Dropped stitches in Tennessee history

by John Allison

May Term 1782. John Sevier a Commissioner of Confiscated property for the year 1781, made return that he sold Two Slaves Confiscated of the estate of Thomas Barker at the price of thirty four Hundred pounds, and that he have the money ready to Return.

Aug. Term 1782. The Court Order that Mrs. Ann Barker wife of Thomas Barker who stands charged with joining the British & was taken at Kings Mountain a prisoner, by the Americans & after that his estate was Confiscated by the County Court of Washington—On her application in behalf of her Husband for Tryal by Jury the same is Accordingly Granted.

These musty old records kept at Jonesboro, stitched together like an old-fashioned copy-book, unbound, “unhonored and unsung,” have slumbered for more than a century. They contain history so sacred, however, that not a mouse or a moth has dared to touch them; the paper is still good and the ink and penmanship clear and legible; and, if properly cared for, they will be as enduring almost as the principles of justice and integrity that guided the men who made them.

Connected with, growing out of and clustering around some entries and orders in these almost forgotten archives of a bygone century, there are stories and traditions which, if they could be unravelled, touched up and then put together again by a skilful and painstaking historian, would thrill with awe, admiration and wonder many of the present generation, and arouse in them sentiments and sympathies far more ennobling and exalting than those aroused by the ephemeral literature of the day. One only of these stories and traditions have I been able to trace and treasure up, for the purpose of giving it to the public at such time as I should think proper.

I have grouped the three entries given above, for the purpose of publishing (for the first time, so far as I know) one of the saddest and most pathetic of the many sad and pathetic stories of the times. The mere reading of these three short entries suggests not only to Tennesseans, but to Americans, a whole history: the Revolutionary War, King’s Mountain, treason, confiscation, imprisonment, wife and children reduced to want, the faithfulness of the wife and her final appeal in person to the court for a trial of her husband by jury. But these entries have their own peculiar and painful history, which will be related briefly, as obtained from sources which would make doubt, on my part at least, undutiful and discrediting to my ancestors.

Thomas Barker came to the Watauga country immediately preceding or just after the formal Declaration of Independence was made by the colonies. He came from either southeastern Virginia or Maryland. He was a large, handsome man, over the average in intelligence. He brought with him a fair library for the times, the best of household and kitchen furniture, some slaves and plenty of live stock and farming utensils. His purpose was to acquire an immense estate in lands, which he was preparing to do when the Revolution broke out in earnest. He was a “tory” from the start, and did not attempt to conceal his views, which were, in brief, that the colonies were too weak to contend successfully with Great Britain; that the latter, with her wealth and facilities, would ultimately crush out all opposition, and the colonies would be reduced in resources and yet subjected to burdens more oppressive than those complained of; or, if they were successful in gaining their independence, they would not be able to agree among themselves upon such form of government as would permanently unite them into one people, offensive and defensive; that no matter what form of government they might adopt for uniting all of the colonies into one whole, they would soon become disaffected and dissolve their relations to each other, thereby becoming a scattered, weak and helpless people for more powerful nations to prey upon and subjugate; and that it was better to yield obedience to and enjoy the protection of the “mother country.”

These views had been expressed by Barker to the court which afterward confiscated his property, as early as the February term, 1779, at which term he was arraigned on a charge of “treason.” Barker also stated to the court that it was not his desire to take sides in the struggle; that he preferred, if let alone, to remain with them and his wife and children, but that, if forced to participate on one side or the other, he should take up arms for the “mother country.” He was a brave man and an honest, and the court knew it; and they disposed of the case—which was styled “State vs Thomas Barker for Treason”—by the following order: “On hearing the facts It is the Opinion of the Court that he the Deft. be discharged.” As the war progressed, however, the feeling of hate and bitterness in the community against “tories” became more and more intense, and Barker finally left his home and joined the British army. He was captured at King’s Mountain by some of the very men who constituted the court to which he had so boldly expressed his views more than a year before. He had been made a captain, and, according to tradition, commanded a company of tories at the battle. He was not only a man of personal courage, but he was a proud, “high-strung” fellow, about twenty-eight or thirty years old; and, at the moment of the surrender of the remnant of Ferguson’s army, he was denouncing in bitter terms the cowardice of his own and other troops.

After the battle of King’s Mountain, the Americans from Virginia and from Washington and Sullivan counties, North Carolina, started home with the prisoners, arms, etc., captured in the battle. On the way, about October 12 to 14, a court martial was held at a point called Bickerstaff’s Old Field, in Rutherford county, North Carolina, and some thirty or more of the prisoners were sentenced to be hanged—some for desertion from the American army, others for horse-stealing, and still others for crimes and outrages perpetrated on the people who were supporting the “common cause of liberty.” None of those so sentenced were regular British soldiers; they were North Carolina tories, some of them from Washington and Sullivan counties. Among the latter were Thomas Barker and James Crawford, who were saved from the ignominious death to which they had been sentenced, and which was actually inflicted on nine or ten of the prisoners, by the intervention of their former friends and neighbors who were then present as soldiers in the commands of Sevier and Shelby. Barker and Crawford knew the men who had captured them, and knew that as a class they were both brave and just. Barker’s bearing, during and after the court martial proceedings, was cool and defiant; he said, with much deliberation, that he was not guilty of a single one of the offences charged against him, and that there were more than a hundred men there who knew him and knew his statement to be true; and he added that, if they stood by and permitted him to be hanged for crimes he was incapable of committing, then he was no judge of men.

This speech infuriated some of the men from Washington and Sullivan counties and Virginia, and they made some demonstrations of instant violence upon the speaker, who stood with a scowl upon his face, and, holding up his open hands, said quietly: “I am unarmed; you can kill me, but you can’t scare me!” His speech, however, had quite a different effect upon those who knew him at home, those who knew his wife, and especially those who knew him to be a brave, truthful, honest man. Col. Charles Roberson, John McNabb, Charles Allison and John Allison,[G] who had participated in the battle of King’s Mountain, interposed with earnestness and emphasis against hanging Barker and Crawford, and they were supported in their opposition by Col. John Sevier and Col. Isaac Shelby, which of course settled it. Barker was brought back to Jonesboro and put in prison, where he had been kept for a little more than a year and ten months, when his noble wife appeared in court in person, and procured the order granting him a trial by jury, given above.

This August term, 1782, was one long talked of and remembered for more reasons than one. It was the term at which a judge—“the Honl. Spruce McCay Esqr.”—presided for the first time; the term at which three horse-thieves had been tried and sentenced to be executed; the term at which tories had been tried and sentenced to imprisonment, and their property confiscated; the term at which some offenders were sentenced to be, and were, whipped at the public whipping-post.[H] Few, very few women would have gone in person before such a court, to demand that a tory be granted a trial by jury; but Mrs. Antoinette Barker, wife of Thomas Barker, walked into court, with two (possibly three) small children with her. Their appearance was sufficient to excite sympathy: their faces were pale and haggard, and their clothing, although neat, was patched and worn. Mrs. Barker was a woman of fine appearance, with a beautiful face and a symmetrical figure, and more than a match for the court in intelligence; but, depicted in every line of her countenance, were the traces of mental anguish and physical suffering. She did not, however, weep, go into hysterics, faint, fall down and be carried out, but she stood up in the presence of that court, in all the magnificence of superior womanhood, and, with the vehement eloquence of despair, pleaded the cause of her husband. All that she said will never be known; some things that she said were handed down from generation to generation. She “used the Declaration of Independence on the court”; she denied that her husband was a traitor; she reminded the justices that he had stated his views to them openly and boldly, that he had never taken the oath of allegiance to the continental cause, and that he had told them plainly that, if forced to a choice, he would go into the British army; that he was her husband, and a kind and good one, and the father of her little, innocent, helpless children; that they had taken all of his property and left his family paupers; that he was then in prison, and had been for nearly two years, in consequence of which his health was altogether gone; that she and her little ones were without a protector, and that her neighbors and former friends had almost wholly forsaken her. Her face, no doubt, was flushed with the hot blood of agony welling up from her heart; possibly her voice grew weak and broke under the stress of her emotion—but this noble woman won her cause. Her application for the trial of her husband by a jury was granted, and the court immediately adjourned. The record shows it, and the adjourning order is signed by Andrew Greer, James Stewart, Charles Roberson, Charles Allison, Thomas Houghton and John McNabb, four of whom at least had participated in the capture of Thomas Barker at King’s Mountain, and had afterward been present at his trial by court martial.