Event
The clash at Hart’s Mill on the Eno during Cornwallis’s occupation.
From the state marker“Grist mill. Site of key Regulator meeting, 1766, and skirmish in 1781 that boosted the Patriot cause. Stood 1/5 mile N.”
State historical marker: G-122: Hart's Mill
1 work about Hart’s Mill skirmish, February 1781 is indexed here.
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Chronology entries for this event, in date order. See these 5 dated events in the chronology →
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first.
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
Mary Claire Engstrom's article on the Hartford mill complex on the Eno and its fortunes during the Revolution, centered on Thomas Hart, who died in 1808. Nine pages with a facsimile and a portrait, printed in 1979.
Included because: Its title names this subject.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this event. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this event itself.
Stewart E. Dunaway's transcription of letters exchanged between Jesse Benton and Thomas Hart from 1780 to 1790, concerning Hart's affairs at Hartford, his place at Hillsborough. The letters concern the economic and social conditions of Hillsborough in the eighteenth century and the Revolution in North Carolina. Self-published through lulu.com in 2009, 68 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, and part of the library's Wall Local History Collection.
Stewart E. Dunaway's account of the Battle of Lindley's Mill, fought in September 1781 after the Loyalist David Fanning raided Hillsborough and carried off Governor Thomas Burke. Burke, Fanning and the Lindley family, whose mill gave the fight its name, are the people at its center, with the Revolutionary campaigns in North Carolina as the frame. Published in 2009.
Stewart E. Dunaway's life of Edmund Fanning (1739-1818), the colonial officeholder in Hillsborough whom the Regulators singled out and who left North Carolina as a loyalist, together with the Fanning family's genealogy. Self-published through Lulu in 2011, 223 pages with illustrations, facsimiles, genealogical tables and maps. Topics include American loyalists and Hillsborough and Orange County biography and genealogy.
A reference work by Jeffery Bright and Stewart E. Dunaway on the Revolutionary War campaigns in North Carolina's Piedmont, among them the 1781 battle at Clapp's Mill. This new edition, privately issued in 2013, runs to 466 pages with illustrations, maps, a bibliography and an index.
The second series of the Colonial Records of North Carolina, the documentary edition begun in 1963 to follow William L. Saunders's ten volumes of 1886 to 1890. Its first volume, Mattie Erma Edwards Parker's edition of the charters and constitutions of 1578 to 1698, came from the Carolina Charter Tercentenary Commission; later volumes, starting with the colony's higher-court records of 1670 to 1696, were issued in Raleigh by the state's archives and history agency.
David Fanning's own account of his years as a Loyalist partisan in North Carolina, 1775 to 1783, including his 1781 raid on Hillsborough, where he captured Governor Thomas Burke. Edited by Thomas H. Wynne and first printed privately at Richmond in 1861, it was reissued in 1865 by Joseph Sabin of New York with an introduction by John H. Wheeler and notes partly by former governor David L. Swain; 86 pages.
The Battle of Clapp's Mill, fought on March 2, 1781, on Beaver Creek in present Alamance County, when Otho Williams's light troops, with Henry Lee's Legion and militia, ambushed Banastre Tarleton's British cavalry shortly before Guilford Courthouse. Rollin M. Steele Jr. argues that the skirmish was a turning point of that year. Alamance County was formed from Orange in 1849. Printed by the author in the early 1990s, 215 pages with an index.
Algie Innman Newlin's short study of the Battle of Lindley's Mill, the 1781 engagement in which Whig militia caught up with David Fanning's Loyalist column on its way from Hillsborough with the captured governor. Published by the Alamance Historical Association in 1975, 30 pages with maps and a bibliography.
North Carolina politics from 1763 to 1776, and the disputes with Britain that carried the colony into the Revolution, in a short study by Lindley S. Butler. It was number 6 in the Bicentennial pamphlet series of the state's Division of Archives and History, published in 1976, 81 pages with illustrations and a bibliography.
Sources and research tools for this event. Research guide: Follow an event across several accounts.
Books from OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection that provide broader context. They may not discuss Hart’s Mill skirmish, February 1781 directly.
A roster of Revolutionary War soldiers, patriots and other ancestors buried in North Carolina and the sites of their graves, compiled by the North Carolina Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution and published in 2007 with sketches by Morgan Harris. Unpaged and illustrated.
Subjects in the OCPL catalog record: Cemeteries -- North Carolina; Tombs -- North Carolina; United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Veterans OCPL call number: NC 973.3 REVPicture: The state historical marker for Hart's Mill (G-122) near Hillsborough, 2009. CC BY 2.0. Photograph by the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough; via Wikimedia Commons
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