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Recently, our country observed the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution. Of course, the focus was on Paul Revere’s historic midnight ride and the Battle of Lexington, but I was also reminded that much of that bloody war was fought and won here in the Carolinas. The battles of Cowpens and King’s Mountain helped seal the fate of the British in America. And yet, you can come even closer to home to find evidence of the struggle for freedom. 

Frequent fights and skirmishes regularly broke out in northern Greenville and Spartanburg counties between locals who took different sides of the conflict. One of the most famous or infamous of the so-called Tories, or British sympathizers, was William Bates, widely known as Bloody Bill Bates. 

They say that Bloody Bill had more loyalty to loot than to the King of England. He led a band of renegades who commonly holed up at a robber’s lair near the foot of Hogback Mountain. His gang consisted of several Cherokee Indians who had little love for the local pioneer settlers, as well as a handful of bloodthirsty whites who often disguised themselves as their Cherokee counterparts. The British enabled Bates to go on his nighttime raids throughout the community, harassing and terrorizing those who sympathized with the Patriot cause. And they set the bar for brutality by torturing, raping, and murdering their unfortunate victims. Their prize was anything they could steal.

There’s little doubt that Bates’ most heinous deed was the raid on Fort Gowen that took place sometime in September 1781. Fort Gowen, a pioneer stockade located on the old Blackstock Road just south of Landrum, was a sanctuary for the area’s settlers against Indian and Tory attacks. During an especially dangerous and threatening time for the local Patriots, many gathered in Fort Gowen for protection. Bloody Bill and a large contingent of Loyalists approached the fort and demanded the occupant’s surrender. The Patriots were clearly outnumbered, but they intended to fight to the death. 

Bates assured them that if they surrendered the fort, they would be treated with kindness. They foolishly believed Bates’ promise and opened the fort’s gates. At that, Bates and his band began a slaughter of men, women, and children, with very few escaping. The Indians began scalping their victims. The story goes that Mrs. Abner Thompson played dead and was scalped by one of the marauders. Miraculously, she survived her wounds and lived for an additional fifty years. This account is recorded in J.B.O Landrum’s Colonial and Revolutionary History of Upper South Carolina.

After the war, Bates moved to the Sandy Plains section of Polk County and was soon arrested for stealing horses. He was taken to the Greenville, SC jail, where he was incarcerated. It was there that young Thomas Motley, the son of one of Bates’ victims, found the noted Tory and demanded the jailer’s keys to open his cell. 

When he went into Bloody Bill’s jail cell, he shot him on sight with his pistol. An inglorious ending for a cruel, heartless man.