Considering just one of Georgia’s 159 counties is named for a woman, she must’ve made a big impression.
Not unlike those six skeletons found buried near Nancy Morgan Hart’s former home in Elberton.
Arguably Georgia’s greatest patriot during the Revolutionary War, Hart was determined to rid the area of British soldiers and “Tory” Americans loyal to the king. She became an invaluable spy for the Colonial authorities, using her 6-foot-tall frame and smallpox-scarred face to pass as a hapless man in enemy encampments, where she gathered intelligence.
Along with guile, Hart’s complete fearlessness in the face of danger — or dreaded “Tories” — proved a most potent weapon. While her husband was off fighting with the Georgia militia, she guarded the homefront; an expert markswoman (and the mother of eight), she likely was present for an important victory over loyalist forces at the Battle of Kettle Creek in Wilkes County.
Yet Hart’s reputation nearly did her in on the night when six enemy soldiers descended on her log cabin, demanding information about a rebel leader, then ordering her to cook them dinner. She gave them wine, too — enough that they didn’t notice her spiriting away their loaded muskets at first. When one finally did, Hart shot him dead. Nothing but hanging was good enough for the other five, she apparently decided; in 1912, six skeletons were unearthed from a nearby spot where it was estimated they had lain for over 100 years.
Hart died in 1830, 23 years before a new county was carved out of Elbert and Franklin and named for her. Yet what likely would have pleased her even more as a legacy was the all-female militia that formed to help protect LaGrange during the Civil War.
Their name: The “Nancy Harts.”
