Pension Application of John Tate: S6191
Transcribed and annotated by C. Leon Harris
Virginia
At a Circuit Superior Court of Law & Chancery held at the Courthouse for the County of Botetourt in Virginia the 7th day of September 1832 –
[several words illegible] September in the year 1832 – personally appeared in open court before the Hon’ble Allen Taylor Judge of the Superior Court of Law and Chancery for the County of Botetourt John Tate aged seventy one years and first duly sworn according to law doth on his Oath make the following declaration in order to obtain the benefit of the act of Congress passed on the 7th day of June 1832
that he was born in the County of Augusta on the 6th day of August in the year 1761 in the year 1777 he served as a Private in a volunteer expedition which went from Staunton in the County of Augusta under the command of Captain Patrick Buchhanan and Thomas Smith against a Bunch of Tories who had assembled in the vicinity of the Peaked Mountain about thirty miles below Staunton The leaders of the party were Captured and lodged in Jail and the followers of them dispersed. in the month of May 1778 or 1779 the Indians from the Western side of the Ohio came in a large body against the Inhabitants of Greenbrier and made an attack upon Donnellys Fort [sic: Donally’s Fort] and information of it was sent to Augusta and the companies commanded by Captain James Tate, Patrick Buckhanan [sic: Buchanan] and Francis Long were ordered to [word illegible] assistance this applicant again volunteered and marched in Tates Company [several words illegible] Savannah Fort which [several words illegible] Lewisburg [formerly named Fort Savannah] [one or two words illegible] they remained for about one month where they were discharged [several words illegible] this affiant received a discharge – in the 1780 he removed with his father to the County of Botetourt where he has remained ever since –
Lord Cornwallis having made very active exertions to take the prisoners taken at the Battle of the Cowpens in January 1781, a requisition was made on the County of Botetourt Militia Captains Mays [sic: David May or Mays], John Cartmill, Matthew Wilson, Holston and [John] Bollar were called into service a heavy draft was made and this affiant volunteered in Mays Company each man was ordered to provide himself with a horse and six days provisions [several words illegible] under the command of Maj. Thomas Rowland and marched in a southern direction untill it crossed the Dan River then the horses were sent home and the detachment thereafter joined the army under the command of General Green [sic: Nathanael Greene] at a place called Allamance [sic: Alamance] on the bank of Haw River the army had a skirmish with the British where several men were killed belonging to Mays Company [see note below] the detachment to which this affiant belonged [one line illegible] bring on the action a few days after this [illegible word] [Col. William] Campbell of Washington County Virginia joined Green then with about [blank] men on the morning [several words illegible] Battle was fought at the Reedy fork of Haw River where Captain May and all his officers of his company and all his men, except myself and thirteen others, left the field of Battle and came home this affiant remained with the army which encamped [several words illegible] the next day after the fight Capt. James Tate and Capt. Smith from Augusta County in Virginia joined the army with their companies my friends from Augusta requested me to join them I declined doing so and a few days afterwards went home this affiant states that he was in service in this [word illegible] about three months as well as he now recollects. [three words illegible] first of July or August in the year 1781 he again volunteered as a private in Capt. David Mays Company and marched from Boyses Ferry now the Town of Pattonsburg [now Buchanan] in Botetourt County to York Town in Virginia and remained there in service during the whole of the Siege after the surrender of Cornwallis he was sent with the prisoners to the Barracks to Winchester where he was discharged – He received a written discharge signed he thinks by Wallace Esten or Estill a Lieutenant of the Company which has been lost the discharge was dated in November 1781 on this tour he served upwards of three months he has no documentary evidence of his service and does not at this time know of any person living in this part of the country who is acquainted with the fact of his having served except Henry Cartmill and John Hewitt [two words illegible] served with him at York Town – he hereby relinquishes every claim whatever to a pension or annuity except the present and declares that his name is not on the pension roll of the agency of any State –
Sworn to and subscribed in Open Court – [signed] John Tate
NOTE: Tate apparently refers to two skirmishes with British troops under Col. Banastre Tarleton as the Americans tried to slow Cornwallis’s pursuit of the much weaker army of Gen. Nathanael Greene fleeing to safety north of the Dan River in Virginia. The first skirmish occurred at Clapp’s Mill on the Alamance River on 4 March 1781. The second was at Wetzel’s Mill on Reedy Fork of the Haw River two days later. About 300 riflemen of the Botetourt County Militia were present in both skirmishes. After the second skirmish many in the militia scattered, possibly because they thought they had been used as cannon fodder to divert the British from pursuit of Greene. These troops could not be collected in time for the confrontation between Greene and Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse on 15 March.