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How far removed from us today is the Revolutionary War? I mean not merely in time alone by the calendar but in our minds and senses. How many generations who could have touched hands during their lifetimes have lived and died in there two hundred intervening years? I touch my grandmother's hand as I sat listening to stories of her childhood. She in turn had sat at her grandmother's feet long before that -- not here in California but in Missouri before that six months journey to California in 1851 when she was only seven. That short chain of grandmother to grandmother to me covered the interval of time and space. It was over sixty years ago that I first heard my grandmother's story of the watch. She was sixty-three when I was born, and it was from her grandmother that she had heard the story so many years ago. Her grandmother was Rebecca Venable COCKRILL, born November 5, 1778. Rebecca was probably too young to really have remembered her brother's first excited display of the gift, though some of us remember things from our very early years. Perhaps because the War was still all around them, knowledge of the gift may have been kept secret for a time between the boy and the grown womenfolk, but it must have been an oft repeated family tale. In northwestern South Carolina the Revolution had some of the character of a civil war. In one small valley there might be a Loyalist group with Patriot neighbors or the reverse. Members of the same family might fight on opposite sides. Some men even changed sides. Enlistment in the Revolutionary ranks were for short intervals after which men returned to their farms. When the men were away the women were cautious in their talk and actions. This thing involving the watch happened while Rebecca's father was away fighting with the South Carolina Militia and only the women and children were at home on the farm near the site of the Battle of Cowpens. The date of the battle was January 17, 1781. It may be that the British soldier was wounded then and had crawled away into the cave when no help came after the battle; or he might have been sniped at somewhere out in the woods at some other time. There had been much movement of Revolutionary and British troops trough the area for several months. It was in a cave that Brother found the soldier and brought badly needed water. The man was hungry too, and Brother brought food. When he told the womenfolk, they were sympathetic but thought it best not to know the exact location of his hiding place. They gladly provided the food and more to aid in his recovery. Brother carried these supplies after dark so no one would know of the hidden enemy. The secret was well kept. Finally the soldier felt strong enough to make his way out of hiding and away from the hostile area. At his last meeting with the boy he thanked him with all his heart and left a gift in the boy's hand -- his watch. What a generous gift and what a treasured possession that must have become! That ended my grandmother's story. I always asked, "What became of the watch?" She did not know. Perhaps it was handed down in her grandmother's brother's family. But that family had gone another way in this big country from that far off time and land of South Carolina. Perhaps I now have a clue. In October, 1975, I visited the library of the Kentucky Building on the campus of Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. There I was searching for information on my grandfather's family -- the grandfather who had married my Missouri grandmother in California in 1857. The librarian who guided me about was familiar with my grandfather's name but not other family surnames until I mentioned Venable. That had been her maiden name and she was descended from the same Joseph VENABLE who was Rebecca's father. I told her the story of the watch. It was unfamiliar to her, but she said her family had inherited two old watches, the origins of which were unknown. One of these, they had been told, was very very old indeed. Could this be the watch? Who knows? NOTE: Rebecca VENABLE married William Anderson COCKRILL and their son, James Anderson COCKRILL was the father of my grandmother, Lucinda Ellender COCKRILL, who married Jeremiah CLAYPOOL. |
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This page created on 11/28/01 23:30.