Nancy Hart (1735-1830) was a fiery, sharp-shooting frontierswoman who outsmarted the British Loyalists at every turn.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan. And this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today’s spy is comparable to American folklore figures like Paul Bunyan, but she did more than chop trees; she was a fiery, sharp-shooting frontierswoman who outsmarted the British Loyalists at every turn. Let’s talk about the legendary Nancy Morgan Hart.
The historical facts in Nancy Hart’s story are entwined with tall tales and legends. But most historians believe she was born Ann Morgan in either Pennsylvania or North Carolina around 1735. Some claim she was related to the Revolutionary War general Daniel Morgan, who was later known for leading troops to victory at the Battle of Cowpens in 1781. However, there isn’t definitive evidence to prove the connection.
Ann adopted the nickname “Nancy,” and grew up in the colony of North Carolina.
According to legend, she became an imposing, six-foot-tall woman with wild red hair. Growing up in the frontier made Nancy muscular and fearless. Anyone who harmed her family or friends would be in for a harsh reckoning. Though Nancy was illiterate, she was an expert on wilderness survival skills like herbalism, hunting, and even shooting — in spite of the fact she apparently had crossed eyes.
When Nancy turned 36, she married Benjamin Hart, a man from a distinguished family that later produced multiple state senators. In 1771, Nancy and Benjamin settled beside the Broad River in Wilkes County, Georgia. Together, they had six sons and two daughters.
Many accounts indicate that Nancy took control of the household, rather than her husband. She also staunchly supported the Whigs, the British political party that opposed absolute monarchism in favor of a parliamentary system. When the Revolutionary War hit, Nancy was eager to take up the rifle to fight against the opposing party, the Tories.
Benjamin left to serve in the Georgia militia against the British, so Nancy took full control of the family farm while doing everything she could to rid the area of British loyalists. Tales of her exploits during the war circulated verbally for years before finally being recorded in writing.
Nancy often snuck off to spy on the British. She would wander into enemy camps while dressed as a man, pretending to be weak and feeble-minded to gather information for the Patriots. She even directly participated in the war, and may have been present at the Battle of Kettle Creek in 1779.
Many of Nancy’s most famous exploits happened right at home in her cabin. In one case, Nancy’s daughter spotted an eye peeking through a tiny crack in their cabin wall. She secretly informed her mother, who tossed a ladle of boiling water at the spy and scalded him. She rushed outside to find a British loyalist yelling in pain. She tied him up and turned him over to the Patriots.
In Nancy’s most famous exploit, five or six British soldiers showed up at her cabin and demanded information on a particular Patriot leader. Though that Patriot only left the cabin minutes ago, Nancy lied and said no one had come by for days. The Tories didn’t buy it. One of the soldiers shot Nancy’s prize turkey and demanded that she cook and serve it to them for dinner. Nancy calmly agreed -- but she was actually hatching a plan.
Nancy sent her daughter to quietly alert the neighbors. While the Tories ate turkey and drank Nancy’s corn liquor, Nancy slipped their guns outside through a hole in the wall. The British spotted her at the last minute, but she drew the final rifle on them, shooting one, and wounding another. When Nancy’s husband and neighbors arrived, they rounded up the soldiers and hanged them from a nearby tree.
This is one of the few tales about Nancy that seems to be validated by concrete evidence. In 1912, some workmen building a railroad near the site of Nancy’s cab in discovered six skeletons that had been buried for at least a century.
After the Revolution ended, the Hart family lived in the Broad River property for several years. Nancy became a devout Methodist Christian. Former Georgia governor George R. Gilmer, whose mother knew Nancy, said that she, “fought the Devil as manfully as she had fought the Tories.”
The Harts then moved to Brunswick, Georgia in the late 1790s. Benjamin passed away shortly after. Nancy tried to return to Broad River, only to discover that her cabin had been washed away by a flood. Instead, she settled in Kentucky with her son where she lived until she passed away in 1830, at around age 93.
Stories about Nancy’s hijinks during the war were first published in a newspaper in 1825. Since then, a Georgia county, city, lake, and highway have all been named in her honor. In the 1930s, the Daughters of the American Revolution also built a replica of her cabin using some of its original stones, which still stands to this day. In 1997, Nancy was inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement.
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