Two hundred forty five years ago this week, the course of the American Revolution shifted in the South Carolina Backcountry because of courage, local knowledge, and a woman who acted when it mattered most.
Her name was Margaret Catherine Moore Barry. History remembers her as Kate Barry.
In December 1780, Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene sent Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan into the South Carolina Backcountry to challenge British control. Alarmed, British commander Lord Charles Cornwallis ordered Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton to locate and destroy Morgan’s force. Tarleton moved quickly, crossing the Pacolet River before dawn on January 16, 1781, while Morgan withdrew toward a place called Cowpens and prepared for battle.
It was during these tense hours that Kate Barry rode.
Kate had grown up at Walnut Grove Manor near present-day Spartanburg. She was the eldest of ten children in one of the region’s earliest English settler families. She knew the woods, rivers, and trails of the backcountry better than most. She married Andrew Barry, a Patriot officer serving under General Andrew Pickens, at fifteen years old. When war came to her doorstep, Kate was a young mother with the drive and determination to support the Patriot cause.
According to long-held local tradition, when Kate learned that British and Loyalist forces were advancing, she mounted her horse and rode through the night. Using her deep knowledge of backcountry paths, she warned neighbors, local militia, and Patriot forces that British forces were approaching. Her ride helped ensure that American troops were alerted, reinforced, and ready.
The Battle of Cowpens unfolded the next morning, January 17, 1781.
What followed was one of the most decisive American victories of the Revolutionary War. Morgan’s carefully planned defense shattered Tarleton’s army in less than an hour. British forces were surrounded and forced to surrender. Tarleton fled the field. The defeat weakened the British Southern Campaign and set in motion events that would lead to Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown later that year.
Kate Barry’s courage extended well beyond a single ride. Throughout the war, she served as a scout, messenger, and spy for Patriot forces in the Tyger River region. Family tradition holds that she faced retaliation from Loyalists for refusing to reveal Patriot movements and narrowly escaped capture on more than one occasion. Her actions earned her lasting recognition as the “Heroine of the Battle of Cowpens.”
Kate Barry died in September 1823 and was buried beside her husband in the family cemetery near Moore, South Carolina. Her legacy endures at Walnut Grove Plantation in Roebuck, where Kate and her siblings grew up. It is preserved today and welcomes visitors to learn and reflect life during the Revolutionary era.
As we mark the 245th anniversary of the Battle of Cowpens, Kate Barry reminds us that independence was not won by generals alone. It was secured by ordinary people who chose bravery in extraordinary moments. Sometimes, history turns on a single ride through the dark.