t a week, and having,
in the meantime, consumed the most of their forage and provisions,
Lord Cornwallis was placed under the necessity of procuring a fresh
supply. He had already experienced something of the _stinging_
propensities of the "hornets" with which he was surrounded, and the
fatalities of their attacks upon his sentries near his camp. In order
to meet the emergency of his situation, he ordered out on the 3d day
of October, 1780, a strong foraging party, under Major Doyle,
consisting of four hundred and fifty infantry, sixty cavalry, and
about forty wagons, who proceeded up the road leading from Charlotte
to Beattie's Ford, on the Catawba river, intending to draw their
supplies from the fertile plantations on Long Creek.

Captain James Thompson, and thirteen others who lived in that
neighborhood, anticipating the necessity the British would be under to
forage, had early in the morning assembled at Mitchell's mill, (now
Frazier's) three miles from Charlotte, at which farm the corn was
pulled--at most other places it was standing in the field. Captain
Thompson and his men were expert riflemen, and well acquainted with
every place in the vicinity. At this place they lay concealed about an
hour, when they heard the wagons and Doyle's party passing by them and
up the main road. As soon as the party had passed about half a mile,
Captain Thompson and his brave followers started through the wood, and
kept parallel with Doyle's party, and _almost in sight_,
reconnoitering the movements of the enemy until they reached
McIntyre's farm, seven miles from Charlotte. A boy plowing by the
road-side, upon seeing the British soldiers pass by him, quickly
mounted his horse, dashed through the nearest by-paths, and barely had
time to warn the intervening families of the approach of the "red
coats." After the foraging party reached McIntyre's, they left a part
of their men and wagons to lay in supplies, while the other part
passed on under Doyle with the expectation of proceeding two or three
miles further. For this reason, Doyle was not _numbered with the
slain_ in place of his second in command.

Thompson's party, finding some were halted at this place, moved
directly towards the thicket down the spring branch, about two hundred
yards from the house. The point of a rocky ridge, covered with bushes,
passed obliquely from the road to the spring, and within fifty yards
of the house which sheltered them from the view or fire of t