The legend the myth of Polly Slocumb

Illustration from The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales, Traditions and Romance of Border and Revolutionary Times

Story By Thomas Byrd

When I was growing up in the Faison-Calypso area of northern Duplin County in the 1930s and 1940s, going to Goldsboro was always a treat. Somewhere north of Mount Olive, after we had crossed the Wayne County line, was a monument by the highway — US 117 — that had a lot of writing on it. We must have stopped on one of our trips and read the writing because there was too much to read from a passing car. The writing said a Mary (Polly) Slocumb once lived in a nearby house and that she jumped out of bed one night and rode a horse all the way to Moores Creek after dreaming her husband had been killed in a battle there.

After graduating from Calypso High School in 1950, I went down to Wilmington and worked a couple of years for the (old) Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. On free Sunday afternoons, a

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buddy and I would explore the surrounding countryside, and one of our excursions took us to Moores Creek Battleground. We saw trails, signs and monuments. The tallest monument had the statute of a woman on top and writing below about Polly Slocumb’s ride, and in front of the monument were the graves of Polly and her husband, Colonel Ezekiel Slocumb.

Thus, by age 20, I had seen where Mary (Polly) Slocumb began her ride and I had seen where she ended it. What further proof did I need that Polly Slocumb was once a flesh-andblood, horse-riding woman?

I now fast-forward to April 2017 when Christopher Fonvielle, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, spoke to members of the Sampson County Historical Society. His topic was the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, fought 27 Feb 1776, in the opening days of the American Revolution.

In his address, Dr. Fonvielle mentioned Mary (Polly) Slocumb, and then added, “As you know, Polly was from here in Sampson County.” Later, I told Dr. Fonvieville I had always heard Polly was from Wayne County. “In fact,” I added, “there’s a monument to her a few miles north of Mount Olive.” “Is the monument still there?” he asked.

“I’ll find out the next time I’m over that way,” I promised.

After two slow drives along what is now US 117 Business, and one on-the-ground search, I gave up on finding Polly’s monument and called Kenneth (Ken) Dilda, retired history professor at the University of Mount Olive and president of the Mount Olive Area Historical Society. Ken said the Slocumb monument was now on the grounds of Southern Wayne High School.

Ken then told me the story of Polly’s ride dates back to 1848, when New York writer Elizabeth Ellet published it in her book, Women in the American Revolution. “But,” he added, “many people down this way no longer believe Polly’s story.”

When Ken finished elaborating on that bombshell, I knew I had lots of catching up to do. I began catching up at Southern Wayne High School, where I read for the first time in about 70 years the following words on Polly’s monument:

NEAR HERE WAS THE COLONIAL HOME AND BURIAL GROUND OF COLONEL EZEKIEL AND POLLY SLOCUMB OF REVOLUTIONARY FAME, DURING TROUBLESOME TIMES, POLLY, DISTURBED BY A DREAM, AROSE AND THROUGH THE DARKNESS ON HORSEBACK, SOUGHT HER HUSBAND ON THE BATTLEFIELD OF MOORES CREEK SEVENTY MILES AWAY, WHERE SHE FOUND HIM SAFE AND THE PATRIOT FORCES OF THE COLONIES VICTORIOUS OVER THE TORIES. THE REMAINS OF EZEKIEL AND POLLY SLOCUMB WERE REINTERRED IN MOORES CREEK BATTLEFIELD PARK IN SEPTEMBER NINETEEN TWENTY NINE TO EVERMORE QUIECAS IN PEACE.

Legend debunked?

Over the next two years, my “catching up” took me to the Wayne County Library and Courthouse in Goldsboro, New Hanover County Library in Wilmington, North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, and back to the Moores Creek battleground in Pender County. Then after spending hours online studying public documents and newspaper articles, I no longer

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believed the story about Polly either. The legend had been debunked, to my satisfaction, by people like Clyde B. King, J. Michael Hubbell and John Braxton Flowers III. Then I began wondering how the myth got started in the first place? I had always heard, “Where there’s smoke, there is fire.” Thus, I began looking for the fire beneath Polly’s story.

I began my search by looking at the life of writer Elizabeth Ellet. Mrs. Ellet was born Elizabeth Fries Lummis in 1818 at Sodus Point, N.Y., married William H. Ellet in 1835, and moved with him in 1836 to Columbia, S.C., where he was a professor of chemistry at the University of South Carolina.

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Continued from page 42

While living in Columbia, Mrs. Ellet began writing for literary and historical publications. In 1845, Mrs. Ellet moved without her husband to New York City, which at the time was feeling the first stirrings of the women’s suffrage movement. She contributed to that movement by publishing three volumes on women in the American Revolution. The first volume, published in 1848, contains stories of 34 women, the first of whom was Mary Washington, mother of President George Washington. The 29th woman was Mary (Polly) Hooks Slocumb.

Polly was born 10 Feb 1760, in Bertie County, a daughter of Thomas Hooks, Sr. and his wife Ann. In January 1771, when Polly was 10, Thomas Hooks purchased 657 acres of land on the south side of Goshen Swamp in Duplin County. (Deed Bk. 3, p. 464.) On a current map, the land would be in the Friendship Community, about five miles southeast of Faison.

Hooks was an officer in the Duplin militia and a justice of the Duplin Court.

Apparently, Mrs. Ellet never met Polly, for she said her information about her came from someone who “enjoyed the honor of ... [Polly’s] intimate friendship” ...(and) “I am permitted to give his account, copied almost verbatim from notes taken at the time.” Mrs. Ellet’s goal, as set forth in the preface, was to tell stories of women from all walks of life and from all 13 colonies. But, she added, finding good source material on many of the women was a challenge.

Dead Men’s Field

Much to my surprise, Mrs. Ellet wrote two stories about Polly. It seems that Polly had two traumatic experiences during the American Revolution, and each of them provided the imaginative Mrs. Ellet with a “peg” on which to hang a story. Here is the background for the first Polly story:

After the battle of Moores Creek Bridge, North Carolina stayed relatively free of troublesome Tories and British troops for five years. Then in February 1781, British troops under the command of Major James Craig seized Wilmington to set up a supply base for General (Lord) Charles Cornwallis, who was preparing to move his army from South Carolina into North Carolina and on to Virginia.

On 26 Apr 1781, His Lordship with about 2,000 soldiers set out once more for Virginia and in early May the British passed a mile or two west of Ezekiel and Polly Slocumb’s plantation in Wayne County. Circulating around Cornwallis’ “regiments of foot” were about 250 dragoons, commanded by 27-yearold, flamboyant Lt. Colonel Banastre (Bloody Ban) Tarleton. Most Patriots fled in terror as the British approached, but not Polly, for here is how she met the “invaders,” according to Mrs. Ellet: “Polly is sitting on the piazza of her ancient-looking mansion one beautiful spring morning with her sister, child and servants when a splendidly dressed British officer [later identified as Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton] dashes up, accompanied by two aides and a 20-man guard. Tarleton raises his cap, bows low, and asks Polly if she is mistress of the plantation.

“No,’’ answered Polly, “it belongs to my husband, who is away.” “Is he a rebel?” Tarleton wants to know. “No sir,” Polly answers. “He is in the army of his country, and fighting against our invaders; therefore not a rebel.” “I fear, madam, we differ in opinion,” Tarleton responds.

The British colonel then informs Polly that “the services of his Majesty require the temporary occupation of your property.”

Later Polly excuses herself to oversee the preparation of an elegant meal for her unwanted guests. She then presides over the partaking of the meal with dignity, grace and barbed wit.

When a captain asks Tarleton if he might have the Slocumb Plantation “when we conquer this province,” Polly injects, “The only land in these United States that will ever remain in the possession of a British officer will measure six feet by two.” Sounds of gunfire interrupt the meal, and Tarleton orders a captain to investigate. Soon, Polly sees her husband, accompanied by two other men, and her 13-year-old brother Charles Hooks, turning their horses into the plantation

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lane. But by jumping a fence, Lt. Slocumb and his companions escape into a nearby woods amid a “shower of bullets.” By this time, Colonel Tarleton, astride his horse, is charging with his full command into the battle. When the fighting ceases nearly half of his men are on the ground, and the place they fell is forevermore known as Dead Men’s Field.

The ride to Moores Creek

Although Polly had made her alleged ride to Moores Creek over five years earlier, Mrs. Ellet tells that story last. Here is the gist of what she wrote, again using many of Polly’s words:

“The men [militia] left on Sunday morning... More than 80 went from this house with my husband ...I slept soundly...that night and worked hard the next day.”

On Monday night, Polly wakes from a dream in which she sees a “body covered by her husband’s great-coat, bloody, dead, with other dead and wounded on the ground around him.” She leaps from bed and says aloud, “I must go to him.”

Polly hands her child to a servant, saddles her mare and gallops down the road taken by the militia.

“About sunrise I came upon a group of women and children, standing and sitting by the road, each showing the same anxiety I felt.” When asked “if the battle had been fought,” they didn’t know but thought Caswell had taken the road to the right of the Wilmington Road. Polly takes the road to the right, also, and about 9 a.m. begins to hear cannon and musket fire, and those sounds guide her to the battlefield. Polly sees a body, just as she has seen in her dream. But when she pulls back the coat, she discovers the dead man is not her Ezekiel. She then starts caring for the Patriot wounded, which she numbers at about 20. Caswell stops by “and ... is about to pay some compliment, but I interrupt him by asking, ‘Where’s my husband?’ To which he replied, ‘Where he ought to be, Madam, in pursuit of the enemy.’”

Then Caswell asked Polly why she was there, to which she replied, “I thought you would need nurses as well as soldiers.” As Polly is lifting the head of a wounded soldier to give him a sip of water, she hears a familiar voice.

Looking up, she sees her startled husband, Lt. Ezekiel Slocumb, “bloody as a butcher and muddy as a ditcher,” who asks, “Why, Polly, what are you doing here, hugging Frank Cogdell, the greatest reprobate in the Army?’” “I don’t care,” Polly replied. “Frank is a brave fellow, a good soldier.” “True, true! Every word of it,” said Caswell. “It was his company that forded the creek, and penetrating the swamp, made the furious charge...which decided the fate of the day.”

Sometime after dark, Polly ends her nursing duties, and Caswell promises her an escort if she will wait until daylight to return home. But determined to see her child, Polly leaps again on her mare and gallops 70 miles back home, where her child “runs to meet her.”

Truth meets legend

Each Polly story contains snippets of truth. Caswell, with whom Polly converses at Moores Creek, was Colonel Richard Caswell (1729-1789). Frank Cogdell (1743-1786) was a sergeant in the Dobbs Militia, which was part of Caswell’s command. Polly had a brother, Charles Hooks (1768-1843), who would have been 13 years old in 1781.

Mrs. Ellet correctly states that Charles later served in both the N. C. General Assembly and the U.S. Congress before moving to Alabama, where he died in 1843.

But, most of what Mrs. Ellet wrote about Polly was false. Mrs. Ellet says in the preface to her book that her goal was to write “with tenderness and feeling, something that only another woman could understand.”

Having two Polly stories enables one to see a pattern in Mrs. Ellet’s writings that could be missed by examining just one story. They are basically love stories, set in a time of war, which is still a winning formula for selling books and movie tickets.

In both stories, Ezekiel is a hard-driving lieutenant taking the fight to the enemy, while Polly is the dutiful wife supporting Ezekiel to the hilt.

In her ride to Moores Creek, she supports him with her bravery and stamina. In her encounter with Tarleton, she supports

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Ezekiel with her “cool head” and fidelity, for the dashing British Colonel was said to be “oh-so” handsome with a wellused eye for the ladies. Yet, in the presence of 21-year old Polly, whom Mrs. Ellet described as “charming,” Tarleton remains the perfect gentleman.

But to find the fire beneath the Slocumb stories, I had to delve deeply into the military records of Polly’s husband, Ezekiel, and her father, Thomas Hooks, Sr.

In August 1832, Ezekiel went before the Wayne Court and proved his eligibility for a federal pension for his service during the Revolution. (National Archives, File No. 7526) Those papers show that Ezekiel’s first tour of duty began in April 1780, or over four years after the battle of Moores Creek Bridge. Furthermore, Ezekiel’s pension papers, which total 19 pages, suggest Mrs. Ellet invented the fictitious tale of “Dead Man Field” to show that Polly’s beloved Ezekiel was a better soldier than “Bloody Ban” Tarleton.

Ezekiel Slocumb was two months shy of his 19th birthday with a 2-year-old daughter and a pregnant wife when he began his first Revolutionary War service, as a private, in April 1780.

Presumably, Ezekiel hurried home to Polly, who had given birth to their second child, Jesse, on 20 Aug 1780. Ezekiel reported to Hillsborough as ordered and continued serving with the Wayne militia until discharged in November 1780.

Ezekiel’s second tour began in August 1781 and lasted 10 months. This time he was a sergeant in a mounted troop of Wayne militiamen who rode through the counties of John-

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ston, Wayne, Lenoir and Duplin, quelling unrest among disappointed Tories as the war came to a close.

Needless to say, no one has ever found a place called “Dead Men’s Field” in Wayne County or anywhere along Cornwallis’s line of march through North Carolina.

After the Revolution, Ezekiel Slocumb became a man of affairs in Wayne County. He was appointed captain of his local militia district, which corresponded roughly to what is now Wayne’s Brogden Township. Eventually, he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, which made him commander of all militia forces in Wayne. Thus, upon his death on 4 Jul 1840 at the age of 80 years and 16 days, his tombstone rightfully identified him as “Colonel Ezekiel Slocumb, a Patriot in the Revolution.”

In 1810, the editor of the Raleigh Star asked Jesse Slocumb, Ezekiel and Polly’s only son, to write a brief history of Wayne County, and he was asked specifically to comment on events that occurred during the Revolution. Here is what Jesse wrote:

“Nothing remarkable occurred during the Revolution. The British under the command of Cornwallis marched through the county and with the aid of Tories (of which the county afforded no inconsiderable share) did some mischief by plundering and destroying stock. I must, however, do the County the Justice and myself the pleasure to say that it afforded opportunities too for Brave and worthy Patriots at a time when the word Patriotism meant love of country and not love of Party.”

SE

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