Item #100298 1812 Burke County North Carolina Land Indenture Agreement SIGNED by Joseph Cowan, a Soldier present at the Battle of Ramsour's Mill.
1812 Burke County North Carolina Land Indenture Agreement SIGNED by Joseph Cowan, a Soldier present at the Battle of Ramsour's Mill.

1812 Burke County North Carolina Land Indenture Agreement SIGNED by Joseph Cowan, a Soldier present at the Battle of Ramsour's Mill.

1812. Joseph COWAN/COWEN was born in 1753 in COWAN's FORD, NC, and died October 30, 1835 in NC. The battle was fierce on June 20, 1780, when a group of Whig Militia met some 1300 local Tories from the Lincoln County area at Ramsour's Mill on Clark's Creek near the present town of Lincolnton. The Whig victory at Ramsour's Mill was a significant step in the sequence of fighting in the South that subsequently produced major victories for the Colonists at King's Mountain and Cowpens, but to Joseph COWEN and many other Whig participants at Ramsour's Mill the question of the price for Independence was preeminent.

Joseph was wounded in the battle and would lose the precious gift of sight in one of his eyes. His duty at Ramsour's Mill followed his service "under Captain Robert Smith of Colonel Thomas Polk's Regiment of the North Carolina line of the Continental Establishment." This was not the local militia or the home guard, this was the primary army of the Colonists serving under the direction of General George Washington.

He enlisted in Mecklenburg County, NC where he was residing at the time of enlistment for one year on or about May 1776. He joined the Regiment at Wilmington and marched to Hedley's Point near Fort Sullivan in South Carolina. He was in one engagement near Fort Sullivan on Bald Head Island in the Bay. He returned to Wilmington and marched on north Halifax in Virginia. He marched and counter marched in the Southern Campaign and was discharged from service in Wilmington about April or May 1777.

As Joseph COWEN trudged the miles from Ramsour's Mill to his home at COWAN'S FORD, on the main branch of the Catawba River, his thoughts most likely would of been turned to the devastation caused by the fight for Freedom. Perhaps Joseph could not have envisioned he would again be in battle on February 1, 1781, as he and other Patriots would contest the crossing of the Catawba near his home at COWAN'S FORD by the mighty British Army of Lord Cornwallis.

Joseph's first wife, mother to his son John, remains unknown, his second wife was Nancy BUCHANAN. Their children were: Joseph b. 1800, William b. 1804, Patsy b. 1806, Nancy b. 1808, Elizabeth b. 1810.

The Revolutionary War Pension file for Joseph of Haywood County, indicates he married in 1799 in the month of April, May or June, in Burke County to Nancy. The marriage is the second one for Joseph, since the Burke County 1790 Census showed Joseph's family included 3 males and 3 females.

Joseph's Pension File also quotes Joseph and Nancy saying they moved from Burke County, and his enlistment was from Mecklenburg County, NC. Other interesting excepts from his pension file are "Was inscribed on the Roll of North Carolina at the rate of $8 per month, to commence on the 8th day of May, 1776."

It also mentions that Joseph was a Hatter by trade and is unable to work and is helpless and lives with a son and 3 daughters who are poor and take care of his old wife and himself." It also states that Joseph did not know that he was entitled to a pension until he met an old friend who told him so about two years ago when he himself had applied for one.

The reason of his not applying for a pension before this has been first, that he was ignorant of the course to be followed and second that when he did so the papers were made out wrong and he got nothing.

The Certificate of Pension was issued the 13th of May, 1826. Joseph lived in a remarkably challenging era, and his commitment to achieving Independence for the Colonies has been left for us in scraps of history scattered around the Catawba River. The most obvious and lasting evidence of this history is the Ford for which the COWEN/COWAN'S will always be identified, granted to Joseph Cowen on August 7, 1787, and the site of Lincoln County's other Revolutionary War Battle. Item #100298

Price: $750.00

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