VII.

ANN HAYNES.

It is mentioned in “The Women of the American Revolution,”[22] that on the approach of Cornwallis to Charlotte, the family of Mr. Brown sought refuge at the house of James Haynes, who lived upon the road leading north of Cowan’s Ford on the Catawba River. While they remained here, the British in pursuit of Morgan stopped at the house, plundered it, and made the owner a prisoner. Mrs. Haynes, despoiled of everything in the way of provision, herself conducted family worship that night, and praying for the restoration of her captive husband, entreated earnestly the interposition of Providence to protect the right. This pious and exemplary matron, whose heart bled for the woes of her oppressed country, and who encouraged her sons to struggle bravely in its defence, was little aware of the extent of the beneficent influence her noble character was to exercise on succeeding generations. The death-bed gift she received from her father—a copy of the Westminster Confession of Faith printed at Edinburgh in 1707—was bequeathed by her as sacredly to her son, John Haynes, and is kept as a venerated relic in his family. Eight of the descendants of Mrs. Haynes are now ministers in the Presbyterian church, devoted to the exposition and extension of the true and simple doctrines of the gospel, while others are engaged in the same good work in other denominations—all carrying out and exemplifying the sterling principles derived from their independent ancestors of the era of Cromwell’s Protectorate.

One of Mrs. Haynes’ descendants has favored me with some notices of the matron and her family, from the recollections of her widowed daughter-in-law, Margaret Haynes, who was for some years a resident of Cornersville, in Tennessee. Her maiden name was Ann Huggins. She was the daughter of John Huggins, a Scotch Presbyterian, who emigrated from the north of Ireland to America about 1730. She married James Haynes about 1748. In a catalogue of the Pioneer Women of the West, her name may well find a place. After her marriage, she settled upon the verge of civilization, in the county of Dauphin, Pennsylvania, where she was exposed to the frontier troubles of that colony, but stronger attractions soon drew her family to the South.

In 1752, James Haynes and two brothers, and many kinsmen with their families, ventured out to the then Far West, in the valley of the Catawba, in the colony of North Carolina. Here, upon the very borders of the hostile Cherokees and Catawbas, they established themselves, building a fort as a defence against Indian incursions, and maintained their position by the strength of their arms. For several years, cooped up within the limits of a frontier station, they courageously opposed the marauding parties of the hostile tribes in their neighborhood. It was in this year that the settlement of the upper country, both of North and South Carolina, began. At that time the frontiers of Pennsylvania were east of the mountains; and Fort Duquesne was a French trading post. The settlements in Virginia were still confined to the Atlantic slope, and it was several years later, when Col. Bird of the British army, advanced into the wilderness, and established Fort Chissel, as a protection to the advancing settlements. Still later, Gov. Dobbs, of North Carolina, succeeded in establishing Fort Loudon, in the midst of the Cherokee nation. Notwithstanding its exposed situation, the settlement grew rapidly, so that in a few years the entire valley of the Catawba was occupied. At this time there were so many buffaloes in this region, that a good hunter could easily kill enough in a few days, to supply his family for the year. Wild turkeys, bears, deer, wolves, and panthers, were also abundant. Every little mountain stream abounded with otters, beavers, and musk-rats. Each pioneer could raise as many head of cattle as he thought proper; the profusion of canes and grasses, rendering stock-raising so easy, that the means of plentiful living was almost to be had without labor. A few skins usually sufficed to purchase upon the seaboard all the necessary supplies of iron, salt, etc., for the year.

This kind of life, requiring the daily use of the rifle, and much exercise on horseback, and exposure to the open air in the woods, made these hardy men the best of soldiers, and enabled them to cope with the wild warriors of the savage tribes who dwelt on their borders. The axe, and the rifle, and the horse, were their constant companions. Each settler sought a home near some clear spring or stream, convenient to the range and susceptible of defence against the Indians. In such a settlement the means of education were limited, and but for the religious zeal and pious labors of a few educated ministers who cast their fortunes with the colonists, would have been unattainable. The Rev. Hezekiah Balch, afterwards a signer of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, was one of them.

In all the trials and disorders of the transition state of society peculiar to the frontiers of the West, these pioneers never forgot the principles, nor gave up the practice of those Christian virtues which they had received from their ancestors. Here, in the midst of the solitudes of their deep pine forests, they reared their sons and daughters in the fear of God and in the love of liberty, and when the storm of civil war burst forth, and they were called upon to sustain the cause of an oppressed people, they did not hesitate to send their sons forth to battle for “the right.”

An aged citizen of Marshall County, Tennessee, often described the appearance of his own father and James Haynes, both prisoners in the hands of the British the night after Gen. Davidson’s death at Cowan’s Ford. He saw these aged men and many other prisoners driven like sheep into a corn-crib, the door of which was filled with rails, and a sentinel placed, over it; and thus without blanket or fire, they passed a long winter night in 1781.

The venerable Mrs. Haynes survived her husband but a short time. True to the principles of her faith, upon her dying bed she gave to each of her children her parting words of advice with one of the religious books contained in her library. To her son John, she gave the Westminster Confession of Faith; to another, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; to a third, Flavel, etc., works usually found in that day in the library of every Christian. She died about the year 1790.

Her husband was no less stern and inflexible in his religious principles. When the question of the introduction of the new version of the Psalms was agitated in the Church at Centre Meeting-House, after much debate, it was put to the vote, and Haynes was left alone as the advocate of the old version. His brethren tauntingly asked him if he was going to stand out alone. He replied, “yes, as long as the world stands;” and so he did to the end of his life.

A rude and humble stone now marks the last resting place of both, at their own home, near Centre Meeting-House, Iredell County, N. C., where, more than a century ago, they sat down amidst the dim solitudes of the western wilderness. The old homestead is now the residence of James Sloan, a relative of the family.

The three sons, Joseph, John and James, and the son-in-law, Capt. Scott, bore arms against the Cherokees, and against the British and loyalists. They were brave young men, of active habits, and accustomed to hard service; rode much about the country, and were always ready for any enterprise requiring toil and exposure, or skill and daring. In proportion as they made themselves useful to the whig party, they were of course persecuted by the loyalists. Their irregular life in military service never caused them to do aught contrary to the strict principles of their faith; they never travelled, except when rigid necessity required it, on the Sabbath, being Puritans enough to look upon profanity and Sabbath-breaking with as much abhorrence as upon horse stealing. They served—John bearing a prominent part—in the first battle fought in North Carolina in which the whigs were victorious, after the suspension of hostilities succeeding the fall of Charleston; that of Ramsour’s Mill, in Lincoln County.[23]

Capt. Scott, the son-in-law of Mrs. Haynes, was killed at Cowan’s Ford, at the same time with Gen. Davidson, who had been stationed there by Gen. Greene, with a small force, to delay the passage of the British army across the Catawba. Joseph Haynes barely escaped with his life in this action. Soon after, the British passing, as already mentioned, near the house of the elder James Haynes, stopped and plundered it, took him prisoner, and boasted in the hearing of his family, that they had killed his son-in-law at the Ford, hinting that his sons also were either killed or captured. The old man was over sixty, and in feeble health; his venerable appearance and Quaker habiliments should have secured their respect, but the crime of sending so many brave sons to battle was not to be forgiven. Family tradition, confirmed by the recollection of his daughter-in-law, states that they pulled off his coat, overcoat, and silver knee and shoe-buckles, and made him dismount and walk on through mud and water, urged forward by the prick of bayonets; also that the news of his capture and the pillaging of his house was carried to his sons by his daughter Hannah, who made her way through bypaths for forty miles, eluding the marauding parties scattered through the country, to the American army. Her brothers immediately set off in pursuit, found their father at length by the roadside, watched over by a wounded American soldier, and conveyed him home.

Another adventure is remembered, in which John Haynes figured, during that memorable retreat of Gen. Greene. He was sent as a scout, with three others, to give notice of the approach of Tarleton’s dragoons. While posted on a hill they were suddenly startled by the appearance of a squadron of his light horse turning round a clump of trees close at hand, with the design of cutting off their retreat. The only point left open was a lane, a mile or so long, through a wide plantation. The four whigs instantly commenced the race, closely pursued by the British dragoons with their drawn sabres, the parties near enough to hear each other’s voices—the royalists calling upon the rebel squad to surrender, and now and then discharging a pistol to enforce the order. The hindmost fugitive, one George Locke, was at length cut down by a sabre-stroke, and killed; the others, hotly pursued, reached the end of the lane, and instantly turned into the thick woods, where they could ride with ease, being practised woodsmen, while the progress of the heavy-armed dragoons of Tarleton was retarded. As they dashed into the cover, they discharged their pistols over their shoulders, killing the leading horseman, a subaltern, who had the moment before cut down their companion, and was almost in the act of performing the same office for them. Fearing an ambuscade, the party hastily retreated, leaving the body of the subaltern where he fell. His uniform was taken off by a negro, and often worn by him after the close of the war.

In his advanced age John Haynes often amused his friends by recounting this and other anecdotes of races with the British troopers. On one occasion he was alone, hemmed in by pursuing horsemen, and driven to the banks of Candle Creek, at a point where the height of the banks and the width of the channel seemed to preclude all hope of escape. Being well mounted and a fearless rider, he dashed to the stream, his enemies close upon him with drawn sabres, cleared the creek at a bound, and was safe from his pursuers who dared not make the leap.

The two other sons, Joseph and James, were with Gates and Greene, and in many of the most trying scenes of the war. Joseph was one of the first who broke the cane and hunted the buffalo in the valley of Duck River, Tennessee. He was a brave soldier and an ardent patriot. It was his boast, that of all his kinsmen who were able to bear arms, there was not one who did not fight on the side of the Republic. He survived most of them who served with him, and after a long and useful life in the land to which he had gone as a pioneer, he died in July 1845, at his residence on Silver Creek, Maury County, Tennessee, in the 96th year of his age.

His brother John was born in a fort or station in the valley of the Catawba, where his family had taken shelter from the incursions of the Cherokee Indians in 1759. All three brothers with their families emigrated to Tennessee in the beginning of the present century, and established themselves in the southern part of Middle Tennessee.

John Haynes and his sons opened the road from the north side of Duck River, near Cany Spring, to the south side of Elk-ridge, where Cornersville now stands. Here father and sons opened farms, aided in erecting churches and school-houses, and soon found themselves surrounded by crowds of emigrants from Carolina and Virginia. They never forgot the precepts of their venerable ancestor, nor neglected their duty to pander to the taste of a less rigidly moral population. John lived to the age of seventy-seven, and kept his character for rapid riding to the last. It was often averred by his friends that he never rode in a walk, but always in a gallop. He died in 1838, but his widow, Margaret Haynes, survived him many years, dying the 3rd July, 1851, at the residence of her son, James S. Haynes, Esq., in her 88th year. Even at that advanced age, she retained her physical and intellectual faculties so perfectly, as to render her reminiscences of the times of peril and bloodshed both reliable and interesting. She remembered to have heard Rev. James McCree preach the funeral of Gen. Davidson at Centre meeting-house soon after the war, at which were present more than a dozen widows of those who had fallen in defence of their country. Her chief employment was reading religious books and studying the Scriptures. She gave food to the hungry and clothing to the needy, encouraging, reproving, and admonishing those around her, and diligently following every good work.

There were other children, daughters of James and Ann Haynes, who married worthy men in Rowan and Mecklenburg, North Carolina, where most of them continued to live. Their descendants are now widely scattered through the West and South, probably numbering three or four hundred, and many of them have been active in the service of their country. Several were engaged in the war of 1812; others subsequently in the Florida or Seminole war, and in the recent war with Mexico; Milton A. Haynes being a subaltern in the Florida war, and a Captain of Tennessee Volunteers in the Mexican war, and two of his brothers serving as subalterns. One of them lost his life in the service. The Rev. Cyrus Haynes, of Illinois, and the Rev. John Haynes of Mississippi, are the grandsons, and several other respectable clergymen of different States are descendants of the subject of this sketch.