A Hole in His Head
- Barbara Lewis
- Dec 5, 2018
- 17 min read
Updated: Dec 6, 2021
Some years ago, my daughter, Laura, and I drove from Steeles Tavern to Greensboro, North Carolina, to see the Guilford Courthouse Battlefield where our ancestor, David Steele, lost part of his skull. To reach Greensboro from the Valley, you drive southwest toward Roanoke, skirting the Alleghenies and the Blue Ridge Mountains, and then head straight south until you reach Battleground Avenue. The trip took us three hours.
Our ancestor required seventeen days to travel the same route.
As Laura and I reach the battlefield visitor’s center, a volunteer asks us if one of our ancestors fought at Guilford. She knew of David Steele, the survivor of a hole in his head, without looking for him in the participants’ list of soldiers. I wonder if we can walk to the place where he fell.
“You can’t get to his part of the battlefield today because that section’s closed for repairs.”
I don’t ask her how one repairs a battlefield. Did somebody dig a trench in the middle of the night? Did a storm root up a thick tangle of trees? I can’t form these questions fast enough because I’m still in shock that the young volunteer at the ticket counter has heard of my ancestor.
We walk through the grounds, mostly sticking to the treed areas until we are bored. Too many guests plod through the battlefield that it’s nearly impossible to summon up the requisite tragic feel to the place. There are no ghosts lingering over these fields or in these woods today. All this wholesome, congenial racket has likely driven them away.
Back at the hotel, we call my dad’s cousin, Dot. “Come to my house and pick me up,” she tells us. “I’ll take you to dinner.”
Irene and Walter raised a big family in Steeles Tavern, and also at Walnut Hills, the farm where Cyrus McCormick invented the reaper. I never met any of Irene and Walter’s sons, but I knew their three daughters—my grandmother, Edith; her sister, Mildred, the mother of Cousin Lee; and Fair, who was Dot’s mother.
Cousin Dot grew up with my dad in Steeles Tavern and his sister, Jayne. During the Depression, Dot’s mother, Aunt Fair, found work in a dress shop in Richmond. Dot lived with her grandparents, Irene and Walter Searson, in their house in Steeles Tavern—the fancy one with the white pillars that’s now the Steeles Tavern Manor. Dot adored my father, and the affection was mutual. My dad lit up whenever he saw Dot, which isn’t surprising since Dot’s a bright light. It would be hard for anyone to remain dull around her. Nearing eighty-years-old, she’s still beautiful, naturally gracious and high-spirited, like a well-groomed, well-bred racehorse.
“Come in! Come in!” she greets us at her door. “I can’t believe you’re here! Wonderful! Wonderful! This is so wonderful!”
We sit in her kitchen and chat. The last time we saw each other was at my cousin Lisa’s wedding some years ago. I remember her standing by our table during the outdoor reception, talking to my parents and dancing to the music by herself, eager to pull her husband, Phil, onto a non-existent dance floor. Although I saw Dot on many occasions as a child, she’s never met Laura, but she soon charms my grown daughter, claiming her as family and quickly pulling her into an unearned intimacy, complimenting her on just about anything from her good driving, to her college education, to her strawberry blonde curls--all with a naturalness honed through a lifetime of charming others. Laura admires her straight off. Southern charm can be quite a super-power. Back in the hotel that night, Laura would say, “Why didn’t you teach me to charm people like that?”
Dot has some family memorabilia she wants to show us. I snap pictures of Irene’s beautiful needlepoint of flowers on black velvet that’s hanging by the door. Laura shoots a video of Dot being Dot since we are both enamored by her. She’s adjusting to being a widow and truly misses her husband, Phil. They enjoyed occasions when they could be a glamorous couple. She doesn’t like being alone, she says with a shrug. “But there’s just not enough older gentlemen to go around!”
Dot treats us to dinner at a local steak house and when we exit the car, she tells Laura she’s “the best driver in the family.” A young, handsome waiter comes to our table and she smiles naturally, earnestly, while she tilts her chin up and focuses on him like he’s such an interesting and delightful person he commands her complete attention. I swear she bats her lovely, long, black eyelashes. “You look like a clever young man,” she says.“I hope you can help us. Tell me, dear, what would you recommend? I’m certain you’d give us the best advice.” Laura shoots me a look like I’ve really let her down.
In spite of her practiced southern woman super-power, Dot strikes me as a straight-shooter. I ask her why she and Phil chose to live in Greensboro. “Mama lived in Roanoke and this was as close to her as I wanted to be.” She’s not interested in genealogy or the battlefield where our ancestor lost a skull bone. But she tells me snippets of her childhood in Steeles Tavern. Since she was raised by her grandparents, my great-grandparents, Walter and Irene, she considered them to be her parents. When Walter Searson died she was devastated. After emigrating from England, Walter became an avid baseball fan (and loved reading the New York Times). One afternoon he was sitting in the bleachers watching a local team. A young girl playing in a nearby car released the brake and the car rolled down an incline into Walter and crushed him. He didn’t die right away. “He suffered,” said Dot. “We couldn’t do anything for him.” Dot blamed the girl. Seventy years later, her eyes flash with anger. “That girl rode the bus with me. Every day I would sit on that bus and look right at her.” She stares at the imaginary girl who killed her grandfather as though she could drill a hole right through her even today. The Scots-Irish warrior spirit hasn’t gone far from Cousin Dot. I can’t help wondering how that girl fared growing up in such a small town after accidentally killing my great-grandfather.
At the Battle of Guilford Courthouse Visitor’s Center, you can watch a short film revealing the tactical maneuvers of the battle using an animated map. I’m quite fond of maps, although they’ve generally gone out of style. I find that it helps to study the layout of the land—the fences, woods, and fields, and of course, the courthouse. At the Visitor’s Center, there’s also a live-action recreation film of the battle. Would the soldiers who fought at Guilford ever have imagined that each year men would dress up to do exactly what they did that day? As I read the play-by-play of the battle, it seems to me that the actual soldiers on the battlefield hardly knew what was happening that day. I doubt they’d want to dress up and go through those fateful actions again.
The Revolutionary War is a long story told in sudden bursts. Sure, there were battles and skirmishes. But most of it was tedious and duller than mud. There was a lot of mud. Wait. Walk through the mud. Wait some more—without washing off the mud. Form lines. Fire. Fall back or advance. Finish fighting and walk somewhere else, usually through the mud. Sit around. Sing. Complain. Try to find some shoes. Wish someone would write you. Wish you knew how to write. Eat whatever they give you. Try to sleep on the muddy and yet still hard ground with one thin blanket.
For the first three years of the war, most of the major battles and sieges took place in the Northern colonies. After the French entered the war on the side of the Americans in 1778, the British shifted their focus to the South, seizing the key ports of Savannah and Charleston. The British devastated the American military in the South.
Gen. Nathanael Greene came to the rescue. Green, reputed to be Washington's most gifted and dependable officer, took command of the southern troops. When Cornwallis’s superior forces headed off toward Virginia, Green settled on a strategy of guerrilla warfare to prevent their advance. In early March, he welcomed reinforcements from North Carolina and Virginia, almost doubling the size of his army. These men knew about guerrilla warfare since they’d been practicing it for years against American Indians. Among these reinforcements were Valley men, including my ancestor, David Steele, who enlisted with James Tate’s Augusta Militia under Henry “Light-Horse Harry" Lee.
There are some players in this brief saga that I want you to meet: Gen. Greene who saved the south; his right-hand guy, Henry Lee; James Tate who led my ancestor, David Steele, at Guilford; Daniel Morgan, a brilliant strategist; and William Campbell, who recruited Valley men; and the bad guy, Banastre Tarleton.
Col. Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, father to Robert E. Lee, commanded the Continental cavalry under General Greene. Lee led a legion of highly mobile light troops that not only participated in major battles, but also disrupted delivery supplies, initiated skirmishes and raids, conducted surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and organized expeditions behind enemy lines. When Cornwallis moved his army into North Carolina, Lee's Legion entered South Carolina to intimidate Loyalists and harass the British. James Tate brought the Augusta Militia to join Lee and General Green at Guilford.
Tate was born in Augusta County, near Steele’s Tavern. Tate’s company was composed almost entirely of men from the Presbyterian congregations of Bethel and Tinkling Spring. These congregations were located a few miles from Steeles Tavern. Twenty-three of Tate’s soldiers are buried in the graveyard at Bethel Church. Daniel Morgan, famous for leading the American victory at the Battle of Cowpens, referred to Tate’s men as the “Augusta Riflemen.” Virginia sharpshooters proved to be invaluable at the battles of Cowpens and Guilford, helping to turn the tide of the war.
Now for a lesson in strategy. Two months before the Battle of Guilford, Daniel Morgan, the rugged wagoner who settled in the Valley, led Colonial forces in a surprising victory at the Battle of Cowpens. Morgan, along with his cousin, Daniel Boone, had served as a civilian teamster during the French and Indian War, and later as a rifleman, protecting western settlements from Indian raids. He took part in Dunmore's War, raiding Shawnee villages, along with many Valley men. Morgan's strategic plan at Cowpens took advantage of the longer range and accuracy of the Virginia riflemen who he positioned in the front line with other skirmishers, followed by the militia in the second line, with the regulars, the professionally trained soldiers, on top of a hill in the third line. After firing, the first two units withdrew, inviting a premature charge from the British that resulted in attacks from all sides, trapping the enemy. Morgan’s creative plan at Cowpens would be used again by Greene at the Battle of Guilford, albeit somewhat modified and not as effective. After Morgan’s victory at Cowpens, General Greene led his army north toward Virginia, pursued by Cornwallis. Greene desperately wanted reinforcements and reached out to William Campbell to bring him more men from the Valley.
William Campbell had fought in Dunmore’s War against the Shawnee and Mingo nations in 1774. He was a handsome, wide-shouldered, backwoods statesman and an educated landowner who married his good friend Patrick Henry’s sister, Elizabeth, and brought her home to the Valley. Campbell had trouble recruiting in Virginia where the people remained wary of attacks by the Cherokee and Loyalist. In the end, he was only able to lead sixty men to Guilford under Captain James Tate. As mentioned, these Valley men included the wagoner, David Steele.
Private David Steele of Midway (Steeles Tavern) enlisted in the militia as a wagoner, (serving under Captain James Tate as part of Col. “Light Horse” Harry Lee’s Regiment). Tate’s men assembled at David’s tavern, or so says tradition. Rev. James Waddell gave a parting address, most likely rousing the men to do their duty to God by protecting their liberties, homes, and families. David brought along a wagonload of needed supplies. Traveling with a wagon over rutted, often soggy, clay trails, and fording swollen creeks and rivers, proved an immensely difficult journey. From Steele’s Tavern, the company marched to Lexington, slogging along for seventeen days and reaching Green’s army on Saturday, March 10, five days before the battle. Having left Lexington on Feb. 26, the survivors among the Augusta Riflemen would not reach home again until March 23, a month later. I can’t imagine how difficult the trip home must’ve been for the wounded David Steele, traveling along that bumpy, rutted road, while still suffering from multiple sword blows.
The Augusta Militia joined “Light-Horse Harry" Lee at Guilford Courthouse and rested for four days. On the morning of the battle, Col. Lee rode out with thirty riflemen of the Augusta Militia, led by James Tate, to face the British dragoons of Banastre Tarleton's Legion. The resulting skirmish held up the British Army so that the Americans could fall into battle lines. James Tate died during this skirmish.
Some trivia on the man partially responsible for the near-death experience of David Steele, given entirely without bias: Banastre Tarleton inherited £5,000 on his father's death and squandered most of this money within less than a year on gambling and women. He then purchased a commission as a cavalry officer and proved to be a gifted horseman and leader of troops. He joined the main British Army to fight the colonies. Among American soldiers, Tarleton developed a bad reputation. Known as an aggressive commander, he became condemned as a butcher after survivors claimed he massacred soldiers who tried to surrender after a battle at Waxhaws. Reports of these atrocities motivated colonials to support various military efforts, such as joining up at Steeles Tavern to fight at Cowpens and Guilford. Tarleton’s troops were demolished at the Battle of Cowpens. He lost two fingers from a bullet to his right hand in the Battle of Guilford. After the surrender at Yorktown, the senior British officers were invited to dinner by their American captors; the only officer not invited was Tarleton. After returning to Britain, he was elected to Parliament, representing Liverpool, where he was especially noted for supporting the slave trade. He carried on a fifteen-year relationship with the actress and writer Mary Robinson (ex-mistress of the future King George IV) who he initially seduced on a bet. Not that I want to prejudice your views of him.
Back to the Battle of Guilford. Emulating Daniel Morgan’s brilliantly successful strategy at the Battle of Cowpens, General Greene divided his troops into three lines. The inexperienced North Carolina militia formed the first line, with skilled backwood’s riflemen flanking both sides. The Augusta militiamen were on the left flank. Greene placed the more experienced Virginia militia in the second line with other seasoned soldiers. Many men from Rockbridge and Augusta Counties were experienced combat soldiers and had participated at Kings Mountain and Cowpens. Two cannons stood in the center of the second line. Greene’s third and strongest line consisting of professional soldiers, including the Virginia regiment.
Picture this: Cornwallis marches toward the Guilford Courthouse. Wide plantation fields straddle the road. To the left are trees and more fields. Beyond the fields to the right woodlands extend for several miles. The road leads into a cleared area around the courthouse and passes through a fenced woodland. The American first line of defense and a six-pound cannon are positioned along the road. Men rest the points of their rifles along the fence.
The British see all this and then advance. The North Carolina front line of troops fire, inflicting casualties upon the British before fleeing through the woods. Reports of when and how they fled vary. I would like to point out that these men were farmers facing the best-trained army in the world. Also, soldiers from North Carolina weren’t the only soldiers to run away that day. Some soldiers who left the battlefield didn’t stop running until they reached home. Some “retreated into the western ridges of the Alleghany, (sic) and even to old age dreaded the approach of a stranger, as perhaps an officer for their arrest for desertion.” (Foote) Other inexperienced soldiers remained on the battlefield—and that floors me. One minute you’re hoeing your field and the next moment you’re pointing a musket at some guy you’ve never met. And then you fire! Or maybe you misfire. But then you stand there and let him shoot you! Samuel Houston, who climbed a tree to get a better view, recalled that some men “made such haste in retreat as to bring reproach upon themselves as deficient in bravery, while their neighbors behaved like heroes." (Foote)
After the first line broke apart, the British found stiff resistance from the second line. Soldiers from both sides exchanged numerous volleys and also fought in the underbrush. Although suffering significant losses, the British maneuvered around the American flank to hit Greene’s third and final line of experienced soldiers. Cornwallis directed his officers to fire on the Americans as well as his own men. Greene eventually ordered his forces to break off the counterattack and leave the field, opting to save his army for another day.
But let’s back up again. The Augusta riflemen who had been in the first line reformed as part of the second line after the North Carolinian’s line broke. Then once the British forces moved beyond the first line, Lee's detachments in the southern flank of that second line, including Campbell's riflemen, withdrew and followed a narrow path into the southern woods. Part of the British line followed them. A bloody skirmish ensued, a short distance from the main battlefield, where Lee and Campbell and their American troops pressed hard against the British outliers.
Hearing the raucous, Tarleton led half his legion into the southern woods to relieve the British forces engaged with Lee and Campbell’s men. But just as he approached, Lee’s men went off to help the third line of fighting men in the main battle, leaving Campbell’s men outnumbered. (Campbell blamed Lee afterwards for letting him down.) Overtaking Campbell’s men, Tarleton’s dragoons rode down and sabered many soldiers who were now retreating, including my ancestor, David Steele. Samuel Houston wrote that these men were "obliged to run, and many were sore chased and some were cut down.” Some of the killings occurred after Greene’s surrender, deepening the hatred toward Banastre Tarleton.
While retreating, David’s kinsman, Samuel Steel, shot one of the British dragoons who was chasing him, but two other soldiers finally caught up with him and forced his surrender. “He refused, however, to give up his gun, which he afterward succeeded in reloading, and then put his captors to flight.” (Waddell) Samuel Steele died of old age near his home in Waynesboro, Virginia. David had most likely waited by the supply train, protecting the wagons, but he, too, was attacked. “David Steele, of Midway was cut down in the retreat and left for dead. He revived, and came to live to old age. Foote states that the scar of a deep wound over one of his eyes painfully disfigured him. Several persons who often saw the old soldier, have informed us that his face was not disfigured at all. His skull was cleft by a sabre (sic) and to the end of his days he wore a silver plate over the spot." (Waddell)
The Battle of Guilford Courthouse proved pivotal to the American victory in the Revolutionary War. The largest battle of the Revolutionary War's Southern Campaign lasted less than three hours. The Continental Army serving under Greene inflicted heavy losses on the British, eroding their control of the South. Cornwallis’s victory cost a quarter of his army. One British statesman quipped, “Another such victory would ruin the British army.” Six months later, Cornwallis surrendered to Washington after the Battle of Yorktown. The war would continue another two years.
I attempted to read about the entire Revolutionary War to make sense of the Battle of Guilford. Studying the Revolutionary War battles reminded me of reading a fictional narrative. You can’t just pick up a novel and read a section in the middle and understand the implication of that particular chosen scene. As with a novel, every action in war connects to a previous action and also helps to determine what will happen next. With novels and stories of wars, events don’t make much sense without understanding the characters involved in those events. That's where the novel metaphore breaks down. Novels are so intimate. I feel like I’m searching through Google Earth, trying to find tiny figures moving around on a battlefield. How can we possibly understand the people who lived during this pivotal time in our history when they are so far away?
I can't say I know Cousin Dot and I've spent time with her! Even my dad remains a mystery to me.
While I'm at this I just have to ask the question that has nagged me since I was a kid: Why did they have to go to war? Did you ever wonder that? We’re supposed to be proud of our ancestors for fighting Britain. The way we’re taught in school, the war was inevitable. But was it?
The French and the British had divvied up competing tribes for years, encouraging animosities. War spread overseas. British coffers suffered after helping Americans win this French-backed war with the American Indian. But the British had tried to keep colonist out of trouble by forbidding settlements west of the Appalachians. Did we listen? No, we settled Ohio.
We'd been functioning like an independent nation. Taxes rudely reawakened us to our colonial situation. What a surprise! Americans eventually settled on saying they wanted to be able to vote in Parliament on whether to tax themselves. Would they have done so? Would they have been able to raise money to send to Britain after throwing a million dollars of tea into the Boston Harbor?
Should the British have backed off and forgotten about the imaginary bill they’d wanted to send to the colonies? They certainly didn’t make any money fighting the Americans! What were they going to do with a group of people they ended up fighting for so many years? How could they possibly govern these patriots? Sigh. When I ponder the whys and wherefores of the Revolution, the patriotic fervor that I’m supposed to feel as an American sizzles, causing a mild headache.
Of course, once the war started, the colonists had to fight—and who’s fault was that? The British! Thank goodness! I can end my tale by saying that my ancestors were only defending their homeland. Because the Valley joined the war when the war came to the Valley. Then again, the Scots-Irish never claimed to love the British, not for at least a thousand years before the Revolution. So, they probably didn’t need a lot of encouragement to go and fight the Brits after their families and neighbors and properties became truly threatened. They certainly proved to be good at fighting.
As Laura and I leave Greensboro and drive back through the Shenandoah Valley, none of this makes any sense. Fighting? War? The patchwork of gentle hills and fields with occasional stands of forests make the Valley seem the likely home of Hobbits, not warriors. The Shenandoah Valle is tame land, gently cultivated, the edges of the place rounded and quielty subdued. We drive through stretches of green vales waiting to be greener, rimmed by mountains receding in layers of hazy blue waves. But back in the eighteenth century, my kin fought to subdue this land and anything else that stood in their way. They farmed, hunted, and went to church—and all of it was a struggle, including their fiery faith. They also shot at people, either Indians or the British, or at least some of them did. That’s the truth! That’s my history! Can’t walk away from the truth.
Look at me judging my ancestors! But did David go off to war with hate in his heart for the British? Hate can only take you so far. Love for the fellows who went with him to battle, fear for his family back home, and a deep sense of duty and abhorrence of shame—these feelings are what David must’ve experienced going off to war, holding him there during the battle, and giving him the strength to crawl off the battlefield after enduring seventeen blows to his head and body. I’m proud of him for these personal strengths. Proud and grateful since if he was a different sort of man, I wouldn’t be here today. (His son, John, my ancestor, came into being after David returned to Steeles Tavern.) But I look down on David from a million miles away and he’s still this tiny speck, a dark figure sitting on his porch, looking across the dirt yard toward the flour mill, his kids playing near the creek while his wife, Polly, does the laundry in her washing bucket. Do I know him yet? No, but I’m still trying to discover who he was, along with all the others, and the more I circle the clearing, the more I grow closer to knowing the Steeles of Steeles Tavern.
Yet sometimes I can’t help wondering if it’s me I’m circling. Why would I spend so much time searching through the dead and forgotten bones of my family, if I wasn’t on some kind of personal quest? Is it them I want to know? Or myself? Will the telescopic lens of a history-finding Google Earth search engine help me to uncover the traces of these people hiding inside me? Am I finding the traces of the original dust that makes me human? The traces that none of us can shake? Hasn’t that myth or reality—depending on your point of view—inspired the eternal American quest to leave the past, our former homelands, and our parent’s parents? Yes, and this is also my truth.
We take the past with us because we are all born of the same stock, which makes us, in our vast potential and inherent weakness, all part of the same family. I am them; they are me. I am you; you are us. I wonder if David would agree with this way of viewing the world. Would he call me his kin as I call him mine? I’d like to think he would, and since he’s dead and I’m writing this on his behalf, I’ll say that he claims me and I can therefore make this kinship claim part of my truth. I can do this because this is my narrative, which as long as any of my family remains among the living will continue to unfold before me.
Barbara H. Lewis
Comments