- [Narrator] If you and your neighbor fought on different sides of a war and he lost, what should happen to him?

What about his family?

246 years ago, in the thick of the American Revolution, a group of patriots dealt with that question right here in the North Carolina foothills.

They were fresh off the Battle of Kings Mountain, a patriot victory that Thomas Jefferson said changed the course of the war.

In its aftermath, the patriots held a trial under torchlight and decided to hang nine of their loyalist prisoners from an oak tree.

Some were neighbors, some even family.

Why did they do it?

We weren't sure.

So we dug deep into local history.

- As unpleasant as it is, it seems to have had its desired effect.

- [Narrator] And to the untold stories kept alive by the descendants of this once divided community.

- All people from around here had friends and neighbors and even family that they had issues with.

It's been called the First Civil War, and I think that's pretty fitting.

- [Narrator] This is "Homegrown History."

[bright folk music] Our first stop is the Genealogical Society of Old Tryon.

- We have all kinds of great materials.

Marriage records, some land records, it's like the land grants.

We also have family histories.

- [Narrator] Folks have been working with the Society to find out who their ancestors were since 1973.

Folks like Ricky Toms.

Ricky tells us that years ago, he discovered that two of his ancestors from this area fought on opposite sides of the Revolutionary War.

- [Ricky] It was my grandfather, Horace [indistinct] Toms, and Clara Bushstock.

- [Narrator] To understand why neighbors ended up on opposite sides, you have to understand what was at stake and how personal the war had become.

After years of stalemate in the North, the British bet everything on the South.

A string of major victories in Charleston, Camden, and Augusta gave them confidence.

A British officer named Major Patrick Ferguson was appointed to train and lead a corps of loyalist militia to secure the region.

One of the men who joined the British cause was Ricky's ancestor, Jonas Bedford.

For months, people in this county had been caught in the middle with both patriot and loyalist raids tearing through the area.

Jonas himself had lost 300 cattle to the patriots.

They threatened to burn his home and take his life.

- They were both raiding and stealing and abusing women and children and everything else.

And once it got started, you know, it was a retribution against a retribution.

- [Narrator] Some men, like Jonas, fled the region, hoping if they were gone, the patriots would leave their families alone.

For those who stayed, hope came in September, 1780 when Ferguson set up a loyalist recruitment headquarters at a nearby settlement called Gilbert Town.

Hundreds joined up.

Ricky Toms thinks he knows why.

- The people that had something wanted to hang on to it, just like they do today, and they wanted to, you know, carry on, hand it down.

They didn't want to lose it.

And probably one of the bigger things was that they, they were fearful, and these people, whether they had something or not, but especially those who were more fortunate, they didn't want to take a chance with an upstart country, an upstart bunch of patriots that was hollering, "More representation, less taxes," all this stuff, 'cause odds are, they wasn't going to make it.

- [Narrator] Ferguson's mission was to secure the Western flank for the British.

He warned the patriots to stop raiding loyalists and to lay down their arms, or he would march on them.

But those threats backfired, provoking over 1,000 men to come down from the mountains and foothills to fight.

This patriot militia became known as the Over-Mountain Men.

They marched hundreds of miles to find them and clashed with Ferguson's forces at the Battle of Kings Mountain.

The patriots prevailed.

Ferguson and over 200 loyalist men were killed.

The biggest setback for the British was that over half of their soldiers were taken prisoner.

It was a decisive patriot victory, and a bloody battle fought almost entirely by colonists, not British-born soldiers.

Almost everyone on both sides was a southerner, and in many cases, a North Carolinian.

The reality was, at the Battle of Kings Mountain, you might run into someone you know on that hilltop, and they might be fighting on the opposite side, which is what Ricky Tom said happened to his patriot ancestor, Captain James Withrow.

- His brother-in-law was a Tory, and the Tory got wounded during the battle and fell, must have been in pretty bad shape.

And he called out to his brother-in-law for help, and he let him know right quick and said, "Look to your friends for help.

I'm not in that business.

I'm on the other side."

- [Narrator] So what happened after this famous victory?

The showdown of neighbors against neighbors and family against family.

- No one knows for sure where the graves are, but I cannot definitely say, but somewhere in this general area, were probably the grave sites.

- [Narrator] We're heading into the woods with Chivous Bradley, a county historian whose ancestor was one of nine loyalists executed here.

This is the Biggerstaff Plantation.

One week after the Battle of Kings Mountain, a column of weary patriots transporting hundreds of loyalist prisoners set up camp here.

They'd marched through horrible conditions.

It was raining, it was cold, food was scarce, men were deserting every night, and it was here where all that bad blood between the colonists reached a tipping point.

Patriot Colonel William Campbell convened a tribunal that accused high ranking prisoners of robbing, burning houses, and murder.

Once the idea of a tribunal took hold, it snowballed.

The patriots accused, judged, and sentenced approximately 36 prisoners to death.

One report says a man condemned his own cousin.

Revolutionary War pension records and diaries paint a vivid, bleak picture of what happened that night.

As darkness fell, torches were lit.

The families of the condemned were there.

Wives and children following the column, hoping their loved ones would be released.

The weather turned, and in the gloom of that cold, miserable October night, the hangings began.

The nooses were slipped around the condemned men's necks, and they were led to a large oak tree.

A loyalist prisoner named Uzal Johnson described a tragic scene in his diary.

The daughters of one prisoner sought shelter from the rain after being convinced their dad would be released.

The women had hardly sat down when the news came that he'd been hung.

One report stated Colonel Ambrose Mills asked his own wife to tie a handkerchief over his eyes before his hanging.

Mrs.

Mills also appeared in Uzal Johnson's diary.

This is what he said.

"Mrs.

Mills, with a young child in her arms, sat out all night in the rain with her husband's corpse and not even a blanket to cover her from the inclement weather."

Nine men died that night, some of them just miles from their home.

The next morning, the column marched out, leaving the bodies swinging from the oak tree.

After they left, Martha Biggerstaff and a farm hand cut the bodies down.

Eight were buried in shallow graves on her property.

The ninth was carried by his sons on a plank to a nearby hill for burial.

Chivous can trace his lineage to Ambrose Mills, but he also can trace his lineage to a loyalist soldier who was tried and spared that night.

- It just reminds me of how fragile relationships are and how that it was brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor in this battle.

- [Narrator] Today, the hanging tree is long gone, but locals believe it once stood here.

- As we stand beside of this young white oak, there's the possibility that this tree came from an acorn, off of the original hanging tree that was just a few feet away from this site.

So it's very possible, and it just gives you something to think about.

The fact that this unpleasant thing happened in Rutherford County, but it was an important thing, because while you say that the Battle of Kings Mountain was a turning point, the hanging of these nine loyalists might have really been the turning point because it discouraged any other local citizens from becoming loyalist soldiers anymore.

- [Narrator] In 2007, Chivous heard this property was for sale, so he worked with county leaders and private citizens to acquire it.

- [Chivous] I've seen so much development going on.

I felt like the public ought to have an opportunity to see this history and it not be destroyed.

- [Narrator] So what happened to this once divided community after the war ended?

That question brought us here to Brittain Presbyterian, a church older than the nation itself.

Our tour guide is Leonard Hutchins, who's been a member here for his whole life.

- After the Revolutionary War, we changed the spelling, so it would be separate from England's Britain, and we put the extra T in, just so we would be distinguished that we were no longer part of England or the British.

We were The United States.

- [Narrator] Over a dozen patriot soldiers are buried here, including one who died of his wounds on the march home from Kings Mountain.

The Over-Mountain Men stopped here to bury him just two days before the hangings at Biggerstaff.

And it's here where we find a headstone for Ricky Toms's patriot ancestor, James Withrow, the man who oral tradition says refused to help his injured brother-in-law at the Battle of Kings Mountain.

The fate of Ricky's loyalist ancestor Jonas Bedford holds clues to what happened to the folks who were on the losing side after the war.

Many loyalists lost everything.

Jonas Bedford was one of them.

Jonas escaped after the Battle of Kings Mountain and continued fighting for the British.

After the war, he sailed to England to seek financial restitution for his losses.

His wife, Mercy, stayed behind with their kids and was left nearly destitute.

Five years after Jonas left to fight with Ferguson, Mercy finally got help.

In 1785, the state passed an act for the relief of Mercy Bedford, granting her and the children Jonas's land, the power to sell what remained of his estate, and collect on his debts.

Others left the state entirely, starting over in places where nobody knew which side they'd been on.

And today, many descendants of the loyalists and patriots who experienced the violence and change of the revolution are still here, rooted in the same place, connected to the stories and sacrifices of their ancestors.

- I'm just as proud of, and this is Jonas Bedford the Tory, and that's James Withrow the patriot.

I'm just as proud of one as I am the other.

I've got some of both of 'em in me, and they help make me what I am.

I'm not bragging for no, but I think that's true everybody here.

Everybody can learn and feel close to their ancestors and learn what they went through and appreciate them and appreciate the past and appreciate the present, and hopefully pass it down and appreciate the future.

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