Location: NC 62 at SR 1135 (Porter Sharpe Road) southwest of Alamance
County: Alamance
Original Date Cast: 1992
On March 1, 1781, near Clapp’s Mill on Beaver Creek, Col. Otho Williams lead a Patriot force of 2413 that consisted of Col. Henry Lee’s Legion, Delaware and Maryland Continental soldiers, North Carolina mounted militia, NC and Virginia riflemen, and some Catawba Indians. Lord Charles Cornwallis’s British army of 2213 soldiers, consisting of the Brigade of Guards, 17th Light Dragoons, 23rd, 33rd, and 71st Regiments of Foot, British Legion, Royal NC Regiment, NC Volunteers, Regiment von Bose, and Jagers was camped at Alamance Battleground 3 miles to the south of Clapp’s Mill.
Williams was tasked with screening Gen. Nathaniel Greene’s army 14 miles to the north, as he searched for a location to engage the British main army. Colonel Williams developed a plan to attack the British camp on the morning of March 2, 1781. However, he was talked out of this at the last minute by Colonel Lee. He knew the militia, who made up the bulk of the Patriot force, was poorly organized and unreliable. Instead, they devised a plan to ambush the British as they marched north toward Greene.
On the morning of March 2, an advanced Patriot force of 995 men was arrayed in three lines, similar to the tactic used at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781. At the mill, the first line was a screen of Catawbas and dragoons. Behind them, riflemen and dragoons were in the woods on both sides of the road. The third line was composed of the Delaware and Maryland Continentals.
A few British Legion troopers accompanied British foragers to a plantation near the Patriot position. Williams’s troops were spotted and the handful of British retreated to Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton’s vanguard camped just ahead of the main army. Tarleton decided to investigate. His force numbered 404: 174 British Legion dragoons, 80 Brigade of Guards Light Infantry, and 150 men of Lt. Col. James Webster’s Brigade of Regulars (23rd and 33rd Regiments).
As the British approached the ford at Clapp’s Mill, “…one of the Indians snorted like a deer, whereupon he and his comrades ran forward a few steps… and fired.” The Guards Light Infantry Company quickly deployed and opened fire, which drove off the Catawba. The fire was so heavy and accurate that most of the Riflemen initially failed to fire. The Guards rapidly pushed to the north bank of the creek, followed by Webster’s regulars. At that point, the riflemen finally opened fire. The regulars ran to take up position to the left of the Guards, and the Legion Dragoons to right.
All of the mounted riflemen immediately turned and ran. After only about 15 minutes, the entire Patriot force was retreating. The Continental infantry, 80 yards to the rear of the main force, began firing to cover the rest of the Patriots as they fled down the road. Their three mile retreat brought them to the protection of Colonel Williams, who formed a defensive line at Great Alamance Creek. They expected Tarleton to give chase as he had at Cowpens. Tarleton, however, recognized the trap and stopped his advance once the Patriots had been pushed off the field of battle. Tarleton defeated the nearly 1000 man Patriot force with 230 infantry supported by 174 dragoons. The British losses amounted to one officer, and seventeen enlisted men killed, primarily from the Guards Light Infantry Company. The Patriots lost eight killed, five wounded, and at least two captured.
Clapp's Mill was one of several skirmishes that preceded the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Each wore down the British force and served to give General Greene the time he needed to build a force large enough that he felt he could stop Cornwallis’s army. Following Guilford Courthouse, Cornwallis marched his troops to Wilmington so they could refit and pick up badly needed reinforcements.
In 1898 J. M. Bandy, a local historian, retraced the route taken by the British troops enroute to Guilford Courthouse. Accompanied by Joseph Whitsett and other older men of the local community. Bandy identified the site of Clapp’s Mill about one mile southwest of the Holt factory at Alamance and three miles northwest of the site of the Battle of Alamance. Signs of the old dam and race were visible in 1898 but evidence of the mill itself had by that time disappeared. In recent years the waters of Lake Mackintosh inundated significant portions of the battlefield.
References:
William Henry Hoyt, ed., The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey, II (1914), pp. 280-285
Alamance County: The Legacy of Its People and Places (1984)
Stewart E. Dunaway and Jeffrey B. Bright, Battle at Clapp’s Mill (2008)