Reenactors portraying backwoods patriots have been telling local schoolchildren how volunteers from around here won a major Revolutionary War battle in South Carolina.

Members of the Nolichucky Settlements chapter of the Overmountain Victory Trail Association have been speaking to county fourth- and fifth-graders during their history classes.

Steve Ricker, Steve Alexander and Jerry Mustin spoke at Doak and DeBusk schools on Monday, at Nolichucky and Camp Creek schools on Tuesday, and at Mosheim school on Wednesday.

"This is a very important story to us," Ricker said Wednesday at Mosheim.

Those who have heard the story know that it ends in what President Theodore Roosevelt called "a brilliant victory" that "marked the turning point of the American Revolution."

But Ricker knew better than to spoil a good story that the children had never heard by giving away the ending. He started at the beginning.

In the early 1700s, he said, "all this land" in East Tennessee was that of the Cherokees. But people from Virginia began settling along the Holston and Watauga rivers, "and even along the Nolichucky" river in Greene County.

A man named Jacob Brown met with several Cherokee chiefs, Ricker said, and "bought a huge chunk of land" from them. After that, "settlers starting coming in" from Virginia, and the land where the students now live, he said, became known as the Nolichucky Settlement.

The Cherokees didn't bother the settlers for the most part, because they had paid for the land, Ricker said, but something else was also going on.

The Revolutionary War had begun in the north, Mustin said. While George Washington was fighting the British in the northern colonies, England sent an army on ships and captured Charleston, S.C.

The British planned to raise an army of "loyalists" in South Carolina, and march north to trap Gen. Washington's army.

The British captured what there was of the Continental Army at Charleston, and sent them to Barbados on prison ships. They fought another American army led by Gen. (Horatio) Gates, and also sent them to Barbados as prisoners, Mustin said.

That meant there were no more "continental" or American armies left to fight the British in the South. So the British began gathering troops for a sweep north to fight Washington.

"That was their great plan. England was a superpower" at the time, Ricker said. "Old King George ruled the world," he said, but the people who lived over the mountains from the coast, that is, around here, "wanted no part of King George."
Ricker drew gasps of astonishment when he said that the king's rule allowed British army soldiers, "if they wanted to," to come into an American's house and make the American sleep on the floor while the soldier slept in their bed.

The overmountain people, "maybe some of your ancestors," were independent types, as are most people who live around here today, and didn't like such treatment, Ricker said. "They didn't want to fool with any king," he said, or to pay taxes to a king who was no help to them.

Ricker brought a teacher, Mary Ann Tarlton, to the stage with him and said that most people were so outraged that they would spit when someone said "King George." Tarlton, a good sport, managed to do a convincing job of portraying this, as the children laughed with glee, and leaned forward to listen to what Ricker would say next.

General Patrick Ferguson, who served under the British General (Charles) Cornwallis, was given the task of raising a loyalist army.

Most loyalists were wealthy, Ricker said, and depended on British control to protect their money, land or position, so they joined the loyalist band.

Ricker, Mustin and Alexander chose students from the audience and had them stand in for key players in the battle on the American side.

John Sevier "was brave and strong," Ricker said. "Everybody respected him. He was a good man." He chose a slender fourth-grader to stand in as Sevier, who headed the Nolichucky settlers.

Isaac Shelby was well respected along the Holston River, north of here, and William Campbell was well respected in southwest Virginia.

Col. Ferguson sent a message to the people living on this side of the mountain, Ricker said, and everybody around here heard about it.

Ferguson said that if the overmountain people did not pledge allegiance to the King and lay down their arms, he would march across the mountains, hang their leaders, burn their homes and "Lay waste to their country with fire and sword," Ricker said.

Outraged overmountain people began to volunteer for the local militia. Shelby raised 240, Sevier also raised 240, and Campbell raised 400 men. They sent messages to each other, and Ricker had the children portraying each leader to call friends from the audience to come and stand with them.

Then, the leaders chose messengers from among their friends and sent messages to the other leaders, telling them to assemble in September at Sycamore Shoals, at Fort Watauga, in what is now Elizabethton.

When they gathered there, Ricker said, the men learned that the British had sent agents to stir up the Cherokees to fight the settlers. So, "the first (military)draft in this country" took place.

The men gathered at Sycamore Shoals counted off, and every seventh man was "drafted" to remain home "to protect women and kids" from the Cherokees, he said.

The others set out on Sevier's birthday, and crossed Roan Mountain in ankle-deep snow. They camped at Shelving Rock, and the next morning, two of Sevier's men were missing. Those men deserted and went ahead to warn Ferguson and the British, Ricker said.

The Americans were told that Ferguson was camped at Gilberton, but when they got there, he and his army had gone.

By the time the overmountain Americans got to Cowpens, S.C., they were exhausted and hungry, and so were their horses.

The men voted to put Col. Campbell in charge, and on Oct. 7, 1780, set out toward Kings Mountain, where they had been told Ferguson was camped.

Campbell led the Virginians in the first attack, and the Virginians lost the most men, he said. "Twenty-eight patriots never came back" from Kings Mountain.

The British drove the Americans back three times, he said. "But they were determined, and kept saying, 'We will not fail,' and the fourth time, they took it."

Ferguson used his sword to cut down white flags of surrender whenever a British soldier raised one, Ricker said, but was finally shot "by a man in his 60s, Robert Young," using a rifle he had named "Sweet Lips," the same nickname that Young called his wife.

The battle lasted an hour and 10 minutes, Ricker said, and an estimated 20,000 shots were fired.

Once it was over, the overmountain men "came home, and never came together as an army again," Ricker said.

When Cornwallis heard about Kings Mountain, he retreated north.

"Nine-hundred starved, exhausted volunteers had stopped and forced the retreat of the most powerful army in the world," Ricker said.

They came home and planted crops the next spring, he said, but they also planted "the seed of freedom, and of independence."

The battle of Kings Mountain "tells us who we are, as Americans, as people," Ricker said.

Whenever there is a threat, he said, Americans will "rise up with the attitude of the people at Kings Mountain, and we will not fail."

In 1975, another group of reenactors, "not us," gathered at Sycamore Shoals and walked the same route to Kings Mountain, and not too many years later, Congress designated the trail that they followed as a national historic trail, now called the Overmountain Victory Trail.

Last year, he said, the Nolichucky Settlement chapter told its story to 7,000 people, and this year it will tell the story to 10,000.

Ricker said they plan to bring the story of the Nolichucky Settlement to school children and adults in Greene County every year.

In the meantime, he said, they plan to continue their research to find the route that John Sevier used to lead his men from Greene County to Sycamore Shoals.

"We're going to find Sevier's original route from Greene County to Fort Watauga," Ricker said, and then ask Congress to add that route to the Overmountain Victory Trail. "That is our goal," he said.

After showing and talking about his flintlock rifle and other equipment, Ricker said, "We want to thank you guys for letting us tell the story." Then he mentioned that Sevier went on to fight in 30 more battles and become the first governor of Tennessee.
The children applauded and cheered for what seemed like a full minute for the three reenactors, who had told them a bit of their own history in a way they could understand and appreciate.