Brigadier General Andrew Pickens was an influential Patriot leader from Abbeville County. Of Scots-Irish and French Huguenot descent and of the Presbyterian faith, he and his family came to Abbeville from the Waxhaws. He soon married Rebecca Calhoun, one of the survivors of the Long Cane Massacre.

Pickens was a noted military leader during the Second Cherokee War, using tactics he had learned from the Cherokees against them. The Native Americans nicknamed him “Skyagunsta,” meaning Esteemed Warrior, after the Ring Fight, acknowledging that even though he was an enemy combatant, they respected him. 

When the Revolutionary War began, Pickens joined the Patriots and distinguished himself at the Battle of Kettle Creek. When Charleston fell in 1780, Pickens accepted a parole from the British government and agreed to stop fighting, but when Loyalists attacked his family and burned his home in Abbeville, Pickens personally informed the British that since they had broken the terms of their agreement to him, he was no longer bound by his promise not to fight. He rejoined the Patriot army and fought in the Siege of Ninety-Six and the Battle of Eutaw Springs. His militia was a crucial part of the victory at Cowpens, a major success for the Patriots.

After the war, he joined the House of Representatives and worked to stabilize relations between the settlers and the Cherokees, brokering the Treaty of Hopewell. Despite fighting against them in his earlier days, he had admiration for them, and was known to host Cherokees at his home. He is buried at the Old Stone Church in Clemson.

John Bowie came to America from Scotland in 1762 and settled on Long Cane Creek, building a home with his wife, Rose. After the Revolution began, he was commissioned as a Captain in the 5th SC Regiment in 1776. Bowie’s military career was closely entwined with that of Andrew Pickens, with both men heavily involved in mobilizing area Patriots.

John Bowie’s years in the Patriot Army gave him the opportunity to serve with noted men such as Nathanael Greene and Daniel Morgan, but he was close friends with his fellow Scotsman Andrew Williamson, a man who gained local notoriety when he turned away from the Patriot cause. Bowie was invited to Williamson’s home ostensibly for drinks, but on arriving, realized that his old friend was also entertaining British officers. Bowie tried to persuade his friend not to join them, even moving Williamson to tears, but it was too late. Bowie’s son later said of his father, “I believe he pitied [Williamson’s] treason but continued to love the man.” Although John Bowie was wounded during the siege of Savannah, the cause of liberty was dear to him and he continued to fight until the end of the war, being promoted to the rank of Major.

After the war, he operated the Abbeville Arsenal and served as a Justice of the Peace and as Clerk of Court. Bowie died in 1827 at age 87, and his grave can be visited in Upper Long Cane Cemetery.

Aside from Andrew Pickens, another military leader from Abbeville who played a key role in the war in the backcountry was James McCall, who was part of almost twenty engagements. Of Scots-Irish descent, he lived in the Long Cane settlement, and got involved early in the war by serving as one of the SC Minute Men in 1774 and then as a captain of the SC Rangers in 1775.

Initially his duties centered on protecting Western South Carolina from Cherokee attacks, but in 1776, he was put on a secret mission to track down Loyalist Alexander Cameron. Instead, he and his men were captured by the Cherokees. McCall alone managed to escape, and went on to be a part of many major events across South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina. 

He worked closely with General Andrew Pickens and Elijah Clarke, a Georgian Revolutionary leader, with these three men establishing local militias as a force to be reckoned with. McCall was in the Battle of Kettle Creek alongside Andrew Pickens, as well as Musgrove Mill in nearby Laurens, Ninety-Six in nearby Greenwood, the Battle of Long Canes in McCormick, where he suffered wounds, and Cowpens, the battle that tipped the scales in the Patriots’ favor.

However, after being a part of the Patriot victory at the Battle of Dunlap’s Defeat in Abbeville, McCall became ill with smallpox. Although he had escaped death multiple times throughout the war, he succumbed to the sickness and died in May of 1781, before the end of the war.

Patrick Calhoun was instrumental in the settling of Abbeville. Formerly, before being given the name “Abbeville” by John de la Howe, this area was part of the Old Ninety-Six District. Calhoun was the leader of a group of Scots-Irish settlers who migrated to South Carolina in the 1750’s. Calhoun was an appointed land surveyor who laid out the original plats of land in the Abbeville area. He and his family were attacked in the Long Cane Massacre of 1760, where he lost his mother, but after the hostilities abated, he returned to Abbeville. Although he was a member of a local militia, his main impact during the years surrounding the Revolution was political. Patrick Calhoun was one of the first in the backcountry to speak out against taxation without representation, and he criticized the King in Britain for using the backcountry settlements as a buffer from the Cherokees but not offering them representation politically. He was elected as the first representative from the backcountry when he joined the South Carolina Assembly and secured voting rights for the settlers in Abbeville. During the Revolution, he participated in the First and Second Provincial Congresses held in 1775 and 1776,  and became the first General Assembly member from Abbeville.  He advocated for independence from Britain, telling his son, John C. Calhoun, that “government is best which allows to each individual the largest liberty compatible with order and tranquility… improvements in political science consist in throwing off restraints.” Calhoun, like his contemporaries Andrew Pickens, Alexander Cameron, and Andrew Williamson, managed his property with slave labor. He died in 1796 after a nosebleed that hemorrhaged while he was riding back from a political meeting in Columbia.

James Birmingham was a young frontiersman who lived near Penny Creek in Abbeville County. He married his wife, Mary Parker, at Upper Long Cane Church in May of 1775, and was a member of the Long Cane militia, which was part of the Ninety-Six Regiment. 

That summer, there was unrest in the area, as local Patriots had ransacked the Loyalist Fort Charlotte in McCormick, and attempted to remove its ammunition to Ninety-Six, a town of strategic importance, but were met by a show of Loyalist force. Tensions simmered throughout the summer as Patriots and Loyalists vied for control of munitions.

The situation reached a head in 1775 at the Battle of Ninety-Six, the first major land engagement in the South. The Long Cane militia, including James Birmingham, was posted at the Ninety-Six fort to defend the settlement when a force of 1,800 Loyalists launched an attack on November 19th to recover a shipment of gunpowder earmarked for the Cherokees. The ensuing battle lasted for three days and ended in a stalemate, but James Birmingham lost his life in the fighting.

This young man from Abbeville was the first South Carolinian to die in the Revolutionary War. Today, a monument for Birmingham can be seen at Star Fort in Ninety-Six, remembering his sacrifice.