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 Cumberland mountains with a wagon, married Jane, a daughter of William and Ellen McDowell, of York county, S.C.  Both Jane and her mother went to King’s Mountain after the battle, and remained several days in ministering to the wants of the wounded soldiers.  It was mainly on the account of Robert Wilson’s distinguished bravery at King’s Mountain that William McDowell gave him his daughter Jane in marriage—­a worthy gift, and worthily bestowed on a gallant soldier.

QUEEN’S MUSEUM

One of the most useful institutions of the Revolutionary period, and around which cluster many patriotic associations, was the College in Charlotte, known as Queen’s Museum.  As the early fount of educational training in Mecklenburg, and the nursery of freemen, as well as of scholars, it should ever claim our warmest regard and veneration.  A brief notice of its origin, progress and termination may be acceptable to the general reader.

The counties of Mecklenburg, Rowan and other portions of the State, lying in the track of the southern tide of emigration from more northern colonies, were principally settled by the Scotch-Irish, who, inheriting an independence of character and free thought from their earliest training, soon became the controlling element of society, and directed its leading religious and political movements.  They were not only the friends of a liberal education, but the early and unflinching advocates of civil and religious liberty.  The “school-master was abroad in the land,” and as duly encouraged as in our own day.  Wherever a preacher was established among them, to proclaim the gospel of salvation, there, with rare exceptions, soon sprang up into lively existence a good school, both of a common and classical order.  Prominently among these seminaries of learning may be named Sugar Creek, Poplar Tent, Center, Bethany, Thyatira, Rocky River, and Providence, all located in Mecklenburg and Rowan counties.  Of all these, Sugar Creek was probably the oldest.  The time of its commencement is not certainly known.