Titles : Captain
Notes : Capt. James Chitwood was a Tory during the Revolutionary War and was captured and hung after the battle of King's Mountain, NC. "The names of the condemned Tories were ---Colonel Ambrose Mills, Capt. James Chitwood, Capt. Wilson, Capt. Walter Gilkey, Capt. grimes, Lieutenant Lafferty, John McFall, John Bibby, and Augustine Hobbs. They were swung off the Gallows Oak, three at a time, and left suspended at the place of execution. According to Lieutenant Allaire's account they died like soldier ....like martyrs, in their own and friends' estimation. "These brave but unfortunate Loyalist, says Allaire, 'with their latest breath expressed their unutterable detestation of the Rebels, and of their base and infamous proceedings; and, as they were being turned off, extolled their King and the British Government, Mills, Wilson, and Chitwood died like Romans.....The Poor Loyalist leaders had been left swinging from the sturdy Oak upon which they had been executed. No sooner had the Whigs moved off, than Mrs. Martha Bickerstaff, the wife of Capt. Aaron Bickerstaff who had served under Ferguson, and been mortally wounded at King's Mountain, with the assistance of an old man who worked on the farm, cut down the nine dead bodies. Eight of them were buried in a shallow trench, some two feet deep; while the remains of Capt. Chitwood were conveyed by some of his friends, on a plank, half a mile away to Benjamin Bickerstaff's, where they were interred on a hill still used as a grave-yard." Taken from the book "Kings Mountain and it's Heroes" by Lyman C Draper...from the website of Ancestors of Billy Ray Chitwood located at http:''www.family tree maker.com/users/c/h/i/Billy-R-Chitwood/GENE40016.html by Julie Chitwood
Events : 11 Oct 1780 + Hung as a Tory on Aaron Biggerstaff's farm. Buried unmarked in a cemetery nearby. (Rutherford, North Carolina, USA)

  

  

  

  

  

  

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