Up a Tree

"Bloody" Bill Cunningham appeared briefly in my last post because records show he was responsible William Cunningham for the death of one of Sharon's distant cousins, Dannett Abney, during the American Revolution. I didn't really have space to go into much of his background but wanted to return to his story.  Imagine my surprise when I found that Cunningham had also participated in a battle involving another of Sharon's ancestors, Capt. John Weir, at the Battle of Kings Mountain. (See "Kings of Kings Mountain, published on April 9.) I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, but it was a serendipitous coincidence. Remember that  the Revolution went beyond the war against Britain and was very much a civil war as well, pitting American loyalists, or Tories, against revolutionaries -- Whigs or patriots. Much of Cunningham's involvement, and the worst of his behavior lies in this civil war aspect. Cunningham originally enlisted in a South Carolina Whig militia

 You sort of have to feel sorry for Georgia. In the War Between the States, aka the Civil War, Georgia became the focus of General William Tecumseh Sherman, who devastatingly marched through the South near the end of the war and set Atlanta on fire.  But I was surprised to find that Georgia featured prominently in the end game of the Revolutionary War as well. Much of the focus at that time fell on Savannah. As I mentioned in the last post, Sharon has relatives who were members of state militias during the Revolutionary Way. Pvt. Michael Abney lies in her direct line of succession, which makes him a great-great-great something or other. Michael appears on a roster of soldiers from South Carolina along with six other Abneys. Given that families back then seemed to love using a sometimes limited number of names, even with large broods of children. I'm pretty sure the men are all related, but I was only able to determine that Michael three brothers with names that appear in the roster