A01=Cynthia A. Kierner
agricultural work
American Revolution
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Author_Cynthia A. Kierner
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Category=DNBH
Category=JBSF1
Category=NHK
citizenship
civic rituals
civil war
civilians
debt
difference
dispute
divorce
E. W. Caruthers
Elizabeth Ellet
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
families
gender
historical memory
horse stealing
ideology
imperial crisis
justices of the peace
Kettle Creek
loyalty oaths
marriage
migration
militia
Moore's Creek Bridge
Nathaniel Greene
North Carolina
North Carolina backcountry
petitions
political
power
radical
Regulators
rights
Rowan County
skirmishes
Tories
wartime home front
women patriots
women petitioners
Product details
- ISBN 9780813954356
- Weight: 310g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 02 Dec 2025
- Publisher: University of Virginia Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Finalist for the 2024 George Washington Prize
The Spurgin family of North Carolina experienced the cataclysm of the American Revolution in the most dramatic ways—and from different sides. This engrossing book tells the story of Jane Welborn Spurgin, a patriot who welcomed General Nathanael Greene to her home and aided Continental forces while her loyalist husband was fighting for the king as an officer in the Tory militia. By focusing on the wife of a middling backcountry farmer, esteemed historian Cynthia Kierner shows how the Revolution not only toppled long-established political hierarchies but also strained family ties and drew women into the public sphere to claim both citizenship and rights—as Jane Spurgin did with a dramatic series of petitions to the North Carolina state legislature when she fought to reclaim her family’s lost property after the war was over.
While providing readers with stories of battles, horse-stealing, bigamy, and exile that bring the Revolutionary era vividly to life, this book also serves as an invaluable examination of the potentially transformative effects of war and revolution, both personally and politically.
The Spurgin family of North Carolina experienced the cataclysm of the American Revolution in the most dramatic ways—and from different sides. This engrossing book tells the story of Jane Welborn Spurgin, a patriot who welcomed General Nathanael Greene to her home and aided Continental forces while her loyalist husband was fighting for the king as an officer in the Tory militia. By focusing on the wife of a middling backcountry farmer, esteemed historian Cynthia Kierner shows how the Revolution not only toppled long-established political hierarchies but also strained family ties and drew women into the public sphere to claim both citizenship and rights—as Jane Spurgin did with a dramatic series of petitions to the North Carolina state legislature when she fought to reclaim her family’s lost property after the war was over.
While providing readers with stories of battles, horse-stealing, bigamy, and exile that bring the Revolutionary era vividly to life, this book also serves as an invaluable examination of the potentially transformative effects of war and revolution, both personally and politically.
Cynthia A. Kierner is Professor of History at George Mason University and the author of Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson's America.
