by Denise Weimer
“On the frontier, strength is
beauty and courage is life.” – tag line from
Across Three Autumns, my upcoming novella inspired by the exploits
of Nancy Hart
The final character in my Georgia
Revolutionary War trilogy is Nancy Ann Morgan Hart, believed by most to have
been born in North Carolina’s Yadkin River Valley in the mid-1730s and to have
moved to the Broad River (Elbert County, Georgia) in the early 1770s. With her
husband Benjamin, who became a lieutenant under Col. Elijah Clark, she had six
sons and two daughters. Their one-room pine cabin rested in a crest of a hill
overlooking what became known as Wahatche Creek, its walls covered by antler
hunting trophies and peppered by holes in the chinking to shoot Indians,
embraced by an extensive apple orchard and herb garden Nancy used in her
medicinal cures.
But Nancy was not the expected
meek, traditional Colonial woman. Beauty and grace passed six-foot-tall Nancy
right on by. Pipe-smoking, crossed-eyed, and pock-marked, Nancy was a crack
shot the Indians called “Wahatche” or “War Woman,” and named her creek after
her. Possessing no patience for weak men, she was said to be “a honey of a
patriot but a devil of a wife.”
Hart became the stuff of Georgia
legends during the Revolutionary War. Refusing to leave the “Hornet’s Nest” when
other civilians fled, Nancy provided a prime example of using what she had in
the interest of a cause. During the British occupation of Augusta when Clark
needed information on enemy plans, she was said to have dressed as a man and
pretended to be “addle-pated” to gain confidences in the British camp. On
another occasion, while making soap over the fire, one of her children noticed
an eye peeking in the cabin chinking. Nancy threw lye into the crevice and went
outside to hog tie and take the prisoner to local militia.
Another time, six British
soldiers, irritated with Nancy, who dressed as a sick woman and misdirected
them in their pursuit of a rebel, shot her last turkey and insisted she cook it
for them. Nancy broke out the corn liquor and sent her daughter Sukey to the
swamp ostensibly to get water but really to blow a conch shell to summon her
father and neighbors working in a far field. Meanwhile, Nancy passed the
soldiers’ stacked weapons through a chink in the wall. She got caught on the
third. Nancy leveled the musket she held and warned the men she’d shoot any who
advanced. One made that mistake and was rapidly dispatched. The others froze,
convinced and also quite confused by Nancy’s roving eye as to who her next
target might be. She held the others at bay until help arrived, then insisted
shooting was too good for the interlopers. Legend says the settlers hung the party
of British. In 1912, a railroad grading crew uncovered six skeletons under
three feet of Hart dirt, giving credence to this particular story.
Nancy’s later days had a good
ending. Gov. George Gilmer’s mother testified late in life that Nancy “went to
the house of worship in search of relief.” Cutting the fastening off the door
of the Methodist meeting house, Nancy barged in and stated she’d heard how the
wicked might work out their salvation. “She … became a shouting Christian,
[and] fought the devil as manfully as she had fought the Tories.”
