During the War of the Revolution Kate Barry acted as a voluntary scout for the patriot Whigs of South Carolina, and was so efficient that the patriot bands were seldom surprised by the British. She was the idol of her husband's company of Rangers, any one of whom would have risked his own life to save hers.
After the war ended Major Crawford approached Captain Andrew Barry, and said: "It is your duty to kill Elliott, the Tory who struck Kate Barry one cut with a whip to intimidate her and make her disclose where the patriots were encamped; but if you will not, then I will kill him, for no man shall live who struck Kate Barry." Then eleven men, including Captain Barry and Major Crawford, went out in search of Elliott, whom they found at a neighborhood gathering. So soon as they were seen approaching, Elliott fled into the house, and sought concealment under a bed. The doors were closed, and after parleying with Captain Barry, and his friends, Elliott's friends agreed that Captain Barry alone, but unarmed, might enter the house, and see Elliott, with the promise that Barry would not kill him, which he might easily have done, as Barry is described by Dr. Howe in his "History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina," as a handsome man, six feet and one inch in height and of powerful muscular strength. Barry entered the house, and the doors were again closed, and Elliott came out from under the bed, when Captain Barry at once seized a three-legged stool, with which he struck Elliott to the floor, exclaiming: "I am now satisfied, I will not take his life."
When General Greene, after Gates' defeat at Camden, was placed in command of the Army of the Southern Department, he sent General Morgan into South Carolina to assemble the scattered patriots, preparatory to reclaiming South Carolina, which after Gates' defeat, and Buford's annihilation at the Waxhaws, lay bleeding at the feet of the British Lion. It was then that Kate Barry in her voluntary capacity as scout for General Morgan, of whose command her husband's company of Rangers was a part, hunted up patriot bands and hurried them forward to Morgan. In a short time General Morgan found himself with sufficient force added to his little army of four hundred regulars to give battle to Tarleton at the Cowpens. To hurry up the South Carolina Rangers she swam her horse across rivers, evaded the Tories, and encountered a thousand dangers, but succeeded in recruiting Morgan's little army with sufficient patriotic force to bring off the best fought battle of the Revolution, and at a time when all seemed lost to the patriot cause, and so followed Carolina's redemption.
Who knows but Kate Barry's prayers were answered when Broad River so suddenly rose from a descending freshet, and cut off Cornwallis' pursuing army after the Battle of the Cowpens. The same downflowing freshet happened at Yadkin, Morgan making good his retreat to Grane near Guilford Court House.
Kate Barry was a daughter of Col. Charles Moore, who was born in Scotland in 1727, and who went into Ireland from Scotland with the Duke of Hamilton, his relative, as family tradition says Col. Charles Moore's mother was a Hamilton.
Charles Moore was a college graduate, and a prominent teacher at the time he removed to Carolina, and is described as such in a deed for land now on file of record in North Carolina, but what important part he took in the War of the Revolution is not positively known; further than that his son, Captain Thomas Moore, distinguished himself at Cowpens, and was afterwards a General in the War of 1812. But Col. Charles Moore's six sons-in-law all acted prominent parts on the side of the patriots in the War of the Revolution, viz: Captain Andrew Barry, husband of Margaret Katherine Moore; Col. Jno. Lawson, husband of Alice Moore; Judge Richard Barry, husband of Rosa Moore; Rev. R. M. Cunningham, D. D., husband of Elizabeth Moore; Capt. Robt. Hanna, husband of —— Moore. He was on the staff of General Sumter at the Battle of Blackstock; Matthew Patton, husband of the two last sisters was a noted soldier, but his rank is not known, except that he was a staff officer.
Written by Mary S. Irwin Wood (Mrs. James S. Wood) Regent of Savannah Chapter, a descendent of Captain Andrew Barry and Kate Barry—from records and authenticated family traditions, and read at June meeting of the Savannah Chapter D. A. R. 1913, by her daughter Miss Rosalind Lawson Wood, by request sent to Elijah Clark Chapter D. A. R., Athens, Ga., to be read by Mrs. Augusta Wood DuBose, also a descendant of Kate Barry and her husband, Captain Andrew Barry.
[ART AND ARTISTS OF THE REVOLUTION.]
During the reign of George III, in the town of Boston, with only eighteen thousand inhabitants, there hung in the library of Harvard University a copy of "A Cardinal" by Van Dycke. The New England states were opposed to art as a principle, but showed signs of literary and artistic activity at this time. Exhibitions were unknown, the painters were "traveling artists" who went over the country painting portraits on sign boards, stage coaches, and fire engines, for practice and also a living. John Singleton Copeley, in Boston, was the only American artist who did meritorious work. Before he came under foreign influences, he wielded his brush with great dexterity, "The Death of the Earl of Chatham" in the National Gallery in London, being one of his famous pictures. The grouping of the portrait figures is skillfully arranged. To our art, the portraits he painted in Boston are of importance. The lesson thus taught led us into the interior of the royalist era, with carved furniture, showy curtains, peopled with well-to-do men and women, lavishly robed, that suggests the customs as well as the people of the Revolutionary period. Benjamin West, a contemporary of Copely, had nothing in common with the development of American art. He left at an early age for England, where he climbed the pinnacle of social, if not artistic success. He was a personal friend of the king, was employed as his historical painter, succeeding Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the royal academy. One of his pictures quite noted was "Christ Rejected." "Death on the Pale Horse," the size of the canvas he used was 200 by 264 feet. His daring innovation of dressing the characters showed the costumes of the time and country in which they lived. It was his picturesque personality more than his art that attracts us to-day. In his native town, Philadelphia, it is said the Cherokee Indians taught him the secret of preparing color. This was the first city in the Union where opportunities for art growth and a moderate patronage presented themselves. Charles Wilson Peale, a man rather versatile, also a painter of some merit, established the first "Art Gallery," a museum of historical portraits, in his residence in Philadelphia.