GA, USA
The Man Called Burnfoot
About Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brown
Thomas Brown arrived in Georgia in 1774 with capital, ambition, and a plan to establish a plantation in the backcountry. He was twenty-four years old, a recent immigrant from Yorkshire, and he had chosen his timing badly.
By the summer of 1775, the political situation in Georgia had hardened to the point where anyone of means who had not publicly declared for the Patriot cause was assumed to be an enemy. A group of Liberty Boys — the local name for the Sons of Liberty — arrived at Brown's plantation near Augusta in August 1775 with the intention of compelling him to sign an oath of loyalty to the Patriot cause. Brown refused. What happened next depends on the source: the least damning version says he was beaten, had his feet burned over hot coals, and was tarred and feathered before being run out of town. Brown's own account, and the accounts from British sources, are considerably more graphic.
He emerged from the experience with permanent damage to his feet — which is where the nickname Burnfoot came from, though he apparently despised it — and with a hatred for the Patriot cause that operated at a personal level well below politics. He made his way to British lines and spent the early years of the war organizing Loyalist networks in South Carolina and Georgia. By 1780, with Charleston fallen and Augusta in British hands, he was the commandant of the town and the king's principal agent for maintaining relations with the Cherokee and Creek nations.
Brown was effective. He was also brutal in ways that exceeded what the military situation required. After Clarke's failed assault in September 1780, he hanged thirteen of the Patriots who had been left behind. He used his Creek and Cherokee auxiliaries in ways that terrorized the Patriot backcountry population. The cycle of reprisal he helped set in motion made the Augusta theater one of the most savage of the entire war.
When Pickens and Lee finally took Fort Cornwallis in June 1781 and Brown surrendered, Georgia militiamen tried to kill him as he was being escorted out. Patriot officers physically shielded him — an irony that Brown himself must have noticed. He survived, evacuated with the British fleet, and eventually settled in the Bahamas, where he died in 1825. He never returned to Georgia.
What Brown's story shows is that the backcountry war was not purely a political conflict or even a military one. It was personal in a way that the formal narrative of campaigns and battles cannot capture. Men who had been tortured did not forget it. Families who had lost relatives to reprisals did not put that aside when the fighting ended. The Georgia backcountry in 1780–1781 was a place where the Revolution had collapsed into something that looked less like a war of independence and more like a civil war with no front lines and no rules.
Sources
Primary & Secondary Sources
British Garrison Papers: Augusta, Georgia, 1779-1781
Public Record Office (National Archives, United Kingdom) · PRIMARY · TIER1
British garrison orders and correspondence from Augusta during the occupation period. Documents the construction of Fort Cornwallis and Fort Grierson, the Loyalist militia organization, and the final siege that ended British control of the Georgia interior.
General Andrew Pickens and Colonel Elijah Clarke: Report on the Recapture of Augusta, June 1781
National Archives and Records Administration · PRIMARY · TIER1
Joint report from the American commanders on the June 1781 siege of Augusta, which ended with the surrender of Fort Cornwallis and Fort Grierson. The primary American source on the final recapture of the town.
Georgia Archives: Richmond County Records and Georgia Executive Council Papers, 1775-1782
Georgia Archives · PRIMARY · TIER1
Georgia Archives homepage. Richmond County records require on-site access; no specific digitized finding aid available.
Pension Applications: Augusta and Richmond County Militia, Georgia
National Archives and Records Administration · PRIMARY · TIER1
Pension applications from Georgia and South Carolina militia veterans who participated in the various actions at Augusta. The depositions describe the siege operations and the personal combat at Fort Grierson.
Thomas Browne Papers: Loyalist Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Augusta, 1780-1781
Georgia Historical Society · PRIMARY · TIER1
Papers of the notorious Loyalist commander who held Augusta for the British. Browne's use of Creek and Cherokee allies and his reputation for brutality toward Patriot prisoners made the struggle for Augusta particularly vicious.
Augusta and the Georgia Backcountry in the American Revolution
Georgia Historical Quarterly · SECONDARY · TIER2
Peer-reviewed article examining Augusta's role as the key to controlling the Georgia interior. Covers all three periods of control (Patriot, British, Patriot) and the impact of the shifting front on the civilian population.
Historic Augusta: Revolutionary War Sites and Collections
Historic Augusta · INSTITUTIONAL · TIER2
The local historic preservation organization maintains interpretive resources on Augusta's Revolutionary War heritage, including the site of Fort Cornwallis and the Mackay House, used as a British headquarters during the occupation.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/thomas-brown
www.battlefields.org · SECONDARY · TIER2
Discovered by agentic enrichment for Augusta
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/thomas-brown-1750-1825/
www.georgiaencyclopedia.org · SECONDARY · TIER2
Discovered by agentic enrichment for Augusta
https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/brown-thomas/
www.scencyclopedia.org · SECONDARY · TIER2
Discovered by agentic enrichment for Augusta
Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department: Augusta Operations
Bradford and Inskeep (Henry Lee) · SECONDARY · TIER2
Light Horse Harry Lee's Legion participated in the 1781 Augusta siege alongside Pickens and Clarke. Lee's account provides regimental-level detail on the Mayham Tower construction and the final assault on Fort Cornwallis.
National Society Colonial Dames of America in the State of Georgia: Revolutionary Records
National Society Colonial Dames of America, Georgia · INSTITUTIONAL · TIER2
The Georgia NSCDA has compiled and published significant Revolutionary War records for the Augusta area, including transcripts of Richmond County committee minutes and Georgia Executive Council papers pertaining to the Augusta campaigns.
South Carolina Loyalists in the American Revolution: The Georgia Backcountry
University of South Carolina Press (Robert S. Lambert) · SECONDARY · TIER2
Examines the Loyalist social geography of the South Carolina-Georgia border region around Augusta. Essential for understanding why the town changed hands so many times and the character of the backcountry civil war.
The King's Ranger: Thomas Brown and the American Revolution on the Southern Frontier
University of Georgia Press (Edward J. Cashin) · SECONDARY · TIER2
Scholarly biography of the Loyalist commander who held Augusta for the British. Provides the fullest account of the British occupation and the siege operations from the Loyalist perspective, drawing on Browne's papers and British records.
Augusta -- American Battlefield Trust
American Battlefield Trust · TERTIARY · TIER3
Visitor-oriented battlefield guide for the Augusta engagements. Provides maps, a summary narrative of all three actions at Augusta, and information on surviving sites.
Siege of Augusta (1781) -- Wikipedia
Wikipedia · TERTIARY · TIER3
General reference entry on the June 1781 siege. The order of battle and tactical narrative are accurate in outline. Cross-reference with Lee's memoirs and Cashin's Browne biography for accuracy on the final assault.