Battle of Great Cane Brake Traditional Cache
Battle of Great Cane Brake
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Placed on the 240th anniversary of the Battle of Great Cane Brake, the only battle of the American Revolution fought in Greenville County, SC. Patriots under the command of Colonel William Thomson routed the Loyalists, whose leader, Major Patrick Cunningham, abandoned his troops and fled on horseback.
The battle site, the south side of the creek to the Reedy River, is now on private property. The formal historical marker is located on Fork Shoals Road.
“In 2009 the original maker, placed here in 1941, was moved from the south side of the creek, which flows into the Reedy River, to a more accessible location.” (Friends of History, 2011)
“By this time an expedition under Colonel Richard Richardson was already on its way into the back country to arrest the leaders of the Royal party. Richardson decided that his mission was not affected by the truce signed at Ninety Six and proceeded to carry out his instructions.12 Receiving intelligence that the most active leaders of the opposition were encamped on Cherokee land, he dispatched a force under Colonel William Thomson, which surprised the Tories on the morning of December 22 and defeated them in the Battle of Great Cane Brake. Since this is the first mention of this officer, it will be appropriate to note that Thomson, and not Thompson, is the correct spelling of his name.13 Most of the Loyalist band were captured; Patrick Cunningham escaped to the Cherokee Nation. The Great Cane Brake was located on Reedy River in the southern portion of present Greenville County. The only location Colonel Richardson gives us is that the site was a long march of nearly twenty-five miles from his camp at Hollingsworth's Mill on Raborn's Creek (in present Laurens County, and the modern spelling is Rabon Creek).14 Luxuriant growths of cane were quite common in river valleys of the up country before the Revolution.
This is in fact where Reedy River derives its name. It is also to be remembered that Greenville County was still Indian land at this time, and presumably had been spared the inroads of settlers, with their cleared fields and domestic animals. The place where Thomson and Cunningham had their action would have been one of those virgin cane brakes which so impressed the. first inhabitants of the back country.15 Two days before Christmas .of 1775, a snowstorm began in the northern part of South Carolina which lasted continuously for thirty hours. Colonel Richardson's men were compelled to march back to the Congarees through a fifteen inch accumulation of snow, many of them suffering frostbite as a result. The expedition has ever since been known as the Snow Campaign.16”
12 Gibbes, Vol. 1, pp. 222-223.
13 Letter from William Thomson to Henry Laurens, November 28, 1775 (original manuscript in S. C. Archives Gibbes Collection).
14 Gibbes, Vol. 1, pp. 242-244, 246-248.
15 John H. Logan, A History of the Upper Country of South Carolina, pp. 9-10; Louis De Vorsey, Jr., The Indian Boundary in the Southern Colonies, 1768-1775, p. 133.
16 Gibbes, Vol. 1, p..247.
By Terry Lipscomb, Names in South Carolina, Vol.XX, Winter 1973, , English Dept., University of SC, p.20-21. See http://gaz.jrshelby.com/greatcanebrake.htm
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(Decrypt)
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