Stirring Up a Hornet's Nest: - UGA Laboratory of Archaeology ...

Behind the crowd—probably about 100 people including the 30-piece band—three-old fashioned glass-top fruit jars stood on
the ground, each almost filled with red dirt, and each wrapped in a plastic bag. On each jar was a masking tape label. Beside
each jar was a hole, and behind each hole was a tombstone.
Those jars, as unpretentious as they looked, were what the ceremony was all about. The dirt in the jars was what was left of
two soldiers of the American Revolution, Lewis Flemister and Richard Peteet and Peteet’s wife Delphia. Another tombstone
stood nearby in memory of Capt. James Cartledge, who also was being honored, but whose remains could not be located
(Whyte 1974:60).
Whyte also recorded additional details about the D.A.R.’s veteran grave recovery and relocation program
that was being implemented at the Kettle Creek monument. Whyte recounted a conversation with Mrs. Lou
Singleton, a prominent D.A.R. officer:
‘Next year I hope we’re going to move Abraham Simon,’ Mrs. [Lou] Singleton said when she took time from scooting back
and forth across the clearing arranging relatives, D.A.R. members, speakers and visitors. ‘He was a Jew. After he died, his
widow married Jesse Mercer. Simon’s money—he was very wealthy—went into the founding of Mercer University. They
say he was buried standing up with his gun in his hand. Said he was ready to meet the devil.’
‘There are plenty of soldiers around. Last year we moved Maj. John Lindsey. We were really digging in his grave because he
was known as Silver Fist Lindsey. He lost his arm over at the Battle of Long [Cane] Creek ‘cross the river. [Lindsey] Had a
silver prosthesis. We wondered if we could find the silver fist, but we didn’t. Whether they buried him with it, we don’t
know. But somebody else could have gone there and dug. We felt like it had been tampered with’ (Whyte 1974:62).
Robert Willingham, Jr. conducted historical research on the Kettle Creek battle for his history of Wilkes
County (Willingham 1969). Willingham’s research included the examination of numerous pension records,
although these were not referenced and that research effort is of minimal use for purposes of this study.
Janet Harvill Standard (1973) wrote a history of Wilkes County, which includes some information about
the Kettle Creek battlefield. Standard’s treatise on the subject is important because it contains some unique
historical information that she gathered from older citizens of Wilkes County.
By far the most thorough historical research on Kettle Creek, prior to the present study, was done by
historians Robert Scott Davis, Jr. and Kenneth Thomas, Jr. Their collaboration resulted in a lengthy report.
In subsequent books and journal articles, Davis has continued to explore the history and historical
geography of the Kettle Creek battlefield. Both Davis and Thomas were helpful in guiding the present
research.
Robert Scott Davis, Jr. and others conducted limited reconnaissance of the Kettle Creek vicinity in 1974
and 1975, in conjunction with the efforts to document the site in the National Register of Historic Places
and in anticipation of the creation of a Georgia State Park at Kettle Creek. The NRHP listing was
successfully achieved but the creation of a state park concept, after some preliminary study, was shelved.
Robert Scott Davis, Jr. and Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr. wrote a summary of the Kettle Creek battle for the
Georgia Department of Natural Resources. They compiled information on many of the participants of the
Kettle Creek battle from pension records, although that effort represents only a small sampling of the total
participants. As a result of the efforts of Davis and Thomas, a National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)
nomination was completed and submitted to the President’s Advisory Council for Historic Preservation
recommending the Kettle Creek Battlefield. The NRHP nomination was approved and Kettle Creek
Battlefield was listed in NRHP in 1975. The NRHP property boundary was a rectangular parcel 40 acres in
size.
Davis and Thomas (1975:95) stated that, in an interview with Mr. Nicholas [sic, Henry Nichols aged 102 in
1974]; “the cemetery on the hill directly north of War Hill is the burial site of the Revolutionary War
Soldiers.” Davis and Thomas noted that they “visited the site on July 2, 1974 and found one of the graves
covered with bricks and the others marked with small rocks” and they concluded from their observations,
“We believe this cemetery to be of a much later vintage than the Revolutionary War.” Below is a
transcription of a handwritten manuscript on file, Historic Preservation Division, Georgia Department of
Natural Resources (Figures 5-7). After jogging his memory, Robert Scott Davis, Jr. claimed authorship of
this unattributed document, which was entitled, “Archaeological Possibilities of Kettle Creek”:
Description: The War hill site is a round shaped point of a saddle approx. 100 feet above the nearby creek and 40 feet above
the top of the low area between the points of the saddle. There are no visible sites on the hill such as fortifications, structures,
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