Watauga Association - Military Affairs

Military Affairs

Wataugan militiamen were present at multiple engagements on the frontier and throughout the American Revolution. A company of 20 Wataugans took part in the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774 during Lord Dunmore's War, and another contingent aided in the defense of Boonesborough and Harrodsburg later in the decade.

The Washington District Committee of Safety, created in 1775, consisted of John Carter, Zachariah Isbell, Jacob Brown, John Sevier, James Smith, James and Charles Robertson, William Bean, John Jones, George Russell, and Robert Lucas. The Committee acquired arms and oversaw the construction of Fort Watauga (initially named Fort Caswell and located at present day Elizabethton, Tennessee), where they thwarted one wing of the Cherokee invasion of July 1776. Wataugans took part in William Christian's punitive expedition against the Overhill towns in the latter half of 1776.

Even at the height of the Cherokee threat in the Spring of 1776, the Wataugans heeded a call to arms and dispatched a company of riflemen under Felix Walker to aide in the defense of Charleston in South Carolina. In August 1780, a small contingent led by Col. Isaac Shelby fought in the American Patriot victory at the Battle of Musgrove Mill near present day Clinton, South Carolina. In late September 1780, the Overmountain Men— the frontier militia that crossed the Appalachian Mountains and defeated an army of British loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain— mustered at Sycamore Shoals, and included 240 Wataugans under the command of Cols. John Sevier and Isaac Shelby. After the battle, Sevier led a second punitive expedition against the Cherokee in which he destroyed the Chickamauga villages near modern Chattanooga.

At least one Wataugan, William Tatham, was present at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.