Actual Factual Georgia: Nancy Hart — one tough lady

Hart, who was portrayed in one of the programs, lived in the area around Wilkes County in east Georgia and wasn’t particularly fond of the British soldiers and the Tories who roamed that part of the state. She was said to be a tough woman, tall and strong. Hart had several kids and could handle a musket as well as anybody, despite being cross eyed.

Sometimes, she would dress like a man and work in British camps so she could spy on them and pass on secrets to the militia, to which her husband belonged. Hart’s defining story, which was depicted through a reenactment in the show, centered on a group of five or six Tories and British soldiers who went to Hart’s home one day, according to her bio on the National Women’s History Museum’s website.

She fed them, getting them drunk in the process, and then stole their guns. Hart killed one of the men who moved toward her and held the rest captive until the militia arrived. As the story goes, the men wanted to shoot the enemy, but Hart wanted to hang them, so that’s what happened.

Their bodies were found during the construction of a railroad in 1912, the New Georgia Encyclopedia states.

Hart and her family are believed to have later lived in Brunswick and Athens before moving to Kentucky, where she died in 1830, but her memory lives on in Georgia. Hart County and its county seat of Hartwell were named for her, and is the only Georgia county named for a woman.

A replica of Hart’s cabin is in Elbert County, near its border with Wilkes County, and was built using chimney rocks from her original home. As one of the historians says in the series, you didn’t want to mess with Nancy Hart.