Author: Joel Keith Harris / Joe Edwin Harris Jr
Having worked on my family history for several years and having looked at many Internet websites for information concerning various ancestors, I note a scarcity of information about my sixth great grandfather Samuel Johnson of Wilkes County, North Carolina. His life span (1757-1834) covered a most important part of our country’s history. Samuel, along with his cousins and neighbors, fought and nearly gave his life, in the defense of his homeland against disgruntled Native Americans and the marauding British Army. I was first introduced to Samuel through the genealogical studies of cousin Mary Lynn Johnson Richards who spent decades unveiling our family tree. Mary and many others used their bloodlines to Capt. Samuel as an entry to the Daughters of the American Revolution, and yes, others joined the SAR.

Samuel’s story began with his birth in Fauquier County, near Richmond, Virginia in 1757, the sixth child of Jeffrey Johnson III 1722-17 88 and Rachel Walker d. 1816. Rachel was the daughter of George Walker and Frances Hardwick. This Johnson line has been traced and documented back through Jeffrey Johnson I who died in 1726 in King George County, Virginia and who was living in Greater Wiccocomicoe Parish, Northumberland County, with his father John Johnson in 1663.

Like most colonial families, the Johnsons vied for land grants and toiled the soil and reaped the bounty of the forests in the fertile Virginia valleys as they worked their way south into western North Carolina. Jeffery Johnson III, Samuel’s father, brought his family into Wilkes County about 1771 when he received land grants on the Yadkin River. With the help of slave labor, notably two gentlemen referred to in Jeffrey IlI’s will as Harry and Ned, the Johnson family, working long and hard, became quite prosperous.

On the 1830 federal census for Wilkes County, Samuel and family were listed as owning ten slaves. Though he fought for his own freedom and that of his countrymen, he wasn’t quite ready to change the system that held black men in bondage. From all accounts of his deeds, there is no reason to suspect that there wasn’t considerable respect shared by all occupants of the Johnson plantation. There was work to be done by all from which all could benefit. Young Samuel worked the family’s farm near Roaring River until he reached manhood and made the acquaintance of William Lenoir and joined the militia as a gentleman soldier.

Sam was well documented as having participated in several raids against the Cherokees under the command of Lenoir and also that of Ben Cleveland. In 1779 he, according to Lyman Draper, “commanded a mounted company against Tories in the Fayetteville region” and “served on Cleveland’s New River expedition in early 1780”.

Additional biography submitted by Joe Edwin Harris Jr., for Wyoming Society:

By the fall of 1780, Samuel Johnson was a 23-year-old Wilkes County backwoods farmer. With little formal education he depended greatly upon a keen sense of out door know how rather than upon his unusual ability to read and write. These fiercely independent backwoods people had been little threatened by the northern war of the American Revolution, now five years old. Not yet married, Samuel Johnson was eager to volunteer for militia duty when the call for able-bodied men was made. Enlisting in Captain Benjamin Cleveland’s Company of North Carolina Volunteers as a private in 1776, Sam Johnson was eventually promoted and awarded an officer’s commission.

After many years of fighting to a stalemate in the northern colonies, England had changed military strategies and moved an army under the command of British General Charles Cornwallis into South Carolina. Within weeks Cornwallis’ troops had overrun the entire colony. It was this southern invasion that aroused the inhabitants of Virginia (also included West Virginia and Kentucky), North Carolina (included Tennessee), South Carolina, and Georgia to gather a volunteer army to stop and eliminate the British threat in the south. Now four years later Colonel Benjamin Cleveland’s crude minuteman unit, consisting mainly of about 400 Scot-Irish descendents was again mustered for service. 23-year-old Captain Samuel Johnson from Wilkes County was one of those minuteman volunteers. Cleveland’s little brigade marched to an area called Quaker Meadows near where modern day Morganton, NC is located. Joining another force of over-mountain men hailing from valleys west of the Alleghenies, the combined strength of frontiersmen assembled reached approximately 1,600 patriots.

For several days in steady rain this militia group followed one of General Cornwallis’ Loyalist Regiments numbering about 1,100 men until trapping it atop the crest of Kings Mountain, South Carolina. On October 7, 1780, about 3 o’clock in the after noon in a misty rain, this volunteer militia of over-mountain men formed in a horseshoe around the base of the mountain behind their mounted leaders. As they began to close the noose of the encirclement, Loyalist pickets began to skirmish. At that moment, a coordinated assault was launched. From the crest in their defensive positions the Loyalist rained down volley after volley of fire, but the densely wooded sides of the mountain provided the attackers with cover. As the militia clawed their way near the summit of Kings Mountain, the Loyalists now facing possible destruction charged from their positions with fixed bayonets. It was reported by witnesses of the battle that – Samuel Johnson, “rushed his men forward into the most dangerous and exposed position.” Amidst the chaos Captain Samuel Johnson sustained a bullet wound through his abdomen. There were, also, a number of bullet holes in the skirts of his coat. Wounded in action, Captain Johnson continued to issue directions and shout encouragement to his men without regard to his own safety. Another eyewitness reported that Captain Johnson’s immediate reactions upon enemy contact resulted in the successful accomplishment of his mission but not before 5 of his neighbors were killed in action. While the combat lasted approximately an hour, to one of the attackers, the mountain appeared, “volcanic; there flashed along its summit, and around its base, and up its sides, one long sulphurous blaze.” The violent description of the attack to secure the summit of Kings Mountain could be summed up as a complete victory for the volunteer militia. This combined force of over-mountain men volunteers had slain 225 Loyalists, wounded 163, and taken 716 prisoners, with a loss to themselves of 28 killed and 62 wounded.

During Samuel Johnson’s lifetime, he repeatedly said that the gun- shot wound to his body would have been fatal had it not been that for three days before the battle he had not eaten. Constantly on the move as they tracked the Loyalists to Kings Mountain, they did not stop and eat or rest. They consumed tack and water on the move. This deprivation resulted in the empty condition of his bowels and was therefore attributed to his escape from death and helped in a speedy recovery.

Samuel Johnson was married to Mary Hamon in Wilkes County on June 25, 1782. Soon after their marriage they settled on the headwaters of the Roaring River in what is now Traphill, Wilkes County, NC. They lived out their lives there and are buried on the old home place, in what is now called the Old Newt Johnson Cemetery. Samuel Johnson was 77 years old at his death. The Johnson’s produced nine children. The youngest, Rachel Walker Johnson, is my great-great-great Grandmother.

Various affidavits and testimonies on file in the Revolutionary War Pension files state, “Captain Johnson was known as a brave man, and most effective officer and soldier during the Revolutionary War. He was highly esteemed by the citizens of the country and entitled to distinguished consideration for his service.”