Patriots: the Family Man

Elijah Clarke (1732-1799), hero with a hook nose.  I have a thing for noses.  General Elijah Clarke was one of the men of whom fictional character Benjamin Martin in The Patriot was based.  We get the man closely tied to his seven children, whose home was burned by the Tories, in Elijah Clarke.  One of his younger daughters was named Susanna, which is where the screenwriters had a field day creating a tear-jerking traumatized little girl who could not speak after losing her mother.  Gets me everytime.

 

Hannah Arrington was Elijah Clarke's wife.  She was a strong, muscular woman of Scots Irish descendent, whose parents settled at Winyah Bay, where the Marions built Goatfield.  They say that Hannah was a quiet woman, but when she spoke she spoke with authority.  She followed her husband from camp to camp during the Revolutionary War, bringing the children with her.  The Tories burned their home to the ground while they were away.  Hannah refused to let the enemy break her spirit.  She nursed the wounded on both sides of the battles.  Sounds like a great lady.  Unfortuately I am not descended from her.

Elijah Clarke was from the Outer Banks, son of immigrants.  He was born the same year as both George Washington and Francis Marion.  Elijah wasn't schooled and had no money, so he took his new bride to the free and newly ceded lands from the treaty which ended the French and Indian War in the mountains of Georgia.  This guy fought both Indians and the British during the Revolutionary War.  He survived mulitple wounds, Small Pox, and the Mumps.  He fought under Andew Pickens in Georgia, leading a successful charge to win the battle at Kettle Creek.  Pickens and Clarke fought together again in the two month battle for Augusta.  The British took over a good bit of South Carolina and Georgia in 1780, so Clarke had to travel through Indian country to try to retake Augusta.

Elijah's son John left school at 14 to fight alongside his father, and by 16 he was a captain.  I believe the Gabriel Martin character has some John Clarke in him.  The Clarkes led guerrilla style raids on the British and colonial Loyalists at Musgrove's Mill, Cedar Springs, Wofford's Iron Works, Fishdam Ford, Long Cane, and Blackstocks, in addition to Augusta.  Elijah Clarke was rewarded at the close of the war with a plantation.  He served in the Georgian government, as did his son John.  Elijah was something of a libertarian, insteadof something like a sandwich: he got into trouble trying to create an independent republic on Creek Indian land.  I guess you can't win them all.