Hershel Parker Scholarship August 11, 2014 The Tryon County Patriots of 1775 and Their “Association”

http://allthingsliberty.com/2014/08/the-tryon-county-patriots-of-1775-and-their-association/

On August 14, 1775 some North Carolina colonial men, possibly as many as four dozen or so, met at the Tryon County courthouse. That is, they crowded into Christian (“Christy”) Mauney’s isolated log house at a country cross roads thirty some miles west of Charlotte. There they drafted and copied into the minutes a document they called “An Association.” That term in patriotic documents of 1774 and 1775 did not identify the signers as having joined a civic group or social club. The meaning, now long obsolete, was a written pledge to carry out an enterprise. At the risk of their fortunes and their lives they were pledging to take up arms against British soldiers in defense of what they saw as their natural rights under the British constitution. The men at Mauney’s resolved that their “Association” should “be Signed by the Inhabitants of Tryon County.” Presumably many signed there at Mauney’s, but the document may have been carried around to encourage other “Inhabitants” to sign it.[1] The document said,

The unprecedented, barbarous & bloody actions Committed by the British Troops on our American Brethren near Boston, on the 19^th of April & 20^th of May last together with the Hostile opperations & Traiterous Designs now Carrying on by the Tools of Ministerial Vengeance & Despotism for the Subjugating all British America, Sugest to us the painful Necessity of having recourse to Arms, for the preservation of those Rights & Liberties which the principles of our Constitution and the Laws of God Nature & nations have made it our Duty to Defend.—

We therefore the Subscribers freeholders & Inhabitants of Tryon County, do hereby faithfully unite Ourselves under the most Sacred ties of Religion Honor & love to Our Country, firmly to Resist force by force in defence of our Natural Freedom & Constitutional Rights against all Invasions, & at the same time do Solemnly Engage to take up Arms and Risque our lives and fortunes in Maintaining the Freedom of our Country whenever the Wisdom & Council of the Continental Congress or our provincial Convention shall Declare it necessary, & this Engagement we will Continue in & hold Sacred, till a Reconciliation shall take place between Great Britain & America on Constitutional principles, which we most ardently desire. And we do firmly agree to hold all such persons Inimical to the liberties of America, who shall refuse to Subscribe this Association.[2] . . . .


This is the opening of my first publication as historian in 50 years, since an article was published by the New-York Historical Quarterly.  My intention is to publish more articles all of which involve at least one ancestor, whether tangentially or prominently. It is possible they could make up ORNERY PEOPLE: WHAT WAS A DEPRESSION OKIE? but chances are they will be a side-product, too historical, although some of the episodes like the Sims Intruder story have the ancestors front and center. We will see. Meanwhile, I am overjoyed at being Boy Historian at nearly 79. What joy, being published in the webzine JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.