Winslow Driggers (abt. 1739 - 1771)

Born about 1739 in Norfolk, Virginia

Ancestors

Died 1771 at about age 32 in Drowning Creek, N. Carolina

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This profile is part of the Driggers Name Study.

Biography

• Note-Drowning Creek was originally in North Carolina. After "the split" it was, and still is, in South Carolina.

• [Actually, Drowning Creek was the original name of today's Lumber River in North Carolina and the Lumber's headwaters above Hoke County, North Carolina are still named Drowning Creek. The Lumber River flows into South Carolina for about 9 miles where it becomes the Little Pee Dee. Nearly all of its length is in North Carolina.]^[1]

Winslow born say 1739, number 12 in the Muster Roll of Captain Alexander McKintosh's Company of Colonel George Gabriel Powell's Battalion of South Carolina Militia "Serving in the Late Expedition Against the Cherokees from October 11, 1759 to January 15, 1760, inclusive ..." [Clark, Colonial Soldiers of the South, 892]. He was a notorious leader of one of the outlaw, back-country communities which were said to be composed of both white and mixed-race men. In the Fall of the year 1770 he escaped from jail in Savannah, Georgia, and returned to the area of the Little Peedee River in North and South Carolina where he continued his outlaw career. He was described as: about six Feet; Complexion, black; Visage, pale, being much reduced by Sickness; Hair, black and long, generally cued. The following year a band of ex-Regulators captured him at his hideout near Drowning Creek and used the provisions of the Negro Act as an excuse to hang him on the spot [Brown, South Carolina Regulators, 29-31, 103; Saunders, Colonial Records of North Carolina, IX:725, 771].

South Carolina Gazette, October 3rd, 1771 " Winsler Driggers, a notorious villain, who escaped out of Savannah Gaol about thirteen months ago, under sentence of death, and for the taken of whom a reward of fifty pounds sterling was offered, has a length met with his deserts. He was taken about a month ago, near Drowning Creek, in the Charraw Settlement, proved to be a Mulatto, tried under the Negro Act, and hanged. It seems he had been in those parts some months, collected a gang of other desperate villains, in number near fifty, who committed all manner of depredations. Capt. Philip Pledger, with a number of his neighbors, at length made an attempt to take or drive them out of the settlement. As soon as Capt. Pledger's party appeared, the villains fired, and Driggers wounded Capt. Pledger in one of his arms, so that he has since lost it (it was amputated). Pledger's party returned the fire, killed one William Hodge and one Johnson, wounded Driggers in one arm and the back, who nevertheless escaped, but was afterwards taken."

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia.

• http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/Driggers_Dutchfield.htm

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/2:1:9WYX-CY9

https://familysearch.org/search/tree/results?count=75&query=%2Bgivenname%3AWinslow~%20%2Bsurname%3ADriggers~%20%2Bbirth_year%3A1739-1739~

• Source: S2 "FamilySearch," database, \i FamilySearch\i0   The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Publication: (http://www.familysearch.org) accessed 22 Feb 2017), entry for Winslow Driggers, person ID LD5S-TYB. Certainty: 3