Three Patriots at Kings Mountain
South Carolina
This marker honors three African American patriots who fought in the Battle of Kings Mountain. Esias Bowman, John Broddy, and Andrew Ferguson.
On the seventh of October, seventeen eighty, frontier militia known as the Overmountain Men surrounded a Loyalist force on the wooded ridge nearby and destroyed it in about an hour. Historians call it the turning point of the Revolution in the South.
Black men are believed to have taken part. Their stories ran the full range of that hard era. One was a free man of color. One was a servant of Colonel William Campbell. Andrew Ferguson was born free in Virginia and drafted at just fifteen, going on to fight at Brandywine, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, and Eutaw Springs.
For generations their service went unmarked. This memorial finally records that they stood on that ridge too.
