While taking her husband and sons supplies at the prison in Seventy-Six on July 11, 1780, Jane Thomas overheard a conversation between two Tory women. They were talking about a surprise attack that was planned against a Rebel camp at Cedar Springs for the following night (John Buchanan 112).
Jane knew that Rebel camp well. It was the meeting site for the Spartan Regiment, led now by her son, John. Her reactions quickly became a plan to protect these sixty men. Her horse ride to encourage her imprisoned husband and two sons at Ninety-Six was now a rescue plan for another son.
“Cedar Spring derived its name from a large cedar tree that formerly ornamented the banks of this fine spring, which is about fifty feet in circumference. It has three principal fountains or sources of supply, which force the water from the bowels of the earth, forming a beautiful basin three feet deep” (Lyman Draper 74).
As the opening photograph for Conner Runyon’s “Did the First Cedar Springs Skirmish Really Happen?” in the Journal of the American Revolution is a recent photograph of the beautiful Cedar Spring. The sun-dappled water is an invitation for a picnic, not a war games meeting of citizen soldiers, as it was in July, 1780.
Another sixty-mile ride on horseback was Jane’s plan for the next day. Leaving early in the morning would give her time to not wear the horse out. This determined mother and grandmother knew she could warn her son of the danger before the British attackers arrived (Logan). After a grueling horseback ride, probably bareback, Jane delivered her message and then left for home. She had done her best to alert them and save lives.
She must have been exhausted, but even more grateful, that she had been in the right place and time to hear the Tory plans of attack and be able to intervene for the safety of her family and other friends of liberty.
Colonel Thomas, Jr. quickly laid out a surprise for the British that night. He set his camp fires for the look of a camp asleep. The soldier volunteers rolled up their blankets to appear as a sleeping roll. Silence covered the camp, and then the militia sneaked away. They hid in the woods and waited. Rifles were primed for signs of the enemy.
Before long, around 150 Loyalists quietly jumped off their horses on the outskirts of the Whig camp and quietly made their way toward the dim light of the banked fires.
The hidden, Whig soldiers saw the enemy’s shadows, and the first volley fired. Looking into the dark from the camp, the Tories could see nothing.
Rather than catching snoring rebels rolled up in their blankets, a hidden force of shrill rifles greeted the British. There was a sudden and quick retreat. They ran in panic (Wes Hope 40).
Celebration was in the air, as these Patriots saw their enemy run from them, not toward them. Their resistance and win against Ferguson’s forces was the boost they needed, as did the Back Country Whigs, all because of the warning by Jane Thomas.
For eight years, the lives of the Thomas family were centered on war. Striving for liberty and freedom took over their days and nights. Defending her hearth and home was behind every decision that Jane Thomas made. She was steadfast and dependable; Jane was relentless in preserving her family.
Posted in the Charleston Carolina Gazette was Jane’s obituary, which gives us more clues about her personality and what others knew of this remarkable woman.
DIED, on the 16th of April, in the 91st year of her age, Mrs. Jane Thomas, wife of Col. John Thomas. She was descended from respectable parents of the name of Black, in the state of Pennsylvania, was an useful member of society, and a pious christian of the Presbyterian persuasion, The husband of her youth is left, dove like, to lament his irreparable loss, and though old and decriped, he feels it most sensibly–Her children, grand-children and great- grand children, are very numerous; while they lament their loss, they are consoled with the hope that she is gone to the friend of sinners Jesus Christ. She was a sincere and spirited whig. In the year 1779, when the tories attacked the house of her husband, to get at a magazine kept there, she cooperated with her son and son-in-law in guarding it. While they fired on the assailants, she advanced in front of them, with a sword in her hand and dared them to come on. They were intimidated and retired. She steadily refused to drink any tea after the revolutionary war commenced, saying “it was the blood of some of the poor men who first fell in the war.” She enjoyed good health throughout her long life, lived on a spare diet, with frequent draughts of butter-milk but never took any physic.
It is obvious from these words of respect that Jane Thomas lived out the words from Leviticus inscribed on the Liberty Bell, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof” (25:10).
Huzzah!
Sheila Ingle 