William Berry

William Berry

• BIRTH 1743 - Augusta County, Virginia, USA
• DEATH 6 Mar 1781 (aged 37–38) - Guilford County, North Carolina, USA
• BURIAL Burial Details Unknown
• MEMORIAL ID 185423621 · View Source

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/185423621/william-berry

William Berry was born about 1743 or 1744 on his parent’s farm, which was situated in the upper reaches of a tributary of the North Fork of the James River within the Borden Tract in Augusta County, Virginia. No documentation exists for any specific events that may have occurred to him during his childhood, but indirect evidence makes it clear that he grew up in a rural frontier environment on the outer fringes of British colonization in the mountains of Virginia.

Things were quickly changing for these English colonists, though, and during the late 60s and early 70s (the 1760s and 1770s), political winds favored westward expansion of these frontier English settlements that had previously been geographically confined by French North American colonial claims. William’s father, Thomas Berry Senior, had been born in Northern Ireland in 1718 and migrated to the American colonies, probably through Pennsylvania with his father, the elder James Berry, during the 30s and 40s. During the 60s, after the passing of his father, the elder James Berry, and in response to the ever-changing geopolitical climate, Thomas Sr. gradually divested himself of his Augusta County land holdings and moved again. By 1770 he had moved his family to the Holston River valley in southwestern Virginia, and the direct documentary evidence for his son William Berry begins during this period.

William Berry participated in some of the military campaigns that affected the frontier settlements of North Carolina and Virginia during the Revolutionary War. Extensive documentation of the participants in the Battle of Point Pleasant which took place in the fall of 1774 indicates that William Berry definitely did not serve in any of the militia units involved in that battle, but he certainly could have served in the Battle of Long Island Flats in the summer of 1776, the subsequent punitive campaign against the Cherokee tribes led by Col. Christian later that year, and other militia deployments against the Cherokee and Shawnee and the King’s Mountain battle in the fall of 1780.

The only definitive information about his military service comes from a Revolutionary War pension application made by a fellow soldier, Thomas McSpadden, who served in the same militia company as William in early 1781. In the application, Thomas McSpadden noted that his militia company, under the overall command of Col. Campbell and the same unit he had served within the King’s Mountain Campaign where he served with William’s brother James Berry (although the relationship between William and James was not stated), was called up again a few months later in the spring of 1781.

By that time the company was led by Captain James Montgomery, replacing Capt. Edmondson who had been killed the previous fall at the King’s Mountain battle. Since Thomas McSpadden had served in the same company in the fall of 1780 and William Berry was a member of his 1781 company a few months later, it seems logical to presume that William Berry could also have served in the King’s Mountain battle the previous fall. Unfortuantely, there is no documentation to support this theory. In his pension statement, Thomas McSpadden noted that the company was involved in a skirmish at Whitsell’s Mill on the Haw River in North Carolina while pursuing General Cornwallis’ troops, and William Berry was killed as the men retreated in the face of superior firepower.