Re: British Burning of Churches in SC and GA

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@quarterman.org>]

>The source on fortifying the churches is my Way family history which you keep 
>asking about but which I have already described. I wrote the following on 
>page 141, "When the American Revolution came, the churches at Dorchester and 
>Beech Hill, as well as the one in Midway, Georgia, were closed and fortified. 
> The British burned all three."

That's your conclusion.  It's unfortunate you didn't record your source.

>While I have some 900 footnotes in my book, it is a family history and I did 
>not feel the need to document every historical statement and have no footnote 
>there.  In my research I traveled three separate times in a motor home up and 
>down the Eastern seaboard from Salem, MA and Boston to Savannah, Sunbury, 
>Midway, and Hinesville, GA.  In Boston I researched in the NEHGS headquarters 
>for days, in the Boston Public Library, etc; in the Philadelphia Free Public 
>Library, in the state archives and libraries of VA, NC, SC, GA, TX, and in 
>the historical associations of VA at Richmond, in SC at Charleston, and in GA 
>at Savannah. I went twice to the DAR Library in Camden, SC,and twice to the 
>A.S. Salley Archives in Orangeburg, SC.  I visited more courthouses than I 
>would like to think about in SC, GA, and TX. I also went to Salt Lake City.  
>Since I live in the Virginia suburbs of Washington,  DC, I have spent many 
>days in the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the DAR Library, and 
>the Federal Bureau of Land Management. Finally, although I had already 
>visited Great Britain six times in either a personal or official capacity, 
>beginning as an undergraduate student, and had seen all of that country I had 
>ever planned to, I recently undertook still another trip there solely to 
>research the Ways and the families they immediately married into in America, 
>the Sumners and Mavericks.

Congratulations on all your research.

>I don't know where I picked up the info on the fortifying of the churches, 
>but I am sure it is accurate.

While your conclusion may well be true, it's the first I've heard of it.
Stacy mentions a cannon that was stationed in the road near Midway Church,
but that was withdrawn, apparently leaving the church undefended.

>  It may have come from brochures passed out by 
>the state park rangers in Old Dorchester State Park and the Old Sunbury State 
>Park, or from local, county and state histories.  A.S. Salley wrote a lot on 
>the subject.  But any standard history of the American Revolution would 
>address the military campaigns.  The same might be said of a biography of 
>Lord Charles Cornwallis, of the best cavalry officer of the British 
>Empire----young and arrogant Sir Banastre Tarleton----and of a biography of 
>the "Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, or of the US General Nathaniel Greene, a 
>Rhode Island Quaker who proved to be an exception to the rule that Quakers 
>did not fight.

Thanks for the speculation on sources.

>I tossed out my comment on the fortifying of the churches because I feel that 
>Americans have too one-sided a view of the American Revolution, one 
>strengthened by such items as the recent popular Mel Gibson movie, The 
>Patriot.

As you know, our book was published well before that movie came out.

>Once again, my book: A. Dane Bowen, Jr., Ph. D. (Ivy League in History), 
>Henry Way (1583-1667) and Descendants: Pioneering Four Centuries across 
>America, Baltimore, Md., 2001, 488 pp. size 8 and 1|2 x 11. The 25-page 
>index, in four columns, 10 font, has some 5,950 name entries.  It was so well 
>received that it quickly sold out.

Congratulations.

Thanks for sending the details on your book again; I see you did indeed
send them back on 7 Jan.

>  The publisher will not reprint less than 
>50 additional copies.  I am unwilling to take the risk of ordering so many 
>more.  If your list members and\or others can put together an order of 35 
>books at $50 apiece, I will order another 50!

OK, I've just added your book to the list of Quarterman books in
 http://www.quarterman.org/books/index.html

with your request and then we'll see how many responses came in.
See:
 http://www.quarterman.org/books/bowen.html

>Since the book is copyrighted, copies were deposited in the Library of 
>Congress and will presumably become available there.  However, I can tell you 
>from experience that the last time I looked, the Quarterman book about three 
>years after its publication was still not available there. I only first saw 
>it at the public library in the county seat of Liberty Co., GA, Hinesville.  

We distributed copies to about a dozen libraries in Georgia and elsewhere.

>I later bought a copy.

Thanks.

>Dane Bowen

-jsq
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