A Kings Mountain Farm Family

A Kings Mountain Farm Family. . , Through a war that formed this country and a war that divided it, the McElwee-Oates family owned land and worked in this area., William McElwee, a Scotch-Irish immigrant, settled here around 1765. Neither a wealthy plantation owner nor a poor worker, he was a "yeoman farmer". Yeoman farmers owned their land, usually fewer than 150 acres, and few slaves. William's descendants prospered as the community grew. But like many Kings Mountain farm families, they struggled after the Civil War. The family gradually left the farm they had owned for more than 130 years. In 1935, the government purchased the property for what would become this state park., [Captions:] , An 1843 inventory of John McElwee's possessions, including a 12 enslaved peoples, shows how much the family's wealth had grown. familysearch.org and South Carolina Department of Archives and History , The two-story log home, now gone, was located about 2 mi from here. The two people in this 1895 photograph may be William and Janet McElwee-Oates. Historic American Building Survey Collection, Library of Congress, Though the construction date of the house is not definite, the McElwee's were here at the time of the American Revolution. According to family tradition, when the Battle of Kings Mountain broke out in 1780, William McElwee and two of his sons grabbed their muskets and rushed to help their countrymen. This photograph shows what their farm looked like in 1939. Historic American Building Survey Collection, Library of Congress