Mills and Merrell Story

As normal with legends passed down for generations, there are some documented facts within the stories. But, some elements of the story cannot be documented.
This story is used as an example of Patriots and Tories settling in Henderson County, living in close proximity to each other after the war, and local people in the county descending from both.
In the case of William Mills, it is also to provide documentation to dispel many myths that still are believed as fact among people in Henderson County.

Merrell Family Documented Background
The Merrell family traces back to 1540 in England. They arrived on Staten Island in N.Y. about 1675, and then moved to New Jersey.
By the 1750s, William Merrell III and his brother, Benjamin, had moved to Rowan County in North Carolina to a community of Baptists known as the Jersey Settlement.
Oppression was severe under British Royal Gov. William Tryon. Taxation and fees were exorbitant and the Baptists, especially, refused to pay taxes to support the Church of England. Prison or execution was the fate of dissenters.
The Regulator Movement in North Carolina was from 1765 to 1771 in the area of Rowan, Randolph, Orange, Anson and Granville counties. Some people living in North Carolina took up arms against colonial officials, primarily because of issues surrounding taxes and religion. It ended after the Battle of Alamance in 1771. Several trials were held after the battle, resulting in the hanging of six leaders of the Regulator Movement at Hillsborough on June 19, 1771.
One of those hung was Benjamin Merrell, brother of William Merrell III.
Needless to say, when the Revolutionary War began, William Merrell III (brother of Benjamin) and the majority of able-bodied Merrell men joined the Patriot cause. William Merrell III was a leader of the Patriot forces in North Carolina in Rowan County, and joined the Overmountain Men at the Battle of Kings Mountain.
About four months after the Battle of Kings Mountain, William Merrell III disappeared. From information written later by a son, he was taken from his home by the British, others state by “night riders.” He was never seen again. His wife’s tongue was split so that she could not talk.
One of his sons was John Merrell. John Merrell also fought as a Patriot, but was not at the Battle of Kings Mountain. John Merrell later lost his eye when he was shot at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.
After the war, John Merrell, son of William Merrell III, returned to the Merrell homestead in Rowan County and married Catherine Rhodes. In 1798, he sold this land and with his wife and children moved to the border of today’s Henderson and Buncombe counties (Fairvew-Gerton). He bought his first property in this area on Aug. 13, 1800. He owned substantial acreages of land in today’s Henderson and Buncombe counties.
One of his daughters was Catherine Margaret Merrell who married Ambrose Jones Edney.

Mills Family Documented Background
Ambrose Mills came from England as a baby to Maryland with his parents and grandfather in the 1720s. After his marriage to Mourning Stone, he settled in Virginia. He later moved the family to the area of Wateree, S.C., some time in the late 1740s or early 1750s. His wife and children were killed by Indians at Pine Tree Hill in Camden County, S.C., during the Indian war of 1755-61. One son, William, was the only survivor.
By 1767, Ambrose had married Anne Brown of Chester, S.C. The couple had three more sons and three daughters.
In 1770, he bought 640 acres in today’s Rutherford and Polk Counties on both sides of the Green River. He established a trading post and a saw mill. His son, William Mills, moved to Rutherford-Polk with his father. The family was considered “wealthy” at this time in history, and owned several slaves.
During the Revolutionary War, Ambrose Mills was a Tory colonel with British Loyalist forces, a good friend of Loyalist Col. David Fanning, fought in several battles as a Tory commander, and was a commander of the Tory Cavalry at the Battle of Kings Mountain on Oct. 7, 1780.
William Mills also fought with his father at the Battle of Kings Mountain. William Mills, bleeding from wounds in his shoulder and heel and left for dead after the battle, was discovered by a party of Tories who had missed the battle because they had been foraging for food.
He came home to today’s Polk County and went to a cave on Sugarloaf Mountain on the border of Polk, Rutherford and Henderson Counties to hide from the Patriots until his wounds healed. This was close enough to his home for family members and others to bring him provisions. After regaining his strength, he fought with the Tories again at the Battle of Cowpens.
His father, Tory Col. Ambrose Mills, was captured during the Battle of Kings Mountain and taken to a field on Biggerstaff’s farm in Rutherford County, where he was hung by Patriots on Oct. 14, 1780. He was buried in a shallow trench some two feet deep. This site is now owned by the National Park Service and is part of the Overmountain National Victory Trail.
One of the prisoners reported: “At seven o’clock in the evening, they began to execute them. Col. Mills, Capt. Wilson, Capt. Chitwood and six others were hanged for their loyalty to their sovereign. They died like Romans, saying they died for their King and his Laws. What increased this melancholy scene was the seeing Mrs. Mills, take leave of her husband & two of Capt. Chitwood’s daughters take leave of their father. They then went to our fire where we had made a shed to keep out the rain. They had scarce sat down when news was brought (to Chitwood’s daughters) that their father was dead. Here words can scarce describe the melancholy scene, the two ladies swoon’d away and continued in fits all night. Mrs. Mills with a young child in her arms sat out all night in the rain with her husband’s corps & not even a blanket to cover her from the inclemency of the weather.”
In a letter to Patriot Gen. Smallwood, British Lord Cornwallis wrote: “The hanging of Colonel Mills, who was always a fair and open enemy to your cause, was an act of the most savage barbarity.”
In 1782, at the Rutherford County Superior Court of Law and Equity, court proceedings were held against suspected Tories. Much of the Mills land in Rutherford (and Polk) was confiscated.
After the Revolutionary War, William Mills took the Oath of Allegiance to the new nation, renounced his “treasonous activities,” got some of his land back, and sold this land in Rutherford and today’s Polk County. He moved into today’s Henderson County about 1785, where he bought substantial acreages of land over a 20-year period.
Two of William Mills’ daughters married the two Edney brothers – Samuel and Asa.

Documented Fact
It was 40 years after the Revolutionary War when Catherine Merrell, daughter of John Merrell and granddaughter of William Merrell III, married Ambrose Jones Edney, son of Asa Edney and Sarah Mills and grandson of William Mills.

Legend
It is passed down through family and oral tradition that Ambrose Mills was the person who turned Capt. Benjamin Merrill of the Rowan County Militia over to Gov. Tryon. Remember, Benjamin Merrell was the brother of William Merrell III.
Family tradition and oral history state that at the hanging of Ambrose Mills after the Battle of King’s Mountain (Biggerstaff’s Farm) it was William Merrill III who slapped the horse on which Ambrose Mills sat, avenging the death of his brother, Benjamin.
Family tradition and oral history state that William Mills, son of Ambrose Mills, was the leader of the “British” or “night riders” who took William Merrell III from his home four months after the Battle of King’s Mountain. The legend goes on to say that William Merrell III was taken to the same field on Biggerstaff’s Farm and hanged from the same tree that was used to hang Ambrose Mills. It is stated that William Mills “swung him off.”

Forrest Lyda, one of many hundreds of descendants of the union between Catherine Merrell and Ambrose Jones Edney, loved telling this story. A reporter with the newspaper in Forest City accompanied Forrest Lyda on a visit to Biggerstaff’s Farm in Rutherford County.
Quote from the story in the newspaper: “Two ancestors rise above their kin like apparitions because of their violent deaths. Their trails cross in a honeysuckle patch at a place where an old man, when he was young, was told by an older man that a famous tree once stood – a tree where horses galloped from underneath men with ropes around their necks.”