North Carolina - Guilford Courthouse

We took a long drive one day to visit another Revolutionary War battle site: Guilford Courthouse National Military Park in Greensboro, North Carolina.

To put the battle in context, here is a Revolutionary War timeline focusing on the Southern Campaign.

19 Apr 1775	Lexington & Concord MA	start of war
19 Nov 1775	Ninety Six SC	British defeat Patriots
28 Jun 1776	Charleston SC	unsuccessful attack by British
29 Dec 1778	Savannah GA	British capture city
12 May 1780	Charleston SC	British capture city + 5,500 troops
29 May 1780	Waxhaws SC	British brutally defeat Patriots
16 Aug 1780	Camden SC	British defeat Patriots under Gates
19 Aug 1780	Musgrove Mill SC	Patriots defeat British despite odds
7 Oct 1780	Kings Mountain SC	Patriots defeat British + kill Major Ferguson
17 Jan 1781	Cowpens SC	Patriots defeat British
15 Mar 1781	Guilford Courthouse NC
May-Jun 1781	Ninety Six SC	siege – Patriots unable to capture fort
19 Oct 1781	Yorktown VA	British surrender, end of war

We started at the Visitor Center and toured their little museum with its showcases and display boards. Barbara liked comparing the varied powder horns to her simple Revolutionary War powder horn.

Powder horns in the museum

Instead of a topographic light display like we’ve seen at other battlefields, Guilford Courthouse has a computer animated video showing the fairly complicated battle progress. Then we saw a second video showing reenactors, which was based off eyewitness accounts.

We learned that Cornwallis (the British commander) had about 2000 men and Nathanael Greene (the Patriot commander) had about 4500 men: some Continental regulars and some untrained militia.

Leaders depicted on a display board in the museum

Like the strategy used at Cowpens, Greene set up 3 battle lines.

[map from Wikipedia]

He put the militias in the front 2 lines and his Continental troops in the rear. The first lines were supposed to shoot and drop back to the third line, but many on the front lines shot and scattered. The British pushed through the first 2 lines and continued to fight.

In the end the Patriots retreated, leaving the area and their canons to the British. So technically the Brits won, but they paid a heavy toll as Cornwallis lost a quarter of his troops. The park service brochure summed it up this way, “the one who kept the field lost the war.” The loss of troops was another link in the chain of events leading to Cornwallis’ eventual surrender at Yorktown.

After seeing the visitor center, we drove their battlefield tour. This two mile road has 8 tour stops and lots of monuments and “waysides” (explanatory signs). The terrain has changed since the battle, but the waysides helped explain the battle.

Greene monument

wayside on the Third Battle Line

Regulars monument

Guilford Courthouse has a wide array of monuments – some directly related to the battle and some not. At least one monument marking a battle position was later found to be incorrectly located. There are quite a few monuments honoring individuals. The founders of the park have monuments and there is even a monument to the North Carolina signers of the Declaration of Independence who are buried here.

Turner monument

honoring a mom who rode from Maryland to nurse her son

Signers’ monument

We are thankful for these parks that preserve and interpret history.

South Carolina - Kings Mountain National Military Park’s Battlefield Trail

Kings Mountain National Military Park’s 1.5–mile Battlefield Trail walks visitors through the site of the battle.

Recycled rubber covers the paved trail, providing a cushioned walk. Some people use the trail for their daily walk or jog and it’s been fun getting to know some of these regular visitors.

Signs, which we learned are called “waysides,” tell the story of the battle. One day Bill scrubbed all the waysides, which was quite a job.

A number of monuments line the path. This map shows some of the monuments.

Battlefield Trail map showing Patriot militia positions

The Chronicle monument (the left monument in the image below) is the second oldest Revolutionary monument in the country. (Lexington, Massachusetts has the oldest one.) The inscription is quite weathered, so the monument on the right with the same inscription was added later. They commemorate the men in Colonel Chronicle’s militia who died in the battle.

Here Ranger Lamar, holding his carved rifle prop, explains about the marker to a tour group.

The trail starts by skirting the base of the ridge where the Patriots started the battle. They encircled the ridge, trapping the Loyalists on the top of the hill. As the trail starts to climb, a side trail leads to the Hoover monument.

In 1930 Herbert Hoover spoke here commemorating the 150th anniversary of the battle. It was one of the biggest gatherings up to that point with an estimated 75,000 attending. The hillside was clear cut for the event to form a natural amphitheater, but the forest has been growing since. The next year Kings Mountain became a National Park.

As the trail continues climbing, it traverses where the fighting began. When the militias led by Colonel Campbell and Colonel Shelby charged up the hill, the Loyalists were able to temporarily drive them down, but the Patriots eventually took the eastern part of the ridge. Other militias charged up the hill and the fighting continued along the ridge where the trail now goes.

The next monument along the way is the park’s newest – just placed last year – a marker commemorating the black men who fought in the battle.

At the top of the ridge is the Centennial monument placed at the 100th anniversary of the battle by the Kings Mountain Centennial Association. This private organization and the Daughters of the American Revolution maintained the site before the federal government took it over.

A marble plaque on the monument says, “Here the tide of battle turned in favor of the American Colonies.”

As the trail starts to descend, it approaches the tallest monument and the only monument funded by the US government. It marks the place where the battle ended with the surrender of the Loyalists.

In the picture below Ranger Leah leads a guided walk in front of the US Monument. Do you see Bill in the crowd?

engraving on the US Monument

The final stop along the trail is Ferguson’s grave.

Colonel Patrick Ferguson was the only British soldier at this battle from England. His troops consisted primarily of local Loyalist militia plus some Provincials from the Northeast. He had threatened Patriot settlers “with fire and sword” and they were out to get him. He was shot seven times, fell from his horse, and was dragged as his foot caught in the stirrup. He and Virginia Sal, a woman follower, are buried here. This site became a cairn as people put rocks on his grave – a Scottish tradition, but also a symbolic effort to keep his spirit in the grave.

The trail winds back to the Visitor Center.

South Carolina - Kings Mountain National Military Park Visitor Center

Four days per week we volunteer at Kings Mountain National Military Park and the remaining days we rest, catch up, and explore the area. Most of our recent posts covered explorations on our days off, but now we’ll get back to sharing about the park focusing in this post on the Visitor Center.

THE VIDEO

Many National Park visitor centers have videos, which provide an introduction and sometimes some outstanding imagery of the park.

As Kings Mountain is a historical park, its 26-minute video focuses on the history of the battle and is quite informative. It’s a shorter version of an old History Channel episode. As of the writing of this blog, you can watch the entire 44-minute episode on YouTube here.  

THE MUSEUM

Some visitors to Kings Mountain don’t even realize there’s a museum as it’s kind of tucked in the back, but it’s a nice little museum. Google reviews give it a 4.8 out of 5 stars!

Perhaps the most valued item is their Ferguson rifle.

Major Patrick Ferguson, commander of

the Loyalist force at the Battle of Kings Mountain

Earlier in his career Major Patrick Ferguson, the Loyalist commander at the Battle of Kings Mountain, designed a breech-loading rifle, increasing firing speed and accuracy compared to the more commonly used Brown Bess muzzle-loading smoothbore musket. Some of the innovative Ferguson rifles were produced and used in the Battle of Brandywine, but they were expensive and time consuming to produce and were probably not used in the Battle at Kings Mountain. Kings Mountain National Military Park owns one of the six remaining Ferguson rifles on public display. In 1969 the gun was stolen, but it was later recovered purportedly when someone tried to sell it to the Smithsonian. Now the gun lies behind a sophisticated alarm system.

One of the first displays in the museum tells about the life of the overmountain men (the Patriots who came from over the Blue Ridge mountains) – first shining light on the front of a screen to show the outside of a cabin; then lighting up behind the screen to show the inside.

The main room of the museum recreates a forest reminiscent of the Kings Mountain terrain of 1780 when large old growth trees dominated the hillside. Three men could hide behind a tree.

Many museum exhibits are built into the trees to isolate the audio. Each exhibit has displays, words on a screen, and corresponding audio.

There are three exhibits in the main room that are not in trees. One is a topographical map showing the battle using lights. This old display predates the museum, but really helps explain the location of the troops.

old topographical map with lights showing troop movement

The three exhibits use sophisticated speakers that point directly to where one would stand to see each display. When we arrived none of the speakers worked and the topographical map worked only intermittently. Bill diagnosed the problems and solved some of the issues, but two of the relatively new $2000 directional speakers need to be sent back to the manufacturer or replaced with something more reliable. Barbara should have taken a picture of Bill lying on the floor wearing his headlamp trying to make sense of a rat’s nest of wires within the topographic display.

THE BOOKSTORE

The Visitor Center also has a bookstore. It sells souvenirs but also a surprising amount of history books. The woman who runs the store, Wilma, is a delight!

THE PASSPORT STAMP STATION

World travelers carry a passport book and may get the book stamped when they enter a country. The National Park Service copied the idea – they sell National Park “passport” books to collect park stamps and they provide a stamp at each location. Some visitors really get into this (like Barbara) and some even have hundreds of stamps. It’s a fun and easy way to record one’s visit and it’s sometimes the motivator for people to get to National Parks.

Barbara’s National Park Passport Stamp Book

With 417 National Park units, there are lots of parks to explore and stamps to collect!

North Carolina - Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden

Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden in Belmont NC was on Barbara’s list of things to do in the area.

garden entrance with temporary Chinese display

We weren’t sure how much, if anything, would be in bloom in September, but we thought we’d give it a try and we weren’t disappointed. USA Today listed it as one of the nation's top 10 places to "welcome fall with a flourish.” We were surprised by their abundance of blooming things for this time of year both inside and outside.

A building on the property housed the Orchid Conservancy. An employee held an orchid under our nose for us to confirm that it smelled like chocolate and we enjoyed seeing the other creatively displayed orchids and tropical plants.

The garden’s current event is a Chinese Lantern Festival – an evening program with lit up Chinese and animal figures. We missed the festival which was scheduled to begin that evening, but saw all the figures throughout the garden and a stage rehearsal for a Chinese program. It probably looks cool all lit up at night.

roo (Barbara’s trailname) meets roo (a Chinese festival display)

 

Hummingbird feeders hung near a huge tree with reddish flowers. The hummingbirds put on quite a show for us. We don’t remember ever seeing so many in one place.

This 380 acre property lies near the shore of Lake Wylie a large reservoir on the North and South Carolina border. A trail in the back of the garden led to the lake and connects to a Carolina Thread Trail. We had been on a small section of the Carolina Thread Trail previously.

This garden opened less than 20 years ago, but it is well established and maintained.

statue in Myrtle grove

We had a lovely, peaceful day there.

sign on a bench