“Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.” Norman Vincent Peale
Several years ago, John and I enjoyed a Moravian Love Feast in Old Salem, NC. I can still taste that sweet, hot, milky coffee and the Moravian sugar cake that was served. It was melt-in-my-mouth delicious! Sharing this time of fellowship with complete strangers, we exchanged smiles and sighs of pleasure.
The Candle Tea is sponsored by the Women’s Fellowship of the Home Moravian Church.
We also sang Christmas carols to the accompaniment of the 1797 Tanneberg organ, viewed the putz/miniature replica of early Salem, and listened to the Christmas story.
As I absorbed this time in the Single Brothers’ House, I was as wide-eyed as any child and walked out of the building looking up to the grandeur of a starry night. Once again, Christmas caught me.
Food brings friends, families, and communities together. Whether it is a holiday meal where many contribute or a shared cup of hot tea with ginger snaps for dipping between two friends, the time is about fellowship and remembrance. In the South, both are vital.
A Moravian Love Feast is a time of spiritual fellowship. Traditional simplicity is the model.
A grace was prayed in unison. “Come, Lord Jesus, our guest to be, And bless these gifts bestowed by Thee. Amen” is the customary Moravian prayer. Hymns were sung, and the choir sang.
Religion and community life blended together on the same path in a Moravian community in early America. Their old style love feasts have stood the test of time.
Doesn’t this sound like a lovely time? If you need a Moravian recipe for sugar cake, they are available. Or you might want to know that Fresh Market stocks these scrumptious squares. And, yes, we had warm Moravian sugar cake for breakfast this morning.
It is the season to celebrate. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6
In a few weeks, we will celebrate Thanksgiving, a national and family holiday in our country. We will gather together for fun, food, and fellowship. But will we be thankful for what we have? Will we count our blessings? Name them one-by-one? Will we serve others? Will we remember the sacrifices of those who settled our country?
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”– John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Knowing nothing about the reality of the Pilgrims’ journey to America or those first years of deprivation and death, it was a fun holiday to celebrate during my younger years. At school, we would make Pilgrim and Indian hats and headpieces, eat vegetable soup and cornbread, and sing loudly, “Come Ye Thankful People Come.”
Growing up in twentieth century South Carolina, I could never have imagined this model of the insides of their ship.
The bravery of this group who was willing to give up all they knew for an unknown destination. It was their desire to worship God as they felt led that pushed them on the Mayflower.
The above painting shows this group of settlers boarding their ship. On September 16, 1620, the Mayflower, no larger than a volleyball court today, sailed from Plymouth, England, bound for the Americas with 102 passengers. Headed for Virginia, storms and navigational errors pushed the Mayflower off course. And it was on November 21, they reached Massachusetts. This was the first permanent European settlement in New England.
The Embarkation of the Pilgrims (1857) by American painter Robert Walter Weir.
The painting below is a rendering of their arrival at Plymouth Rock. The faces are quite solemn and serious, as they look toward a forest and a wilderness.
The colonists began building their town. While houses were being built, the group continued to live on the ship. Many of the colonists fell ill. They were probably suffering from scurvy and pneumonia caused by a lack of shelter in the cold, wet weather. Although the Pilgrims were not starving, their sea-diet was very high in salt, which weakened their bodies on the long journey and during that first winter.
As many as two or three people died each day during their first two months on land. Only 52 people survived the first year in Plymouth. More than half of the heads of households died. Five of the eighteen wives lived through the scourges of pneumonia, tuberculosis, and scurvy.
“…Aboute no one, it began to raine…at night. It did freee &snow …still the cold weather continued…very wet and rainy, with the greatest gusts of wind ever we saw…frost and foule weather hindered us much; this time of the yeare seldom could we worke half the week.”
On March 24, a journal entry sums their situation up: “Dies Elizabeth, the wife of Mr. Edward Winslow. N.B. This month thirteen of our number die. And in three mons past dies halfe our company…Of a hundred persons, scarce fifty remain, the living scarce able to bury the dead.”
What a courageous group of men, women, and children; there are no words to laud their fortitude. During the third week of March, the weakened survivors from the Mayflower rowed ashore to their new homes in New Plimouth in those huts that needed rebuilding.
The earliest houses in Plymouth had thatched roofs, but because they were more likely to catch on fire, the colony eventually passed a law that required new homes be built with plank instead. Most houses had dirt floors, not wooden floors, and each had a prominent fire and chimney area, since this was the only source of heat as well as the only way to cook. Each house would have had its own garden, where vegetables and herbs could be grown. Each family was also assigned a field plot just outside of town, where they could grow corn, beans, peas, wheat, and other crops that required more space to grow, as well as to raise larger livestock.
Still, God’s grace was sufficient. English-speaking Indians named Samoset and Squanto helped the Pilgrims learn how to farm the land and harvest the bay. Squanto lived with the Pilgrims until 1622 when he died. His last request was that Gov. William Bradford would pray that he might go to the Englishman’s God in heaven. Bradford wrote: “Squanto continued with them and was their interpreter, and was a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation. He directed them how to set their corn, where to take fish and to procure other commodities and was also their pilot to bring them to unknown places for their profit, and never left them till he dyed.”
By 1621, passenger Edward Winslow wrote a letter in which he said “we have built seven dwelling-houses, and four for the use of the plantation.” In 1622, the Pilgrims built a fence around the colony for their better defense–the perimeter was nearly half a mile, and the fence was about 8 to 9 feet high.
They could have given up and returned to England. They could have thrown up their hands in despair. But their faith was in God, and they chose to not let the hardships make them bitter. Their trust laid the enduring foundations of our country America, and they were thankful.\A pilgrim is a person who goes on a long journey often with a religious or moral purpose, and especially to a foreign land.
After the Mayflower arrived, the first baby born was a boy. His parents (William and Susannah White) named him Peregrine – a word which means traveling from far away and also means pilgrim. Governor William Bradford wrote, “They knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country; and quieted their spirits.”
This beautiful cradle is believed to have been brought on the Mayflower by William and Susanna White, for the use of Peregrine White, who was born onboard the ship in November 1620 while it was anchored off the tip of Cape Cod. It is on display at the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth.
These few fought, fell, and rose to fight again against wild animals, extreme weather, poor housing, and a starvation diet. Then they intentionally celebrated a day of thanksgiving after a time of such hardship. Long-time chronicler and governor William Bradford described this celebration in 1621 with these words.
They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercising in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck of meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.
“It is therefore recommended . . . for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor . . . .”– November 1, 1777 (adopted by the 13 states as the first official Thanksgiving Proclamation) – Samuel Adams
For more information about our forefathers, look at MayflowerHistory.com.
Tomorrow, there will be a remembrance at the site of the Battle of the Waxhaws. The South Carolina Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, the South Carolina Daughters of the American Revolution, and the South Carolina Children of the American Revolution will honor you and the men who fought with you at that battle.
You were a member of the reinforcements consisting of 380 men, the 3rd Virginia Detachment, under the command of Colonel Abraham Buford that failed to reach the city before Charles Town fell. Cornwallis dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton to pursue and engage you.
As I have been getting more involved in lineage societies over the past twenty years, I have thought more and more about you. Born in one century on November 30, 1761 in Spotsylvania County and dying in the next century on November 8, 1839 in Woodford County, Kentucky, you must have lived through many changes. In The Descendants of Captain Thomas Carter, it states that you and Susannah and you visited in 1809 a new wax museum in Lexington and had your silhouettes cut. That forty mile journey didn’t deter you from visiting this collection.
I am proud of you for fighting for our freedom during the Revolutionary War. It makes sense that you enlisted in the Virginia line, where you were born and raised. When I read your pension record, I saw you served your promised 18 months. You were committed to our independence from England.
It is only 96 miles from where I live in Spartanburg, SC to where you fought in the Battle of the Waxhaws. From what I read, this was a bloody battle, and I am glad you were one of the 53 prisoners. After you escaped, you were able to join the war again and be at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown; that must have been quite the celebration.
Along with the other men under Colonel Abraham Buford in the Virginia Continentals and Virginia Regiment, the normal rules of war weren’t adhered to in this battle. Most people today consider it a slaughter.
I wrote about this battle in a book about Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, the mother of President Andrew Jackson, called Brave Elizabeth. Here is the introduction to the chapter titled “The Fog of War.”
Ordinary sights and sounds of the forest flooded the Camden-Salisbury Road, and the air was filled with darting birds and their songs. A menagerie of spring wildlife made their afternoon excursions. A doe followed by her fawn leapt over the fallen tree. A red-tailed hawk silently swooped toward the uneven red clay to grab an unsuspecting field mouse. Young squirrels easily jumped from limb to limb, and bunnies hopped awkwardly around their mother.
It was Monday, May 29, 1780, when military sounds interrupted this warm and sultry spring day.
First along the road trekked a caravan of supply wagons and field artillery. Some wagons were drawn by four horses and others by two. Strapped down in the covered baggage wagons were medicine chests, tents, and officers’ gear. Foodstuffs were also in covered wagons, and the various barrels of hard- tack, potatoes, corn, and dried and salted beef were tightly packed. In between the casks were iron cooking pots and skillets, tin kettles, axes, and wooden cooking utensils. Another set of wagons carried extra rifles and muskets, sturdy barrels of gunpowder, and lead bricks to make bullets. Two, six-pounder cannons on caissons brought up the rear.
Shouts from the wagoners and the crack of whips encouraged the horses forward.
In the midst of the wagons rode the advanced guard. When a Continental Army force marched, it carried its own supplies. All these accouterments and provisions were essential to the livelihood of the 3rd Virginia Regiment of Colonel Abraham Buford. Since the fall of Charlestown to the British on May 12, his men were the last Continental troops in the South. They had been ordered to retreat to Hillsborough, North Carolina and await orders.
It was barely three o’clock when the military sounds of wagons and horses turned into the sounds of battle and bloodshed.
I wonder if the scene around that dirt road was similar to what I wrote?
One of the memorials to those who fought in this battle is at the site of the common grave.
There is a new one closer to the street that has a list of those Americans who fought in the Battle of the Waxhaws, and your name is there. I was so proud to let those know to be sure your name was there, but I am delighted that my sixth great grandfather, Private Thomas Davis, stood tall during the Revolutionary War.
My grandmother, Lucile Hitt Collins, did an enormous amount of research of our family. She was your fourth great granddaughter, and she savored history, especially family history. Like you, she was a schoolteacher. I also chose this profession and enjoyed my years as an educator. You must have passed down that gene for education.
Christmas is my favorite holiday, and I love it that your parents, James Davis and Mary Elizabeth Carter, were married on Christmas day. She was sixteen, and your father was eighteen.
Two years later, they moved into a large home on the plantation called Broadfield in Spotsylvania. I can picture the interior where you grew up with its great inside chimneys, large rooms, and dormer windows. With 600 acres to choose from, was that brick, story and a half home on a hill perhaps?
I found this sketch you did of the house before you moved to Kentucky. With you and your nine siblings, I guess it was a bit crowded at times. Thank you for taking time to make the sketch to take the memory with you.
With you father dying when you were only four, that must have been a loss to your whole family.
I am glad you kept an account book. In February, 1783, you wrote, “Paid for & brought home for Fred’ks’b’g my wedding clothes – 18.3 pounds. 1 Black Velvet Coat, 1 Green Silk Waistcoast, 1 pr Black Cloath Breeches, 1 pr Silk Stockings and one Hat.” You must have been quite dashing! I am sure your bride, Susannah Hyatt, was impressed.
Since you were the youngest child, your inheritance was not linked to your father’s estate. I wonder where you found the money to buy the 400 acres in Orange County? And why on earth did you decide to leave one of the loveliest parts of Virginia to live in unsettled and untamed Kentucky? Were there some heated discussions between you and Susannah? To leave family and friends for a new home beyond the mountains must have been hard.
But you did leave. Selling most of your household goods, because all had to be carried on horseback. There was no room on the trails for wagons; the trek was six weeks. This tedious journey was around 325 miles.
A warm welcome awaited you, as neighbors from miles around arrived to rear a cabin. The day was appointed, and a multitude of capable and willing hands arrived. This helping newcomers was considered a duty of every able-bodied man.
That little account book must have been important to you, since you continued to write about your business. Lists of the servants you took with you to Kentucky and the new furniture you bought for your home upon arrival are there. There are amazing details, e.g. the dozen silver teaspoons, half a dozen tablespoons, and a small silver ladle you bought on July 2, 1783 to take to Kentucky. The story goes that these were the first silver spoons in the state.
Then you have your book purchases listed, too. The Art of Surveying, Bailes Dictionary,The Surveyor, in 4 Vols., History of Europe, in Vols., Robertson’s History of Scotland,Shakespeare’s Works in 6 Vols, Blackwell’s Classics, in 2 Vols., Malvern Dale, a novel, Common Prayer Book, and Domestic Medicine. (It appears that my love of history and its stories goes back to you!)
When you advertised in the Kentucky Gazette for a job in 1788, you mentioned your qualifications to teach “reading, writing and arithmetic, its various branches, bookkeeping, surveying and navigation, geography or the use of the globes, etc.” Your tutor must have instilled in you a curiosity for many things. Compared to the teaching you did, did you, also, enjoy the land surveys you did on the side?
Amazing that you and Susannah raised thirteen children there on Sinking Creek in Woodford County, and I am glad you received your pension for your service. Your granddaughter Sallie said you always enjoyed company dropping by, was quite the tease, and a good story teller.
I truly wish I could have known you! Would you have caught me around the waist, as you did Grandmother Susanna, and dance me around the room?
Winston Churchill said, “We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”
Thank you for fighting for our country. I am so thankful for your service and your patriotism.
It is the beginning of the New Year, 2024, and it reveals on the calendar 365 unknown days. Some are already marked on our personal datebook as holidays, family and friends’ birthdays, and anniversaries. But we know we will encounter surprises and unknown celebrations.
There will also be plenty of choices to make. Some will be easy decisions, and others may drive us to distraction with their complications. Following the paths of others might seem easier, but the conclusion for us would end in errors and blunders. The resolve to walk the road “less traveled” could be a solitary journey. But if it is the way for us, we can march on it with certitude and resolve.
We chose to attend a commemoration program at the Cowpens Battlefield today. John’s SAR Chapter, the Daniel Morgan NSDAR, and the state SAR, along with the National Park Service, commemorated the 243 anniversary of the Battle of Cowpens today. It was in the twenties, but there was little wind. The large tent with heaters kept us from freezing.
I met a fellow DAR from Hendersonville, NC and another DAR from Lexington, Kentucky. My mother, both her parents, and great grands were born and lived in that quaint North Carolina town. As to Kentucky, my dad was reared on a farm about sixty miles from Lexington. I was thrilled with our three connections. They were both visiting the battlefield today with their husbands, who were SAR members. What a delightful time we had talking about our families and our love for America and its history. All three of our families had served in the military, also.
The leader of the Whigs, those fighting against the English for their freedom, were led by a man named Daniel Morgan.
Daniel Morgan was a penniless, illiterate teenager with nothing but the clothes on his back when he showed up in Winchester, Virginia, evidently escaping a mysterious past that he never discussed with anyone. He found work as a teamster and eventually he saved enough money to buy a team and a wagon of his own. He took the jobs no one else wanted–the most grueling, the most dangerous–and he established a successful trade. Morgan literally brawled and fought his way up the frontier ladder, teaching himself to read and write along the way.
In 1755, while working as a teamster on Braddock’s expedition, Morgan slugged a British officer who had insulted him. For that he was sentenced for 500 lashes–often a death sentence. For the rest of his life Morgan would show his scars to anyone who asked to see them, and to many who didn’t. He always said that he counted the lashes as they were being administered, and there were only 499 of them. “King George still owes me one,” he would say with a laugh.
Morgan was already a legend and a hero when he and his “Flying Army” squared off against Banastre Tarleton on a frosty Carolina morning at a place called Cowpens. There he would score one of the most impressive (and improbable) victories in American military history, nearly annihilating Tarleton’s command, at trifling cost to his own–employing an innovative and daring battle plan that ended with a double envelopment of the British. Of his battle plan, historian John Buchanan says, “This untutored son of the frontier was the only general in the American Revolution, on either side, to produce a significant original tactical thought.” A few days after the battle, Morgan wrote to a friend, “I have given him (Tarleton) a devil of a whipping.”
3026934 The Battle of Cowpens 1781 Daniel Morgan\’s, 1996 (w/c & gouache on paper) by Troiani, Don (b.1949); Private Collection; (add.info.: General Daniel Morgan\’s Continentals rout the British 7th Regiment of Foot.); � Don Troiani; American.
The British historian Charles Stedman, who served under Cornwallis during the campaign, would later write, “Had Lord Cornwallis had with him at the action at Guilford Courthouse those troops that were lost by Colonel Tarleton at the Cowpens, it is not extravagant to suppose that the American colonies might have been reunited to the empire of Great Britain.”
On January 16, 1781, Morgan’s 1800 men deployed with a group of riflemen in front (in trees), followed by militiamen, then more riflemen. The night before the battle, Morgan told his men “Just hold up your heads, boys! Give them three fires and you will be free. Then when you return home, how the old folks will bless you and the girls will kiss you, for your gallant conduct.” The next morning, Tarleton and the British (about 1100 men in all) began marching toward them. As the British approached, the riflemen in front picked off many of them, then fell back and joined the second. Then the militiamen fired off two volleys and fell back to the third line. The British were drawn forward.
As Dr. Christine Swager describes in her book, “Come to the Cowpens,” Daniel Morgan was known as the best horseman, the fastest runner, the fiercest fighter and the strongest wrestler. On a bitter cold day in January 1781, at an upcountry cattle pasture known as “the cow pens,” the cantankerous brigadier general led an army of militiamen, Continental soldiers and cavalry in a stunning defeat of the British.
This victory was a stunning example of military prowess and skilled leadership, the Battle of Cowpens near Chesnee, South Carolina, was a critical American victory in the Revolutionary War. This engagement further weakened British attempts to wrest the southern colonies from American control.
“It is impossible to foresee all the consequences that this unexpected and extraordinary event may produce.” – Report of Lord Cornwallis to Sir Henry Clinton, and he was right.
Huzzah to those men who put their lives on the line for you and me!
Sheila Ingle 