HISTORIC OCONEE COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA Subject: GLEANINGS FROM HORSE SHOE ROBINSON Version 1.0, 15-Dec-2002, H-11.txt **************************************************************** REPRODUCING NOTICE: ------------------- These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format for profit, or presentation by any other organization, or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. Paul M Kankula - nn8nn Seneca, SC, USA Oconee County SC GenWeb Coordinator Oconee County SC GenWeb Homestead http://www.rootsweb.com/~scoconee/oconee.html Oconee County SC GenWeb Tombstone Project http://www.rootsweb.com/~scoconee/cemeteries.html http://www.usgwtombstones.org/southcarolina/oconee.html **************************************************************** DATAFILE INPUT . : Paul M. Kankula at kankula1@innova.net in Dec-2002 DATAFILE LAYOUT : Paul M. Kankula at kankula1@innova.net in Dec-2002 HISTORY WRITE-UP : Mary Cherry Doyle, Clemson, SC in Jan-1935 Dedicated To: Dr Edgar Clay Doyle FOREWORD In presenting these fragmentary facts that have come to my knowledge, it is my hope that they may prove helpful in preserv- ing the history of Oconee county for the youth of the land and all who are interested in the history of Oconee county for South Carolina. With knowledge there will follow a fuller appreciation of the great heritage that is ours. I wish to acknowledge a great debt of gratitude to Dr. J. Walter Daniel, an author- ity on Indians of the South. We are indebted to members of the Wizard of Tamassee Chapter S. C. D. A. R. and many other friends. MARY CHERRY DOYLE. January, 1935. GLEANINGS FROM HORSE SHOE ROBINSON This book, published first in 1835, is said to have been written while the author, John P. Kennedy, was staying at the Old Steel place later known as the Phinney place, which is about half-way between Seneca and Walhalla, on the old road. In the introduction to a later edition, Kennedy tells us of his first meeting with Horse Shoe Robinson: "In the winter of 1818-19, I had occasion to visit the western section of South Carolina ... In the course of my journey I met an accident, which I have preserved in my journal. The reader of the tale which occupies this volume has some interest in it ... The few inhabitants of this region were principally the tenants of the bounty lands, which the state of South Carolina had conferred upon the soldiers of the Revolution; and their settlements, made upon the rich bot- toms on the river valleys, were separated from each other by large tracts of forests. I had much perplexity in finding my way through the almost pathless forest which lay be- tween two of these settlements. That of which I was in quest was situated upon the Seneca, a tributary of the Savannah, here called Tugaloo. It was near sundown, when I emerged from wilderness upon a wagon road, very uncer- tain of my whereabouts." Just at this juncture, a young lad, mounted bareback, came into the road ahead of him and Kennedy followed, to find him later thrown by his horse. As he stopped to render assistance, the lad's father came and between them, they carried the boy into the house. "Never had I regretted the want of an acquisition as I then regretted that I had no skill in surgery . . . The mother of the family happened to be absent that night; and, next to the physician, the mother is the best adviser . . . The nearest physician, Dr. Anderson, resided at Pendleton, thirty miles off ... In the difficulty of the juncture, a thought occurred to Colonel T. 'I think I will send for Horse Shoe Robinson,' he said, with a mani- fest lighting up the countenance." In less than an hour, Robinson came and on examining the lad, found his shoulder dislocated; so he got the bone in proper position again and made the patient comfortable, then said, 'I larnt that, Colonel, in the campaigns. A man picks up some good everywhere, if he's mind to that's my observation.' "Robinson then decides to spend the night and they got him to tell some stories of the war. 'Ask him how he got away from Charleston after the surrender; and then get him to tell you how he took the five Scotchmen prisoners." It was long after midnight before our party broke up; and when I got to my bed it was to dream of Horse Shoe and his adventures. "The reader will thus see how I came into possession of the leading incidents upon which this tale is founded. It was first published in 1835. Horse Shoe Robinson was then a very old man. I commissioned a friend to send him a copy of the book. What do you say to all this was the question addressed to him, after the reading was finished. His reply is a voucher which I desire to preserve: 'It is all true and right-in its right place-excepting about them women, which I disremember. That mought be true, too; but my memory is treacherous ... I disremember.' "Robinson had been a blacksmith at the breaking out of the Revolution, and in truth could hardly be said to have yet abandoned the craft; although of late he had been en- gaged in a course of life which had but little to do with the anvil except in that metaphorical sense of hammering out and shaping the rough iron independence of his country. He was the owner of a little farm in the Waxhaw settlement, on the Catawba, and having pitched his habitation upon a promontory, around whose base the Waxhaw creek swept with a regular but narrow circuit, this locality, taken in connection with his calling, gave rise to a common prefix to his name throughout the neighborhood, and he was there- fore almost exclusively distinguished by the sobriquet of Horse Shoe Robinson." HIS STORY OF HIS ESCAPE FROM CHARLESTON "You was with us, major, when Prevost served us that trick in Georgia last year-kept us, you remember, on the lookout for him t'other side of the Savannah, whilst all the time he was whisking of it down to Charleston. . . It was a sign fit for General Lincoln's consarnment, that this here British should make a push at Charleston on the tenth of May, 1779, and get beaten, and that exactly in one year and two days afterwards, they should make another push and win the town. Now, what was it a sign of, but that they and the Tories was more industrious that year than we were? It was a pity to throw away a good army on such a place, for it wa'nt worth defending at last . . . They began to shut us in, every day a little closer. First they closed a door on one side, and then on t'other; till, at last they sent a sort of flash-o'-lightning fellow, this here Col. Tarleton, up to Monck's Corner, which, you know, was our back door and he shut that up and double bolted it, by giving Huger a most tremendous lathering. Now, when we were shut in, we had nothing to do but look out. I'll tell you an observa- tion I made at that time . . . When a man has got to fight, it's a natural sort of thing enough; but when he has got nothing to eat, it's an on natural state. I have heard of men who should have said they would rather fight than eat- if they told truth, they would have made honest fellows for our garrison at Charleston . . . We got taken at last and surrendered on the 12th of May ... I shouldn't have minded it much, it was the fortune of war. But they insulted us as soon as they got our arms from us. It was a blasted cowardly trick in them to endeavor to wean us from our cause. First, they told us that Col. Pinckney and some other officers had gone over; but that was too on probable a piece of rascality-we didn't believe one word on't. One morning Col. Pinckney axed that we mought be drawn up in a line in front of barracks; and there he made a speech ... I wish you could have heard him. I always thought a bugle horn the best music in the world, till that day. But that day Col. Charles Cotseworth Pinckney's voice was sweeter than hawns and trumpets . . . So Col. Pinckney put a stop to all this parleying with our poor fellows." Horse Shoe then tells of being asked by Pinckney if he could give the guard the slip and take a letter to Major Butler and how, on a darkish, drizzling evening "I made a long step and a short story of it, by just slipping over the line and setting out . . . When danger stares you in the face, the best way is not to see it. It is only in not seeing it that a brave man differs from a coward: that's my opinion." And after many adventures and narrow escapes from Tories on the route, he finally reaches Butler. Robinson's philosophy of the war was: "There is some things in the world that's good, and some that's bad. But I have found that good and bad is so mixed up and jumbled together, that you don't often get much of one without a little of the other. A sodger's a sodger, no matter what side he is on; and they are the naturalest people in the world' for fellow-feeling. One day a man is up, and then the laugh's on his side; next day he is down, and then the laugh's against him ..." "I am not the only man, Major, that has been spoiled in his religion by these wars. I had both politeness and decency till we got to squabbling over our chimney corners in Caro- lina. But when a man's conscience begins to get hard, it does it faster than anything in nature; it is, I may say, like the boiling of an egg-it is very clear at first, but as soon as it gets cloudy, one minute more and you may cut it with a knife." LULU GIGNILLIAT NORTON.