Fearless American Heroine ‘War Woman’ Nancy Hart:
Fact or Legend?
By Lewis Smith
In 2015, the National Women’s History Museum featured Georgia frontierswoman Nancy Morgan Hart, a legendary hero of the American Revolution. Nancy’s self-made mission during the war was to rid the Georgia backwoods of British Loyalists, called Tories.
Born around 1735 in NC, Nancy was an imposing, red-headed woman, six feet tall and muscular. Her fearlessness made local Cherokee Indians refer to her as the ‘war woman.’ She was illiterate but knew much about frontier survival and was a skilled herbalist, hunter and an excellent musket shot, despite being cross-eyed. She married Benjamin Hart in 1771, and they settled in Wilkes County, GA.
During the Revolution, Nancy often left their farm to spy on the British. Dressed as a man, she would enter British camps pretending to be feeble-minded to gain information, but Hart’s most famous act involved six British soldiers, who killed her last turkey and forced her to cook it for them. She got the soldiers drunk on corn liquor and sent her daughter Sukey to alert neighbors of the British presence. While the soldiers ate and drank, Hart began sneaking their Brown Bess muskets out through a hole in the wall. A soldier finally noticed her and rushed her; she killed him, wounded another, and the rest surrendered. When her husband returned, Nancy was holding the soldiers at gunpoint. The Harts, along with their neighbors, hung the Redcoats from a front-yard tree at Nancy’s insistence. In 1912, six bodies, probably the British soldiers, were found buried near the Hart home, perhaps proving the legend.
Later the Harts moved to Brunswick, where Benjamin died. Nancy returned to Wilkes County but her cabin had been washed away. She settled in Kentucky in 1803, near her son, until her death at ninety-three. In the 1930s, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a replica of her cabin, using some of the original stones. A Georgia county, city, lake, and highway are all named for the state’s most famous female Revolutionary War hero Nancy Hart.
What a fantastic story, but is it true? The six skeletons found near her home, is that believable? Well, according to Thomson, Georgia’s McDuffie Progress newspaper edition of December 27, 1912 (not 2012), it seems to be. The paper reported on its front page:
SKELETONS OF TORIES KILLED BY NANCY HART UNEARTHED TUESDAY.
“Skeletons of the six Tories captured at her dinner table and afterwards hung to trees near her home by Nancy Hart more than a century and a quarter ago, were unearthed last Tuesday by a squad of hands at work grading the Elberton & Eastern Railroad. They were buried about three feet under the ground in what is known as the Heard field, near the mouth of Wahatchie creek, some half a mile from the Broad River. The bones are all there, in a splendid state of preservation, but have become disjointed. The skulls are especially well preserved and the teeth are perfect. An examination of the hips shows that they are all males.
“The place where the skeletons were unearthed, together with the fact that they were so close together, near the surface, with no sign of anything like a coffin anywhere around, makes the evidence conclusively convincing that these are the bones of the Tories captured by the Revolutionary heroine who lives in history as the crossest-eyed and ugliest, as well as the bravest and most loyal, woman of the period when patriots were proud to offer themselves and their all on the altar of a country struggling for the right of self-government.
“The house that Nancy Hart lived in was located on Wahatchie creek near a spring some half a mile from where the skeletons were found. The place is now owned by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. This place is about thirteen miles from Elberton. Numbers of people have gone down to examine the remains of the Tories. Those who saw them were not fired with the same zeal for home and native land that burned in Nancy’s heart. Nearly 140 years of Time, with all its changes, made them look on the bones of these men who died as traitors with a degree of allowance that was not possible in the early days.”
Sources:
Born around 1735 in NC, Nancy was an imposing, red-headed woman, six feet tall and muscular. Her fearlessness made local Cherokee Indians refer to her as the ‘war woman.’ She was illiterate but knew much about frontier survival and was a skilled herbalist, hunter and an excellent musket shot, despite being cross-eyed. She married Benjamin Hart in 1771, and they settled in Wilkes County, GA.
During the Revolution, Nancy often left their farm to spy on the British. Dressed as a man, she would enter British camps pretending to be feeble-minded to gain information, but Hart’s most famous act involved six British soldiers, who killed her last turkey and forced her to cook it for them. She got the soldiers drunk on corn liquor and sent her daughter Sukey to alert neighbors of the British presence. While the soldiers ate and drank, Hart began sneaking their Brown Bess muskets out through a hole in the wall. A soldier finally noticed her and rushed her; she killed him, wounded another, and the rest surrendered. When her husband returned, Nancy was holding the soldiers at gunpoint. The Harts, along with their neighbors, hung the Redcoats from a front-yard tree at Nancy’s insistence. In 1912, six bodies, probably the British soldiers, were found buried near the Hart home, perhaps proving the legend.
Later the Harts moved to Brunswick, where Benjamin died. Nancy returned to Wilkes County but her cabin had been washed away. She settled in Kentucky in 1803, near her son, until her death at ninety-three. In the 1930s, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a replica of her cabin, using some of the original stones. A Georgia county, city, lake, and highway are all named for the state’s most famous female Revolutionary War hero Nancy Hart.
What a fantastic story, but is it true? The six skeletons found near her home, is that believable? Well, according to Thomson, Georgia’s McDuffie Progress newspaper edition of December 27, 1912 (not 2012), it seems to be. The paper reported on its front page:
SKELETONS OF TORIES KILLED BY NANCY HART UNEARTHED TUESDAY.
“Skeletons of the six Tories captured at her dinner table and afterwards hung to trees near her home by Nancy Hart more than a century and a quarter ago, were unearthed last Tuesday by a squad of hands at work grading the Elberton & Eastern Railroad. They were buried about three feet under the ground in what is known as the Heard field, near the mouth of Wahatchie creek, some half a mile from the Broad River. The bones are all there, in a splendid state of preservation, but have become disjointed. The skulls are especially well preserved and the teeth are perfect. An examination of the hips shows that they are all males.
“The place where the skeletons were unearthed, together with the fact that they were so close together, near the surface, with no sign of anything like a coffin anywhere around, makes the evidence conclusively convincing that these are the bones of the Tories captured by the Revolutionary heroine who lives in history as the crossest-eyed and ugliest, as well as the bravest and most loyal, woman of the period when patriots were proud to offer themselves and their all on the altar of a country struggling for the right of self-government.
“The house that Nancy Hart lived in was located on Wahatchie creek near a spring some half a mile from where the skeletons were found. The place is now owned by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. This place is about thirteen miles from Elberton. Numbers of people have gone down to examine the remains of the Tories. Those who saw them were not fired with the same zeal for home and native land that burned in Nancy’s heart. Nearly 140 years of Time, with all its changes, made them look on the bones of these men who died as traitors with a degree of allowance that was not possible in the early days.”
Sources:
- Ouzts, Clay. "Nancy Hart (ca. 1735-1830)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 02 March 2020. Web. 07 September 2021.
- The McDuffie Progress Newspaper. Thomson, GA: December 27, 1912.
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