The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 47, July 1943 - April, 1944 Page: 234

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ESTHER AMANDA SHERRILL CULLINS
A PIONEER WOMAN OF THE TEXAS FRONTIER
OLIVE TODD WALKER
Esther Amanda Sherrill, born December 21, 1802, at the
plantation home of her parents in Ninety-sixth District, Pendle-
ton County, South Carolina, was the tenth child of Lewis Sher-
rill, Sr., a Revolutionary soldier, and his wife, Mary Mason
Sherrill.
Esther's parents came of pioneering colonial stock. Her fore-
fathers aided in subduing the wilderness, first of Maryland and
then of Virginia. In 1747, lured by rich, cheap lands, the Sher-
rills and the Masons migrated to North Carolina, settling in an
uninhabited forest on the Catawba River. The settlement which
they established is still called Sherrill's Ford.
In 1779, at the age of eighteen, Lewis Sherrill volunteered as
a private in the Burke County Partisan Rangers; he served
throughout the remainder of the Revolution in the North Caro-
lina Militia, chiefly under General Charles McDowell and Colonel
Brevard. Besides numerous skirmishes against the Cherokees,
he participated in the battles of Stono, Ramseur's Mill, King's
Mountain, and the Cowpens. Lewis Sherrill was one of the
mounted infantry, composed of raw, ill-equipped mountaineers,
who were called "the hornets from the Switzerland of Amer-
ica," who, "rode like fox hunters." Surrounding the base of
King's Mountain, they charged up its rocky, wooded slopes to
its smoke-shrouded summit, where they routed from their
vaunted stronghold Major Ferguson's vastly superior force of
well-trained British and Tories-notwithstanding the arrogant
Major's boast that he was king of King's Mountain.
Fighting side by side in this history-making conflict with
Lewis Sherrill were several of his brothers and cousins, under
Colonels McDowell and Sevier; Sevier was the husband of
Lewis' cousin, Catherine Sherrill.'
'Famed as the handsomest young woman of her times. A writer of that
day declared that "she could outrun, outjump, walk more erectly, and ride
more gracefully than any other female in the mountains roundabout or
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 47, July 1943 - April, 1944, periodical, 1944; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146054/m1/265/ocr/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.

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