Nancy Hart

A Patriot of the American Revolution for GEORGIA. DAR Ancestor # A051652

Nancy Morgan Hart (c. 1735 – 1830) was a heroine of the American Revolutionary War whose exploits against Loyalists in the Georgia backcountry are the stuff of legend. Because stories about her are mostly unsupported by contemporary documentation, it is impossible to entirely distinguish fact from folklore. According to the most famous story about her, during the Revolution a group of "Tory" soldiers (5 or 6) came by her house either looking for food or a Whig they were pursuing. The soldiers demanded that she cook them one of the turkeys in her yard before they left. She sent her daughter to the well for water and secretly instructed her to blow a conch shell to warn her husband and neighbors.

She agreed to feed the Tory soldiers. As they entered the cabin, they placed their guns by the door and sat down at her table to eat. As they were drinking and eating, she was pushing their guns through a hole in the wall of her log cabin. After they had been drinking a sufficient time, she grabbed one of the remaining guns and threatened the men not to move. One ignored her threats, so she killed him. Another made a move toward the weapons and was also killed by Hart. The remaining Tories were held captive until her husband, Benjamin Hart, and neighbors arrived. According to legend, her husband wanted to shoot the soldiers, but she demanded that they were hanged. They were hanged on a nearby tree.

There exist various versions of this story, all of which agree in general, but provide different details. McIntosh quotes two such stories. Cook provides another version from an 1825 newspaper.

Construction crews working on the Elberton and Eastern Railroad in the area in 1912 seemed to have validated this story. While grading a railroad site less than a mile from the old Hart Cabin, the workers found five or six skeletons buried neatly in a row. They were estimated to have been buried for at least a century. She killed one of the soldiers. Mrs. Louisa H. Kendall, whose uncle was John Hart, son of Nancy Hart, wrote a letter in 1872 recalling some of the stories her mother had heard from Nancy Hart. According to this letter, once when she was taking a bag of grain to the mill, a band of Tories forced her off her horse and threw the grain on the ground. Undaunted, the muscular, six-foot Nancy picked up the heavy bag and walked the rest of the way to the mill. The letter also tells about Nancy acting as an unofficial Revolutionary War sniper, killing Tories as they came across the river.

McIntosh also quotes a Mr. Snead, who was related to the Harts, about a time when Nancy was cooking lye soap in her cabin when she discovered a spy looking in through the cracks in the wood chimney. She splashed the boiling soap into his eyes, then went outside and tied him up.

There are two stories about Nancy dressing as a man (and perhaps acting “crazy”), entering Tory camps and gaining information of military value.

Sources:

• Nancy Hart (Morgan)
• Wikipedia
• Geogia Encyclopedia
• Updated from MyHeritage Family Trees via brother John Morgan by SmartCopy: Dec 29 2014, 18:25:31 UTC

GEDCOM Source

@R-2146341906@ Ancestry Family Trees Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network. Original data: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members. This information comes from 1 or more individual Ancestry Family Tree files. This source citation points you to a current version of those files. Note: The owners of these tree files may have removed or changed information since this source citation was created.

GEDCOM Source

Ancestry Family Trees http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/AMTCitationRedir.aspx?tid=6369526&pid=...

Nancy Ann Morgan-Hart and her Rev War Husband, Benjamin Hart are the documented GGGG grand parents of the manager of this memorial. Nancy's grave in the Book Cemetery, is on private land and not accessible by the general public who would like to visit her and her son John's graves. The condition of this small cemetery should be a great embarrassment to the local DAR and SAR chapters and to Henderson County as well, as all like to claim title to her fame yet do little or nothing to honor her or her family's contribution to the American Revolution. This grave should be exhumed and relocated to the grounds of the park in Elbert County, GA where the family cabin was rebuilt and to where her claim to fame was serving with the Georgia Militia during the American Revolution

• Reference: Find-A-Grave

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More about Nancy Morgan Hart

http://tree ===
More about Nancy Morgan Hart http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=document&guid=52d4c391-6fc3-4611-94f...

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Headstone of Nancy Morgan Hart

http://tr ===
Headstone of Nancy Morgan Hart http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=63c258cb-462c-475a-b9ac-a...

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Nancy Morgan Hart medallion

http://trees ===
Nancy Morgan Hart medallion http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=3bdfeaa5-59c1-4e55-b3d5-1...

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Hart County, Georgia is named for Nancy

Hart County, Georgia is named for Nancy Ann Morgan Hart. A web site about her life may be found at http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/6651.

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Are there any primary sources that actually connect Ann Morgan and Benjamin Hart to Thomas Morgan?

The reason I ask this is because there are at least two records that connect Ann (Nancy) Morgan Hart to Mark and Sarah Hinton Morgan of Orange Co., North Carolina.

Mark Morgan actually deeded land over to Benjamin Hart and Sarah lists "Ann Hart" in her will.

Are there any sources that are as good as that which her to Thomas Morgan? I understand that a lot of secondary sources list him as the father, but, it now appears that she was actually the daughter of Mark and Sarah Morgan of Orange Co., North Carolina.

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Nancy Morgan Hart

http://trees.ancestry. ===
Nancy Morgan Hart http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=document&guid=f463823a-b367-421c-92a...

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Nancy Ann Morgan Hart

http://trees.ances ===
Nancy Ann Morgan Hart http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=document&guid=52965f2b-dddd-4a83-bd9...

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Nancy Morgan Hart

http://trees.ancestry. ===
Nancy Morgan Hart http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=b511fa11-4d92-4265-aa8e-c...

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Nancy Morgan Hart Painting

http://trees. ===
Nancy Morgan Hart Painting http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=6e1ae565-bc26-4f59-bb40-6...

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Nancy Morgan Hart

http://trees.ancestry. ===
Nancy Morgan Hart http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=f262b3b0-dde0-4791-8c36-9...

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16616031/nancy-ann-hart