formed several plans of
making his escape, but owing to the presence of large parties of the
enemy, they could not be executed. At length, being near Fort Watson,
they encamped before night, the prisoners being placed in the yard,
and the guard in the house and in the portico. In a short time the
arms of the guard were ordered to be stacked in the portico, a
sentinel placed over them, and all others were soon busily engaged in
preparing their evening meal. The prisoners, in the meantime, having
bribed a soldier to buy some whiskey, as it was a rainy day,
_pretended_ to drink freely of it themselves, and one of them
seemingly more intoxicated than the rest, insisted upon treating the
sentinel. Wilson followed him, as if to prevent him from treating the
sentinel, it being a breach of military order. Watching a favorable
opportunity, he seized the sentinel's musket, and the drunken man
suddenly becoming sober, seized the sentinel. At this signal, the
prisoners--like vigilant hornets, rushed to the stacked arms in the
portico, when the guard, taking the alarm, rushed out of the house.
But it was too late; the prisoners secured the arms, drove the
soldiers into the house at the point of the bayonet, and the whole
guard surrendered at discretion. Unable to take off their prisoners,
Wilson made them all hold up their right hands and swear never again
to bear arms against the "cause of liberty, and the Continental
Congress," and then told them they might go to Charleston on parole;
but if he ever found "a single mother's son of them in arms again, he
would hang him up to a tree like a dog."

Wilson had scarcely disposed of his prisoners before a party of
British dragoons came in sight. As the only means of escape, they
separated into several small companies, and took to the woods. Some of
them reached Marion's camp at Snow Island, and Wilson, with two or
three others, arrived safely in Mecklenburg, over two hundred miles
distant, and through a country overrun with British troops.

Mrs. Wilson was the mother of eleven sons. She and her husband lived
to a good old age, were worthy and consistent members of the
Presbyterian Church, died near the same time, in 1810, and are buried
in Steele Creek graveyard.

About 1792, all the sons moved to Tennessee, where at the present
time, and in other portions of the West, their descendants may be
counted by the hundreds. Robert Wilson, who was said to be the first
man that crossed the