COL. SAMUEL WATSON OF THE REVOLUTION by Louise Pettus
One of the region’s Revolutionary War heroes was Col. Samuel Watson who was bom in Ireland in 1731. Watson’s family emigrated to York County, Pennsylvania where they prospered. In 1871 Watson’s grandson wrote that in Pennsylvania the Watson’s had a “large brick dwelling house finished from cellar to garret.” Watson was probably part of the great migration southward of Pennsylvanians and Virginians at the time of Indian attacks on the frontiersman during the French and Indian Wars which ended in 1763. It is known that Watson was first in Mecklenburg County, N. C. where he married Elizabeth McDowell (1738-1817).

On the 6th of April 1765 Watson registered two plots of land totalling 760 acres , “whereon Watson now liveth,” in “Mecklenburg on Rockey Allisons Creek . . .” At this time much of present-day York County was claimed by Mecklenburg County, N. C. Watson’s house, like his Pennsylvania home, was constructed of brick. The house was located about half way between the town of York and the Catawba River on Hwy 49. Whatever the date of his arrival, the Allison Creek land grant places Watson in the heart of the Bethel congregation, which was located in the northeastern area of the part of York County west of the Catawba. The Bethel congregation covered 10 miles in every direction. As a Bethel elder, Watson became an influential member of the church as well as highly respected in the community. The Lyman Draper papers at the University of Wisconsin describe Watson as a man 5 ft, 5 in. in height, of compact build, and genial in disposition. However, like most Scotch-Irishmen of his time, he had no love for the English. When talk of rebellion became general, Watson quickly rose to the cause. Watson was elected to the South Carolina Provinicial Congress of 1775-1776, one of 46 delegates from the back country. In February of 1776 Watson participated in the framing of South Carolina’s first written constitution. The British, naturally, saw this constitution as defiance of their sovereignty. Watson volunteered his services to the South Carolina Regulars. It was not long before the S. C. troops were made a part of the Continental Army of the newly-formed Continental Congress. By 1778 Watson was a lieut-colonel in Col. Thomas Neel’s New Acquisition District Regiment of Horsemen, a part of Thomson’s Regiment of Rangers. He went with Neel in what is called the Charleston Expedition in the summer of 1779. Neel was killed at Stono Ferry on June 20, 1779 and Watson took his place. In June 1780 nearby Hill’s Ironworks were burned by the British. The terrified workers fled to Watson’s plantation which quickly became a center of resistance. A commissary was set up there to issue supplies to any Whigs who would carry a musket against the British. At the Battle of Hanging Rock in lower Lancaster County, a musket ball hit Watson’s sword, breaking his ribs and knocking him off his horse. His grandson wrote Draper that the family kept the prized sword with the ball half buried in its metal along with Watson’s giant musket which “kicked mightily”.

Watson was also at the skirmish at Williamson Plantation near Brattonsville. The encounter is also called the “Battle of Huck’s Defeat” in some of the literature. Other battles in which Watson participated were Rocky Mount, Sumter’s Defeat and Biggin Church. Samuel Watson, Jr., bom 12 August 1754 in York Co., PA, also fought in the Revolution. He served as a lieutenant under Col. Thomas Neel and Andrew Pickens. He was with his father at Williamson Plantation and Rocky Mount. Some time after the war he moved to Missouri. (There was another Samuel Watson who participated in the Revolution who was apparently no kin to the subject of this article. This Samuel Watson was bom in Virginia in 1740 and served as a lieutenant in the Rangers under Capt. Ezekiel Polk. He was at the battle of Kings Mountain and Blackstock’s and was killed in the battle of Cowpens.) In his old age Samuel Watson, Sr. was paralyzed. He died November 25, 1810 at the age of 79 and is buried in Bethel Cemetery in York County. The Catawba Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution erected a marker in honor of Watson at the site of his Allison Creek home.

(Information courtesy of and from: YCGHS – The Quarterly Magazine)

Courtesy of the SC Dept. of Archives and History – 1992

Ca. 1890s view of cotton being ginned in York County, S.C. Courtesy of the AFLLC Collection - 2017

A common scene across most of the South, "hauling cotton to the gin house." Courtesy of AFLLC Collection - 2017

2745 Charlotte Highway – Colonel Samuel Watson Marker

Get Directions Latitude: 35.0300906 Longitude: -81.1600183

R&R HISTORY LINK: Bratton Gin House

The Yorkville Enquirer on Nov. 21, 1872 reported – “Dr. John A. Watson of Clay Hill has been appointed, Demonstrator of Anatomy at the S.C. University.”

City Directories and History: The historic Williams – Ferguson home, circa 1850’s, at this intersection was once a large and prosperous cotton plantation. It was from this site, across the road on the corner from which the J. T. William’s Cotton Gin was dismantled and relocated to Historic Brattonsville by the Angle – Chisolm Company of Chester, S.C. The gin building was reconstructed at HB on the exact site of the historic Brattton family gin house. The gin gears – mechanics were recovered from a gin complex of the same period, in Chapin, S.C. and each assembled at HB, to create an authentic view of mid 19th century cotton ginning.

The 1910 Walker’s Postal Map shows the Williams House as well as gin and store across the street.

“On Rocky Allison Creek, just to the south of the Hill settlement, was the neighborhood of Col. Samuel Watson. Robert Lathan, a nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister and local historian, said that the settlement near Colonel Watson’s house (outside the Indian Land) was the oldest permanent settlement in the area that became York County. Mr. Lathan placed the settlement near the site of the present-day Tirzah Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Col. Samuel Watson’s brick-and-stone residence, probably the largest house in the New Acquisition, was a community storehouse and also a gathering place for the early residents of that section. Like their neighbors to the north, these people all worshiped at Bethel Meeting-house. The Barrons were another early family there.” Information from: The Genesis of York, by Wm. B. White, Jr., Yorkville Historical Society, 2015 – Jostens Publishing Company

After the defeat of Huck at Williamson’s the mother of Capt. John McClure, in company with some of her neighbors set out for Col. Watson’s. Mrs. McClure was at the time between seventy and eighty years of age. When the party of women came to the grave of Huck, Mrs. McClure said to Mary Johnston, the grandmother of James Johnston of Blackstock, Chester County, South Carolina: ‘ Mary as old as I am I feel like getting down and dancing on that grave; but that would be wrong. God is just and will avenge his own cause.’

As Tarleton and his men passed through the country in search of the heroes of King’s Mountain, they visited the house of Col. Watson, killed all the geese, and one of the officers having scratched with his sword his name on one of the stones of the chimney, remarked that after the war was over and the Whigs were conquered, he intended to come to America and live in that house. The Whigs were not conquered and the officer never returned. The bricks which composed part of Col. Watson’s house were taken away and rebuilt, and form the walls of the lower story of the house of Mr. Lee Williams, known all over York county as the Red House, six miles from Yorkville, on the Charlotte road. Information courtesy of the YCGHS—June 1999

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User comments always welcome - please post at the bottom of this page.

Please enjoy this structure and all those listed in Roots and Recall. But remember each is private property. So view them from a distance or from a public area such as the sidewalk or public road. Do you have information to share and preserve? Family, school, church, or other older photos and stories are welcome. Send them digitally through the “Share Your Story” link, so they too might be posted on Roots and Recall.

2745 Charlotte Highway – Colonel Samuel Watson Marker

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