More than six feet tall, she was an intimidating presence to anyone who crossed her.

A fierce protector of home and family and raised eigh children, oftentimes all alone.

All this while also working as a spy for the revolutionary cause.

And over the years her legend has become folklore.

Not only here in Elbert County, but across Georgia.

This is Marked a series that zooms in on Georgia and its backstor one historical marker at a time.

I'm Maiya May and I am here at Georgia Historical Marker 052-9 to tell you the story of one of Georgia's baddest ladies.

The marker we just showed you is actually about one and a half miles that way, but the story it tells really starts here at the home of Nancy Hart.

Now, this is just a replica.

The original used to be just over that way.

And of all the stories and markers we visit, this story might be one of our state's best.

Women, of course, have played a huge role in Georgia's history, and many of those stories are really well known.

But in the Revolutionary War period, they're kind of harder to find.

We have Mary Musgrove, who was the vital interpreter between the Native Americans, Tomochich and of course, James Oglethorpe.

When the colonies getting founded.

And then we also have Jane Mary Camuse, who was a silk expert, and she was brought into the colony mainl because one of the big reasons why Georgia was founded was t create a thriving silk industry.

But one of the best stories tha we have, which is as much lore and myth as it is history, is the story of Nancy Hart.

She's probably from the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina, but she may have been born in Pennsylvania.

We don't know anything about the early years.

Of course, if she was born in Pennsylvania, wouldn't have been uncommon for her to end up in North Carolina.

Here's the fun part, some of this stuff about Nancy's early life and what happened in a cabin like this, we think is true.

A lot of the legend has been passed down through word of mouth.

There is also some dispute over what we do know, but regardless, a good story is a good story.

And this one we think you'll remember.

But either way, Nancy and her family head south and they settle in Elberton.

And northeast Georgia at thi point is very much the frontier, it is the wild, wild country.

You had the wilderness, dangerous bears and everything else.

You had to be a tough person to survive on that frontier.

And Nancy fits the mold of the frontier perfectly.

She is reportedly six feet tall.

When she was a child she had smallpox, and so some of that scarrin was still present as an adult.

She sort of fits in with this rugged needs of the wild frontier.

And the descriptions we also have of Nancy Hart also mentioned her wild red hair.

And her husband is Benjamin Hart, and he at this time is in the military, and he serves under Elijah Clark, ke military figure at this point.

Since he's in the military, he's gone a lot.

And so this leaves Nancy hom alone with her eight children, who happen to be six boys and two girls.

Alone in a cabin just like this.

This is a very small cabin.

I mean, that alone is enough to earn Nancy Georgia legend status.

She had to survive out there.

That meant that she had to know how to shoot a musket and load it.

And she had to know how to hunt animals, and she had to feed for her family.

And that is a valuable skill in the frontier, because the firearms that they had are not super accurate.

And you had one shot because once you reload it, the thing you were trying to shoot has probably started running away.

So you have to be a good shot, and she was.

George Gilmer, former governor of Georgia, was also a fabulous author.

And he once wrote of Nancy Hart, she traced the bee to its tree, and the deer to its lair, among snakes and wild beasts with unequaled success.

On top of all of this, she's also a fantastic herbalist.

Not a lot of doctors in the Georgia frontier, so this was a skill that was priceless in itself.

Here's what the Milledgevill Recorder had to say about Nancy.

Quote, magical in the mazes of cookery, and yielded the palm to no one in the variet and rarity of her medicaments, end quote.

She's known regionally in thi part of Georgia as Aunt Nancy.

She's the woman who just get things done, she helps everyone.

The Cherokee who are also in this part of Georgia at the time, even give her a nickname Wahatche,, which means war woman.

War woman, 200 plus years later, it seems like Nancy was just a boss.

With all of this together, you can see how Nancy Hart has become this epitome of frontier Georgia.

She almost has like a Paul Bunyan aspect to her.

So imagine raising eight children at home, all alone, and between feeding them, growing crops and all that comes with living basically on the frontier, this next story is just one of the parts of the Nancy Hart legend.

So while she's running a household, while she's raising eigh children, while she's hunting, while she's making a bunch of medicines, Nancy Hart gets herself involved in the Revolutionary War in Georgia.

The ferocity of Nancy Har was not unknown to the British.

They were know for keeping an eye on her cabin.

The story says that one day she was at her cabin with her daughter.

Suki was her name, and that Suki saw someone's eyeball through the door.

Right?

A little crack in the doo and she told her momma about it.

Nancy and the children are making soap at the time, which involves boiling, scalding hot water.

I think we all know where this is headed, right?

And she picked up that ladle of hot boiling water or soap or whatever it was, and went over to that crack and just flung it and heard the guy on the outside.

Ahhh.

And ultimately he is hogtied and hauled off to the local militia as a prisoner of war.

As much as Nancy Hart is known as this frontier warrior woman, there's even another layer to her.

She is stealthy, and she is sly.

We told you she's one of the baddest.

The spy game during the revolution is serious business.

Invaluable information is available on both sides.

We have Benedict Arnold, wh cosplayed as one of Washington's closest confidants, and then funneled all of tha information back to the British.

And then there was a Culper Spy ring, which Washington put together to spy on the British in New York.

And here in Georgia, Nancy Hart, on top of everything else, is spying on the British for the Patriot side.

And then one legend which has been passed down over the year is that Aunt Nancy at one point dressed as a man and walked right into an encampment of British soldiers.

So she funneled informatio that she got from them to John Dooley maybe, Elijah Clarke maybe, Andrew Perkins was in charge of the whole thing.

He's from South Carolina.

And so that information was used to help them plan the battle at Kettle Cree and defeat that Loyalist army.

When it comes to Georgia's revolutionary history.

Kettle Creek is a big deal.

This is the first Patriot victory in Georgia, and the British outnumber them nearly 2 to 1.

Nancy Hart is clearly a force.

The stories of what she did for her family on the frontier are amazing, but there's one stor in particular that has gone from folktale to legend to almost mythical in status.

As the story goes, the British arrived at Nancy Hart's cabin one evening while they're looking for a local Whig leader, and Nancy, in an attempt to throw off the British, made it clear that she had not seen him, and it had been days since she'd seen anybody.

According to the legend, she, of course, had seen him just a few minutes earlier.

But the Tories, and remember that's what the loyalists were called at the time aren't really buying her story.

And so one of the Tories, as the story goes, took one of Nancy's turkeys and killed it, and then demanded that she cook it for them.

And so Nancy, being the hostess with the mostest, cooks the turkey.

And while the men are eating it, she also served some wine for the men who are seated at her table.

So while they're eating, they drink her wine, and then they drink more of her wine, and then some more of her wine.

After a whil the Tories, as you can imagine a few glasses of wine in, aren't really worried about the fugitive they're chasing through the Georgia wilderness.

So now that the Tories are properly drunk, Nancy sends her daughter Suki out to get a bucket of water, which is just a ruse.

Suki is actually going out to alert others.

A little while later, Nancy notices that the Tories have left their guns stacked in the corner of the cabin, and they're not paying attention to what's going on around them.

And so Nancy starts moving the guns through a hole in the wall, just passing them through.

One of the Tories eventually does notice her, but at this poin Nancy has one of the last guns, and she threatens to shoot the first one that moves.

If there's anything we know about Nancy Hart is that she will do anything to protect her family.

And for some of these Tories this is not going to end well.

And of course, the troops d not believe what she is saying.

One of them tries to wrestle the gun from her, and she shoots him, and he is killed right there inside her cabin.

And so she sends her daughter for help.

And when one of the other Tories tries to make a move, she shoots him too.

By this point, Nancy's husband Benjamin has arrived with a bunch of other Patriot soldiers.

It's not the questio of whether or not these British troops are going to live or die but how they will be executed.

Nancy wants them hung because that is the capital punishment of the day.

Benjamin, on the other hand, wants them to die by firing squad.

But as legend goes, it was Nancy who got her way that day.

For a very long time, the story is sort of chalked up as legend.

There are some that just don't believe it.

And look you can kind of understand why.

It's a wild tale, but in 1912, the story that's lon been legend takes another turn.

Flash forward to about 1912, there's some railroad construction going on in Elbert County, really close to where Nancy Hart's cabin was located.

While the workers are grading the new railroad lines they stumble across something.

They find the remains of si bodies buried about three feet below the ground.

And they didn't have a coffin or anything.

It was just laid in there.

That could be those loyalists that she shot.

And this is all found along a stretch of Wahachee Creek.

And according to land records, this is less than a mile from wher Nancy Hart's cabin was located.

And here's something interesting from that news articl from when the bodies were found.

It says, quote, it doubtless occurred to some that maybe these Tories wer as honest in their convictions as Nancy was in hers but that they were in the wrong when seated at Nancy's table, partaking of her enforced hospitality.

In another way of saying this, the troops probably believed what they were doing was right and okay, but they were not really prepared or understood what Nancy Hart could do.

And you might think the story of Nancy Hart stops just down the road from here, where the actual cabin once stood.

But you'd be wrong, because there's another chapter here.

She eventually left he cabin and property in the late 1790s with her family, and moved to Brunswick, along the Georgia coast.

After the revolution i the 1790s, Nancy found religion.

The story says that she went t one of the Methodist societies in the Broad River Valley, there were no churches then.

And she went to the Methodist Society, and they had locked the door to keep her out.

She had that kind of reputation, but she kicked the door down, and she went on in and just sat down.

And that's when Nancy found God.

She spent years as a frontier woman, managing all the difficultie that that kind of life required.

And so from that point on, she fought the Devil with as much intensity that she once fought the lawless with.

According to former Governor George Gilmer, he said, quote she became a shouting Christian and fought the Devil as manfully as she had once fought the Tories.

And then about 1803 John Hart, Nancy son, packs up his family, including Nancy, and they moved to Kentucky.

And it's nearly 25 years that Nancy is in Kentucky, and she dies about 1830.

Despite being such a larger than life big figure in Georgia folklore, she is buried there in the family cemetery in Henderson, Kentucky.

I'm not sure about you guys, but it feels like Nancy has lived like seven different lives.

And while she may be buried in Kentucky, her name and legacy is stil alive and well here in Georgia.

There's Hart County, there's Lake Hartwell, and there's part of Georgia Route 77 that's been named the Nancy Hart Highway.

The legacy of her story is, in the first place, a female in the revolutio in Georgia who stood her ground against all odds and became kind of like a folk hero.

That is a legacy, and whethe you can prove all that or not, that's her legacy that is endured after all those centuries.

But here's one of the real lessons in the Nancy Hart story, the American Revolutio was fought by men in the Patriot militia and armies, but there were a number of people like Nancy as well.

They were spies, misfits, agitators, and these were all vital to the patriot cause.

I told you at the top that the Nancy Hart story is one of our favorites here with our Marked team.

A fierce protector, fearless, someone who showed great cunning and guil and who would never surrender.

Tip of the cap Nancy, for leaving your mark in your own special way.

I'm Maiya May, and we'll see you at our next stop.