke the blade. Now even more enraged, Ben had them seized by his men and hanged from the nearest tree. James Harwell, who had housed and protected these hoodlums, were severely beaten by Ben’s men.
Ben and Benjamin Herndon, who was also involved in this justice, were subsequently indicted for murder in the Superior Court of the District of Salisbury, but on November 6, 1779, the North Carolina House of Commons offered a resolution to the governor, who signed it, and Ben and Herndon were pardoned for their actions.
On June 20, 1780, Cleveland’s Bulldogs turned out to crush the Tories at Ramsour’s (sometimes spelled Ramseur’s) Mill. However, they were with the force led by General Rutherford and saw no action, arriving shortly after the Tories’ defeat. In a second engagement, the Bulldogs chased Colonel Bryan’s British forces from the state and secured the region of New River. Again, Tory leaders and outlaws were hanged.
According to Wheeler, Ben was the leader of more than a hundred fights with the Tories. A “perfect athlete” with a “large frame and an iron constitution” that was accustomed to the forest and climbing mountains, Ben was able to endure any fatigue and hardship in his pursuit of Tory desperadoes. According to Governor Perry, Ben was “bold, fearless, and self-willed, full of hope and buoyancy of spirits....He was a stern man and loved justice more than he did mercy. He knew that very often mercy to a criminal was death to an innocent man.”
In the fall of 1780, Ben led 350 Heroes to their most famous moment of the Revolution, the Battle of King’s Mountain, when he learned that British Colonel Patrick Ferguson intended to march into North Carolina.
Mounted columns of Carolinians and Virginians came from the west over the mountains in snow “shoe mouth deep” in response to the threat. These “over-mountain” men had years before established their settlements and their homes in remote regions far and independent from the Royal authority in the eastern colonies. Though the American Revolution had been raging for five years, these men had until now been unthreatened by the war, but Ferguson’s invasion of the South Carolina upcountry changed their perspective.
In his own campaign, Ferguson had succeeded in recruiting several thousand Carolinians of loyal British persuasion. With them he began to hunt down and punish the “rebels” who continued to resist Royal authority. During the summer of 1780, Ferguson marched and counter-marched through the Carolina upcountry as the over-mountain men swept eastward and engaged him or his detachment in fierce little actions of sometimes confused guerrilla warfare.
In August an American Continental Army from the north had suffered a crushing defeat by Lord Cornwallis at Camden, and the over-mountain men had retired home to rest and strengthen their forces, resolving to recross the mountains and go after Ferguson again. While they were at home keeping watch to the east, Cornwallis mounted his invasion of North Carolina. To protect his left flank from guerrilla attack and to enlist still more Loyalists, he ordered Ferguson to move north into western North Carolina before joining the main army at Charlotte.
On the afternoon of October 6, Ferguson reached King’s Mountain, just south of the North Carolina border, where he decided to camp and await the enemy.
King’s Mountain is a rocky, woody, outlying spur of the Blue Ridge Mountains that rises sixty feet above the plain around it. A plateau at its summit runs about six hundred yards long and seventy feet wide at one end and 120 feet at the other end, giving Ferguson a seemingly excellent campsite and defensive position for his 1100 men.
As Ferguson waited to engage the enemy, he must have felt self-assured to the point of cockiness. His position was apparently impenetrable. He was heard to proclaim from his mountain, “This is a position from which God Almighty cannot drive us!” He was supremely confident of himself and his troops. According to Botta, the Italian historian of the Revolution, Ferguson and his men were “the most profligate and the most ferocious description of men....Believing anything admissible with the sanction of their chief, they put everything in their passage to fire and sword.” Ferguson furthermore scorned the prowess of the freedom fighters, referring to them as “back water men.”
He most surely had underestimated his opponent. The atrocious excesses of the British had inflamed the Whigs with the desire for revenge. Without any authority from Congress or the state authorities, the Whigs assembled and demanded that their officers lead them into battle. They had no commissaries or quartermasters, no provisions or baggage wagons. Each man carried his own “wallet,” blanket, and gun. They slept on the ground, drank from streams, and ate parched corn and roasted pumpkins.

Note: http://www.angelfire.com/il/ClevelandFamilyChron/ColBen2.html
Deeds of Glory:
A Biography of Colonel Benjamin Cleveland
Part Two
By Vikki L. Jeanne Cleveland


In September Ben and his 350 Bulldogs had joined Colonel William Campbell, Colonel Isaac Shelby, Colonel John Sevier, and other militia leaders at Quaker Meadows near Catawba River. Since there were so many officers of equal rank (the Battle of King’s Mountain is sometimes called the Battle of Colonels because of this particular military phenomenon), it was agreed that command should rest with the board of colonels. Colonel Campbell was elected officer of the day to execute the board’s decisions. Ben was to be one of the principal officers in the conflict. Most of the united forces of 1600 were afoot, but approximately 700--including Ben--were mounted on the fastest horses and overtook Ferguson at King’s Mountain.

These mounted troops were divided into three division under Ben, Colonel Campbell, and Colonel Lacey, and each division would storm the mountain from a different direction: Lacey from the west, Campbell from the center, and Ben from the east.

Just before the beginning of the battle, Ben addressed his troops in what historian Dr. David Ramsay called “plain unvarnished language” that showed Ben’s good sense and knowledge of human nature. This speech doubtlessly added greatly to the triumph of the American cause by inspiring the courage and patriotism of the over-mountain men:

“My brave fellows! We have beat the Tories and we can beat them again. They are all cowardly. If they had the spirit of men, they would join with their fellow citizens in supporting the independence of their country. When engaged you are not to wait for the word of command from me. I will show you by my example how to fight. I can undertake no more. Every man must consider himself an officer and act from his own judgment. Fire as quick as you can and stand as long as you can. When you can do no better, get behind trees, or retreat; but I beg of you not to run quite off. If we be repulsed, let us make a point to return and renew the fight. Perhaps we may have better luck in the second attempt than in the first. If any of you be scared, such have leave to retire; and they are requested immediately to take themselves off.”

His men followed his suggestions precisely. In fact, details of Ben’s speech proved to be amazingly prophetic. His men hid behind rocks and trees and fired, they were repelled, they rallied and came back to the charge and renewed the fight, and they had better luck in the second attempt.

Previous to the battle, the Whig horsemen approached the mountain and sought out their respective pre-assigned positions. Many of the men threw aside their hats and tied their handkerchiefs around their heads so that limbs and bushes would not hinder their charge up the mountain. Ramsay says that Ben was the first to reach his position and that his men were the first to receive the shock of the enemy’s charge. Other researchers maintain that Ben was delayed by having to cross a marshy place and that Colonel Sevier was the first one to engage the enemy. Either way, Ben was in position on time and in the hottest of the contest.

Sword in hand, he rode to the front of his column and led the ascent, calling for his men to follow. Ferguson’s troops poured “galling fire” into the advancing line, and Ben’s beloved war horse, Roebuck, was hit twice and shot out from under the colonel. Ben was not prone to say, “Go on without me, fellas!” Snatching his flintlock pistols, he dismounted and ran on foot ahead of his men until another horse was brought to him from the rear. (Because of his three-hundred-pound weight, he kept two horses with him so that one could rest while he rode the other.)

By then the patriots were ascending the mountain from all sides. The mountain was ablaze with gunfire, unceasing gunfire amid the rattle and roar of men shouting and officers bellowing words of encouragement to their troops. Above the din there was the shrill whine of the silver whistle Ferguson used to direct his troops.

Eventually the British line wavered and broke in confusion. Ferguson, who had fought desperately, dashed for liberty but was drilled by a dozen bullets. His command immediately surrendered to the patriots. Ferguson’s gray charger ran away when its master fell in battle, but it was soon recaptured and by general consent presented to Ben to compensate for the loss of Roebuck.

When the smoke of battle cleared, the “back water men” whom Ferguson had ridiculed had slain 225 Loyalists, wounded 163, and taken 716 prisoners with the loss to themselves of only twenty-eight killed and sixty-two wounded.

As darkness descended, the aftermath of the battle was cruel and gruesome. One of the freedom fighters wrote that the victors had “to encamp on the ground with the dead and wounded, and pass the night amid groans and lamentations.” Another wrote, “The groans of the wounded and dying on the mountain were truly affecting--begging piteously for a little water; but in the hurry, confusion, and exhaustion of the Whigs these cries, when emanating from the Tories, were little heeded.”

The next morning the sun came out for the first time in several days. Fearing that Cornwallis would soon send a force in pursuit, the Revolutionary troops were eager to begin their march home. The dead were carelessly buried in piles under logs and rocks, the wounded were tended, and the plunder divided. Ben had captured an English drum that he kept and exhibited to friends who visited him years later in the Tugaloo Valley in South Carolina.

Feeling that their work was now complete, many patriots at this point simply walked away from King’s Mountain to return to their homes, but a strong force of patriots remained to march the prisoners north to turn them over to the Continental Army at Hillsborough, North Carolina.

On this journey a number of prisoners were brutally beaten, some even hacked with swords. A week later, when the procession reached the Bickerstaff settlement about fifty miles from King’s Mountain, a committee of Whig colonels appointed themselves as jury to try the “obnoxious” Loyalists. In a trial that lasted throughout the dismal, rainy day, thirty-six Tories were found guilty of “breaking open houses, killing the men, turning the men and women out of doors, and burning the houses.” The trial was concluded after dark. Ben was instrumental in the immediate execution by hanging of nine of the convicted thirty-six.

According to President Theodore Roosevelt in his history of the American Revolution, the Battle of King’s Mountain was the turning point of the war. This British defeat delayed the plans of Cornwallis for three months. During this time, the Continental Army was able to organize a new offensive in the South while Cornwallis began a rapid retreat toward Ninety-Six, now the only point in the interior of South Carolina dominated by British and Tory influence.

In addition to these logistical benefits, the victory generated within the patriots new life and energy. Cornwallis was never able to regain his hold from these rejuvenated freedom fighters. In fact, Ben and his men continued to harass Cornwallis whenever possible by cutting off his foraging parties and making British lives generally miserable. One year after King’s Mountain, Cornwallis was forced to surrender at Yorktown, Virginia.

The pension claim of William Lenoir vividly details Ben’s action at King’s Mountain. To his Heroes, Ben was the supreme hero whose “spirit of adventure and self-reliance, quickness of thought, and rapidity of action in times of emergency and danger” contributed greatly to the American victory. According to one historian, “These men, with their rough ways, helped forge a nation out of the furnace of King’s Mountain.” When Ben returned home and to the General Assembly in February of 1781, his fellow legislators presented him with “an elegant mounted sword,” as were the other commanders of King’s Mountain. A resolution was passed stating that Ben was in readiness to leave the assembly again in defense of his country.

Though King’s Mountain was the crowning glory of Ben’s service in the militia, it by no means marked the end of his Revolutionary adventures. Ben himself became a prisoner in 1781 when he was captured by Tories. His reputation and a one-hundred-guinea reward (about $225) for his head certainly diminished his chances for living through this particular escapade.

There are actually two stories detailing how Ben came to be captured by his Loyalist opponents:

According to one account, Ben was one day visiting in Ashe County with his friends Richard and John Calloway when his presence was betrayed by a local Tory named Joseph Perkins. (There are records existing which show that the Perkins family lived with the stigma of this betrayal for many years.) Perkins sent word to a Tory leader named William Riddle, whose men surrounded the Calloway house and burst in on the occupants. In the blast of gunfire, Richard Calloway was shot in the leg, but John managed to jump out a window and escape into the forest. Ben expected to be executed instantly, but instead he was taken prisoner.

In the meantime, John was running for help from friends assembled at a church meeting he knew was in progress seven miles down the road. Word spread quickly in the settlement. When Ben’s brother Robert heard of Ben’s capture, he assembled a rescue party of six to nine men and set off in search of the colonel.

In the other story connected with this adventure, the rescue party numbered thirty men. Ben had been captured not by any betrayal but by plain ol’ dumb luck as he rode across the Blue Ridge to inspect New River grazing lands. Unfortunately the ride coincided with that of William Riddle, whose military party was taking a Whig to Ninety-Six, where the British were offering big rewards for Whig prisoners. Riddle was smart enough not to accost ben face-to-face. His strategy was to wait until nightfall and steal Ben’s horses, and when Ben pursued, Riddle and his men could ambush the King’s Mountain hero at a place of Riddle’s choosing.

Because Ben scoffed at the idea of traveling with a guard, he had with him this day only two servants and was, therefore, easily taken by the Tories. In the confusion focused around Ben, the servants were able to escape. They ran immediately to brother Robert, who gathered his rescue party of thirty men.

The Tories suspected that someone would pursue them, and they left for Ninety-Six immediately. Satisfied by their own cleverness, they walked down streams to avoid being tracked. Ben had some clever ideas of his own, however, and he secretly turned up stones and broke off twigs to mark the trail.

Robert rode all day and night, and by morning of the second day he had caught up with the Tories. As he surveyed the scene before making his move, he saw his three-hundred-pound brother sitting on a log and laboriously writing on bits of paper. Some accounts claim that a Tory held a cocked pistol to Ben’s head. In any event, Ben was being forced to write out passes for the Tories to use in Whig territory. Because Ben realized that he would be killed as soon as the Tories had their passes, he was taking his time. His lack of education served him well here, for the many mistakes he made--some actual and some faked--bought him extra time.

Finally, amid much hooting and shouting, Robert and his men blazed into the Tory camp. As they fired their guns into Riddle’s men, Ben rolled off his log and tried to shield his bulk behind it. Some of Riddle’s men escaped, but Riddle himself and two others were captured and taken to Mulberry Field Meeting House (later known as Wilkesboro), where they were all hanged from the same limb of a large oak tree. The place where Riddle was captured is part of the mountain range in northern North Carolina which was afterwards known as Riddle’s Knob.

Since Ben was away from home so much during this time, his plantation was frequently left unprotected. “A notorious Tory leader of the Upper Yadkin,” Bill Harrison, “routinely raided Cleveland’s farm, stole his stock, and destroyed his property.” Perhaps in retaliation for all the Tory executions, Harrison captured Ben’s overseer, John Doss, and hanged him.

Soon afterward, Ben’s scouts caught Harrison and took him immediately to the enraged colonel.

“I hope you will not hang me, Colonel,” Harrison said softly. “You know I am a useful man in the neighborhood...and I have heard you curse Fanning and other Loyalists for putting prisoners to death. Where are your principles? Where is your conscience?”

“Where is my conscience?” Ben snapped. “Where are my horses and cattle you have stolen, my barns you have burned--and where is poor Jack Doss?”

Ben then dragged Harrison to the same spot where Doss had been hanged. Tying a vine around the Tory’s neck, Ben called to his men, “Run up the hill, boys, and butt him off the log!”

Even when Ben was away from Round About, his influence was constantly present, as was demonstrated one day when some Whig scouts brought four Tories to the Cleveland plantation and asked Mary Cleveland what to do with them. Without hesitation, she ordered, “Go and hang them to the gate post!” The Tories were hanged. Some sources credit Ben’s son John with ordering the execution, but more sources credit Mary.

Ben’s impatience with injustice was not limited to Tories. A captain in his regiment apprehended a man for stealing stirrups from a saddle and took the thief to Ben, who ordered that the robber’s thumbs be locked in the notch of an arbor fork as the culprit received fifteen lashes. This punishment gave rise to yet another localism inspired by Ben’s activities: “to the notch.”

After the war Ben returned to his beloved Round About, but he was able to remain there only three or four years before he lost his plantation to a “better title.” At that time in North Carolina history, land speculation and claim jumping were rampant in the Yadkin Valley. Anyone who had been away fighting in the war for any length of time could expect to be victimized. Even Daniel Boone encountered problems.

At this time Ben directed his ambitions toward the beautiful land he had seen in the Tugaloo River Valley in South Carolina. In 1785 when he was granted 1050 acres on the Franklin County, GA, side, he began selling off his remaining Wilkes County property. Sometime between 1786 and 1787 he moved his family to their new home in the fork of the Tugaloo River and Chauga Creek in the present-day county of Oconee, South Carolina, then called Pendleton District.

Though results were usually favorable, Ben’s migrations were because of losses he had incurred. He had moved from Virginia to North Carolina to absent himself from the influence of wild companions who had once caused him the loss of one whole harvest, and then he moved this final time, to the Tugaloo Valley, partially because of his loss of Round About.

He added to his new farm by buying land from other Revolutionary grantees. Between 1779 and 1793 he acquired, through grants and purchases, nearly seven thousand acres of land on both sides of the Tugaloo River. Some of this land he kept as part of his “estate,” and some he sold. One record, for example, shows him selling 650 acres on Mill Creek of the Chauga River to a blacksmith named Littleberry Toney (November 29, 1790). All the land retained in his estate was eventually passed on to Ben’s son Absalom, and from Absalom to Absalom’s one son and six daughters. Over the years this large estate has been bought in small portions by local residents and newcomers to the area. Two hundred thirty acres of the most desirable portion of the original estate were purchased in 1969 by Paul and Lucy Wilkerson, who were still living there in 1987. The land is referred to as both Cleveland Plantation and Rivoli Farms.

The site of Ben’s new home was once the Cherokee town of Chauga. A large mound in the bottom land evinced the one-time Cherokee presence. When this site was excavated by the University of Georgia, Carbon 14 dating showed that it had been occupied by mankind as early as 700 A.D. and then had been continually occupied by Indians or white men up to the present.

Ben soon became involved in the affairs of his new state and served for many years as judge of the court of Old Pendleton District along with General Andrew Pickens and Colonel Robert Anderson. Despite his service to the area, Ben was odd man out when Old Pendleton was divided in 1828. The two newly formed counties were named “Anderson” and “Pickens,” and when Pickens was divided yet again in 1868, “Cleveland” was once more passed over as a name in favor of “Oconee.”

As a judge, Ben continued the philosophy he had perpetuated in warfare. Lacking the formal training of a lawyer, he relied on his own keen sense of right and wrong when issuing a legal decision. In truth, he had tremendous contempt for the technicalities of law and all the resulting delays. When lawyers expounded their legalese before his bench, he often fell asleep, sometimes lapsing into snores that interfered with the litigation until one of his associates nudged him awake. Consequently, all the long, prosy legal speeches had little effect on the judgments he rendered. Both on the field of battle and in the court of law, he was considered a fast man with a rope as he administered justice promptly and fairly. Any unfortunate horse thief brought before Ben received the same treatment as the Tories had, usually hanging.

Even the Indians in adjacent areas felt his displeasure. When a small band stole some of Ben’s horses, he went to the headman of the Indian village and demanded the immediate return of his property. His horses were returned at once.

Several years before his death in 1806, Ben became so unwieldy in size that he could not mount his favorite saddle horse. Estimates placed his peak weight somewhere between 450 and 500 pounds. His arms could not meet across his body, and he became an object of curiosity to strangers. Because his obesity was so uncomfortable to him, he did have a quantity of fat physically removed from his body, but his family said the operation only made him appear fatter.

In his final years, he was able to wear only loose-fitting gowns made of light fabric in the summer and heavier material in winter. He was confined to a special chair that was built especially for him and mounted on rollers. By day he sat in it to direct the operation of his farm; by night he slept in it, for his bulk oppressed his breathing whenever he lay down.

Governor Perry’s father often visited Ben on cold mornings and found the colonel wearing only a thin calico morning gown. Though Ben’s legs were purple, he seemed oblivious of the temperature.

“This is a very cold morning, Colonel Cleveland,” Mr. Perry pointed out to his neighbor.

“No, no,” Ben argued, “it is a very fine morning, and I have come out to enjoy the fresh morning air.”

Governor Perry later observed, “In consequence of his enormous size, he was so insensible to the cold as he had been in his younger days to fear.... Colonel Cleveland was one of nature’s great men, great in every respect, great in person, great in heart and great in mind. He was never afraid to take responsibility.”

Ben’s special chair became his death chair, too, when he died in it at his breakfast table in October of 1806. He was sixty-nine years old. His beloved wife, Mary, had predeceased him by ten years, and his younger son John had also died a few years before. Ben joined them now in the family cemetery on his plantation. The grave, for awhile, was lost among the pines growing there, but eventually a marker was placed at the supposed site of the grave. Governor Perry wrote, “I remember visiting, when a boy, the grave of Colonel Benjamin Cleveland on the banks of Tugaloo, in Pendleton District--now Oconee County--and I found it in a neglected state...except, I think, there may have been a granite slab covering it; but the brambles and briars and bushes had grown up all around where lay the great hero of King’s Mountain. Many years afterward in passing through the neighborhood, I inquired of a farmer if Colonel Cleveland’s grave was still neglected, and he replied that it looked like an old hog pen! Someone had built, years before, a square pen around it out of pine saplings and they had rotted down.” Fortunately, the gravesite has since been preserved in a more respectful manner. Ben’s grave is now enclosed by a new rail fence. An American flag decorates the gravesite along with a commemorative plaque presented by the Boy Scouts.

On July 27, 1887, a large monument to Ben was dedicated at Fort Madison in Westminster County, South Carolina, near the Georgia border. Fort Madison is only a community by that name--it was never a military establishment. Because of its militaristic name, however, and its proximity to Ben’s home, many mistakenly believe this monument marks Ben’s final resting place.

Ben’s Tugaloo Valley home was once a large wooden-framed building commanding a “grand panoramic view” of the rivers, hills, and mountains of South Carolina and Georgia. The house later burned although Governor Perry remembered the chimneys still standing. As early as 1874 Colonel Robert A. Thompson recalled that Ben’s house, outhouses, and even the brick lining of his house cellar were gone.

No biography of Benjamin Cleveland would be complete without mentioning his relationship to Oliver Cromwell. Cleveland family genealogists frequently encounter unsubstantiated stories claiming that the American Cleveland line is descended from Cromwell. Though most have dismissed the notion as romantic rumor, Ben seemed to have believed the story of the basis of a book The Life and Adventures of Mr. Cromwell, the Natural Son of Oliver Cromwell, written by the son of a great English beauty named Elizabeth Cleveland.

Elizabeth, the daughter of a palace officer of Hampton Court, attracted the attention of King Charles I. She subsequently won the sympathies of Cromwell when he assumed the reins of government. According to the family rumor, she became Cromwell’s mistress and had a son by him. This son wrote the book that so influenced Colonel Ben Cleveland.

Despite the book’s effect on Ben, serious historians give little credence to the concept. While King Charles was of the ilk to have a mistress or two lying around the castle, Cromwell was far too Puritan to engage in such extra-marital activities. A Cromwell biographer named Noble denounced the book as “too marvelous to be true...the extraordinary adventures recited in this book make it appear to be a fictitious narrative.” Nevertheless, Ben and other Clevelands were convinced enough of the story’s authenticity to include it in the family history, and the name Oliver Cromwell Cleveland shows up frequently in Cleveland genealogy.

Governor Benjamin F. Perry, who included Ben in his Sketches of Eminent Statesmen, maintained, “I have found great difficulty in collecting material for a sketch of Colonel Cleveland’s life and character. The events of his life, like the pine poles which surrounded his grave, have rotted out of the memory of the new generation, and there are few living who know anything about him.” Fortunately, since Governor Perry’s efforts, another historian, Lyman C. Draper, has gathered and recorded an abundance of information on the colonel. As secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society in the mid-nineteenth century, Draper corresponded with hundreds of people (including Governor Perry) in order to collect information for his book King’s Mountain and Its Heroes. Draper was a meticulous researcher who contacted everyone who knew anything about the Clevelands. His manuscript collection is now recorded on thirty rolls of microfilm. Even though only a small portion of Draper’s research concerned the Clevelands, there are still hundreds of letters, memoranda, affidavits, and sketches from Cleveland descendants, neighbors, and military and civilian associates, many dating from the 1840’s.

Draper wrote of Ben, “While it is conceded Cleveland was a rough frontier man, and particularly inimical to thieving and murderous Tories yet he was kind hearted and his sympathies as responsive to misfortune as those of the tenderest woman.”

There seems to be no shortage of glorification for the colonel. In 1855 General John S. Preston said, “Cleveland, so brave and yet so gentle. As a soldier he ranked among the bravest of the brave. A strict disciplinarian, he was so kind and gentle that all his men loved him. The idol of his men, he was the pet aversion and terror of the British and Tories. Stubborn and persistent in defense, he was intrepid and fearless in charge. Deeply imbued with the justice of his cause and burning with patriotic fervor, almost equal to the religious fanaticism of Cromwell, like the illustrious Cromwell he possessed the happy faculty of imparting to his men a part of his own fiery nature and stubborn courage. In battle he was ever superb...”

A few years later, at the dedication ceremony for Ben’s monument at Fort Madison, a speaker said about the colonel, “As a friend he was tried and true. No one ever had occasion to regret he ever trusted Cleveland. As true as steel, and brave as a lion, he never deserted a friend in time of trouble or danger; but when dangers thickened and foes multiplied, he stuck closer than a brother. All his friends had implicit confidence in the integrity of his heart, the valor of his arm, and almost unerring certainty of his judgment. Where he was best known he was best loved, and where that judgment was oftenest tried, it was most religiously trusted.”

This man who had begun his life as a ne-er-do-well in Virginia grew up to be, according to Dr. Betty Linney Waugh, “a larger than life version of the Revolutionary War era.” His deeds of glory laid the foundation for a new nation. While his name may not have the recognition factor of his buddy Daniel Boone, his vision, valor, and vitality contributed as much as Boone’s to the legacy of the United States of America.

Death: BET. 1875 - 1876

Source: (Name)
Title: Genforum Posting

Note: Genforum Posting. www.genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi?VanHorn::2.html

Death: 1849 Burke county, NC

Source: (Name)
Title: Genforum Posting

Note: http://users.erols.com/fmoran/coffey2.html

The first record of Edward Coffey in VA appears in the will of Edward Mosely, dated January 6, 1699 in which he gives to his "servant Ed. Coffe one heifer of 2 years old." On September 10, 1700, Edward Coffey received a judgment from the Mosely estate for his freedom, corn, and clothes. Edward Coffey was probably transported to America during the Williamite Confiscation by Edward Mosely. Edward Coffey is a witness to Thomas Powell's will of Sittingbourne Parish, Essex County, VA. in which Thomas bequeathed 1 shilling to his daughter Ann Coffey.
Edward Coffey (1670, probably in Ireland - 1716, Essex County, VA) lived in St. Ann's Parish, Essex County, VA. In Nov., 1714, Edward Coffey sold part of his land (bought from Augustine Smith) on Occupation Creek to Thomas Warren. His wife, Ann Ester Powell, is a witness to this transaction. Edward died in 1716 and Ann died in 1744. After Edward's death in 1716 his widow, Ann, married Robert Dulin (Dula?) and they had two sons. (Ann Powell was the dau. of Thomas Powell and Mary Place of Dinsdale.)

Essex County, Virginia Records
Deeds & Wills No. 14, Page 669
IN THE NAME OF GOD AMEN. I Edward Coffey being in bedd of sickness but in perfett sense & emmbrey thanks bee to God; I Edward Cofey do bequeath this to bee my Last Will & Testament, -

I leave all my Land to my two Suns John Cofey and Edward Cofey Equall to be divided at Sixten Ears of age if the mother of them be ded otherwayes att Eighten Years of Ages.

I also give one Cowe & her increase to my daughter Marther Cofey att ye Ears of Sixten or at her mothers deth allso one Cowe yerlen to my Sun John Coffey & her increase

All the tenebles Stock & Bock I give to my wife Ann Cofey till her deth but if she marys then every one of my Children to have their parts as they come of age, and after ye Deces of my wife all tenables to be Equall devided between my Six children John, Edward Cofey, Marther Cofey, Ann Cofey, Austes Cofey, Elisabeth Cofey.

As witness my hand & Seall this 14th day of Febry 1715/16

Samel. Edmondson
Themety (mark) Selemon
Edward Cofey (his mark) Cofey

Death: NOV 1716 Elizabeth City, Essex County, VA