Tory’s Den

Patriots Punish Tory Thieves

Location


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Coordinates: 36.4016, -80.2997.

Type: Stop
Tour: Wachovia
County: Stokes

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The trail to the Tory’s Den has rough ground, sometimes steep with uneven steps, and thus is inaccessible for most people with mobility issues. However, an information board can be viewed from the parking lot above the cave’s mouth. The house at our second stop is fully visible from a vehicle, and the ground is relatively flat.

Description

Mysteries of the Cave

Evidence is limited for the Tory’s Den stories on this page. The first seems based only on local traditions, repeated in several sources with different details and contradicted by another. The second comes mostly from a preacher who collected wartime stories in the mid-1800s, Rev. E.W. Caruthers, though the basic facts are backed by eyewitness accounts.[1] This cave is one of three identified as the Den by 1800s newspaper articles. So believe with caution!

Photo of a trail leading into woods from a parking lot
(AmRevNC photograph)

Walk to the Tory’s Den Trail head at the far end of the parking lot—not the one across from the first lot entrance, though a sign there bears the name, too. Take the trail approximately a quarter-mile to its end at a small cave.

Much of the fighting in North Carolina during the American Revolution was a civil war between people backing independence (Patriots or “Whigs”) and those supporting Great Britain (Loyalists or “Tories”). Two events of that “war within a war” may have occurred here.

Local tradition holds that in 1778 (but more likely later), Tories forced out of their homes by Whig attacks were living here. They raided the home of John (“Jack”) Martin, the Rock House, visited later on this page. Martin fought as a Patriot throughout much of the war. Along with taking supplies, the Tories may have kidnapped an employee’s daughter.

The most detailed source suggests this is not the correct cave.[2] It says an enslaved man known for his tracking skills, name unrecorded, was on guard duty near the Rock House watching for the raiders one night. He spotted a campfire. (Notice the black soot stains on the ceiling from fires burned inside.) He told Martin, who sent him to investigate. The man returned with news that it was the Tories, in a setting hard to reach and with a commanding view of the area. Martin set a compass on the porch to take a reading on the light so they could find the spot in the daylight. A fire here would have been blocked from view at the House by the ridge above you.[3]

Photo of a narrow cave opening in a large outcrop of rock, with trees to the left
(AmRevNC photograph)

The detailed source says Martin divided his force of neighbors and part-time militia soldiers the next day to approach by three routes: one directly toward this spot, one going around Hanging Rock, and the third through Quaker Gap (where NC 66 crosses Sauratown Mountain today). They managed to arrive at the same time.  The Tories opened fire, but, outnumbered and surrounded, had to surrender. Some were killed and the rest captured, with no Patriot deaths.[4]

An early newspaper article tells this story differently, with the Patriots coming across the Tories and chasing them, but finding no one in the cave. They followed bits of cloth the woman tore from her dress and dropped as clues until finding her and her kidnappers.[5]

The information board suggests 100 people were living here, which seems unlikely given its size. For people unable to visit: The cave, roughly 12 feet high at the entrance, is perhaps 20 feet deep. But it quickly narrows to 6 feet or less in width starting about two-thirds of the way back. The total floor area is around the size of a modest living room. It may well have been one place small Loyalist bands hid at times. But other, larger, candidates for the Tory’s Den are on Flat Shoals Mountain to the south (left from the cave), and Sauratown Mountain south of the Rock House.[6]

Caruthers says that in February 1781, 15 Loyalists including a free African-American, Arnold, went to the home of a Patriot farmer named Blackburne. They called him outside and stole what they liked from the house, including all of his clothes—except the shirt on his back! Led by a Capt. Stanly, their headquarters was at the Tory’s Den, wherever that was.[7]

Blackburne made his way to the home of the commander of the Surry County militia, Lt. Col. Joseph Winston. He didn’t have to go far: He apparently lived right across Town Fork Creek from Winston, in the southeast corner of modern Stokes.[8] Winston invited him in, but Blackburne declined unless Winston loaned him a pair of pants! Winston gave him some buckskins and sent for help.

With the men who responded, they went searching, passing this direction through Quaker Gap. That evening near the Virginia border, they came across a boy with a bread tray, who claimed he had taken grain-meal to a neighbor. Winston did not believe him, and threatened to hang the child if he did not tell them where the Tories were. When the boy refused, Winston had some of his men tie a rope around his neck, throw it over a tree limb, and haul him up. After they let him down, the boy still refused to talk, so they did it again. Winston threatened to leave him up there the next time, and the child relented.

A mile away, they attacked the Tories on Chestnut Ridge, east of Mount Airy in Surry County[9]. The Tories scattered. Martin was one of the pursuers. As he overtook a man named Horton, Horton turned and fired. Martin reared his horse to block the bullet and dropped to the ground. The horse was hit below an eye. Martin then shot Horton in the back as he ran, and Horton died three days later. The fate of the horse is unknown. Caruthers says all were caught and killed except Stanly, spared at the request of Blackburne for reasons unexplained, and taken prisoner.

Just inside the Den’s mouth the Patriots found “an immense quantity of beef and other bones,” indicating the Tories had used it as a base for long time.[10]

The Rock House

To see Martin’s intriguing “Rock House” a few miles away (36.4044, -80.3620), return to your vehicle and:

  1. After turning right out of the lot, keep making left turns to arrive at NC 66.
  2. Turn right, drive 1.6 miles, and turn left on Taylor Road.
  3. Drive 0.3 miles, and turn right on State Road 1175.
  4. Drive 1.6 miles, and turn left on Flat Rock Road.
    Note: The graves of Martin and his wife are just before the turn, on the right.
  5. Take the next right, Col. Jack Martin Road.
  6. Turn right into the pullout at the remains of the stone house.

Walk to the house if you wish.

There is some debate over when Jack Martin was born to James and Mary Martin.[11] He was raised about six miles to the north. Depending on the source, he was between 14 and 18 when he picked out this site for his future home and began working on it around 1770. Stones were supposedly dragged from South Double Creek, downhill from the front of the house, using oxen. When American independence was declared six years later, the house was two stories high. [12]

Photo of the roofless ruins of a house of light-brown rocks, with vertical stabilizing poles around it and a black security fence
(AmRevNC photograph)

Martin’s service with the Patriot militia came early that year, marching toward today’s Fayetteville too late to fight in the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge, against Loyalists trying to help a British army. He did not serve in a campaign against the Cherokees that summer as some sources claim, according to a veteran’s pension application filed by his wife. But after the British reclaimed Charleston in May 1780, Martin fought Loyalists regularly, as a lieutenant in the Surry County Militia (Stokes was part of Surry then). They often marched against Tories along the Dan, New, and Yadkin rivers, and he fought in the Battle of Colson’s Mill on the Pee Dee close to South Carolina.

In the summer of 1780, a British corps occupied a base near modern Rutherfordton to suppress Patriot activity, and its commander threatened to cross the Appalachians. “Overmountain Men” from there and others in this region responded by marching on him, including Martin. He probably gathered with the county militia in modern Elkin.

Nearing S.C., while on patrol, Martin and another man were ambushed by Tories. The other soldier fled, Martin’s brother-in-law and fellow soldier Thomas Shipp said. The “Tories took their horses & Martin’s gun & left him lying for dead but he came to himself & returned to camp where (a soldier) picked the shot out of his head where they had penetrated through his hat & skin in his temples.” He thus missed the Battle of King’s Mountain (S.C.), but helped guard the Loyalist prisoners as far as Bethabara in modern Winston-Salem.

Martin recovered to fight again when the British invaded N.C. a third time in early 1781. He was at the Battle of Clapp’s Mill near modern Burlington, but contrary to many sources, was not in the Battle of Guilford Court House. His last tour took him all the way to Wilmington to dislodge a British corps, but it left after learning of the British surrender at Yorktown.[13]

The incomplete house may have been used as a militia muster point and fortified blockhouse during the war. Martin married Nancy Shipp in 1784, prompting him to finish it. He raised it to three stories, plus a basement with a fireplace large enough “‘to roast an ox.’”[14] As you can still see, the walls were two feet thick, reportedly covered with white stucco and visible for miles.

Closeup photo of the rear wall from the left corner, showing the wall thickness in the door and window openings
(AmRevNC photograph)

In later years, it was a social center for the area. While raising 10 children, the Martins ran a large plantation growing various crops and horses. Martin was also a judge and was elected to the House of Commons of the state General Assembly. Meanwhile he remained in the county militia nearly 20 years after the war, rising to colonel.

By 1821, Martin had more than 7,000 acres through a series of deals, more than one per year over 30 years. Some were questionable. In 1795 he bought land seized for debts at auction for £2. Eight days later sold it to the sheriff who ran the auction—who was prohibited from bidding—for £100.

Martin died while fighting a forest fire with his wife, enslaved workers, and neighbors in 1822, around age 66. He reportedly lay down on a flat rock near the house to rest while Nancy took over the fight, and when she returned, he was dead.[15]

When Martin died, he had 22 cows, nine horses, hogs, and held 32 people in slavery.[16] Thirty people owed him money. He had 80 books, many suggesting a classical education, some in Greek or Latin, plus biographies of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.[17]

Nancy lived another 19 years, and they are both buried in the family cemetery nearby. An 1890 fire and a storm seven years later gutted the inside of the house and brought down the roof.

If you want to visit the graveyard, you can walk down the open part of the slope, to the left facing away from the house, and back to the intersection of SR 1175. The graves are to the right.

More Information

[1] Caruthers 1856.

[2] Martin ca. 1953.

[3] The Rock House is west of here, off the far side of the parking lot, so the cave is blocked from its view by the ridge topped by the lot.

[4] Information Board; The Danbury Reporter (1928). Descendant: Martin.

[5] “History and Romance Found in Revolutionary Landmark.”

[6] Martin’s great-granddaughter said in 1912 the den was visible from the Rock House (quoted in Carroll 2006), which suggests a site somewhere on Sauratown Mountain. However, the direction of approach provided in Martin (ca. 1953) best aligns with Flat Shoals, across the mountains from the Rock House. AmRevNC thanks Jacob Fields of Hanging Rock State Park; Caleb and Megan Jones of Mountain Top Youth Camp; and Matthew Perry of Stokes Co. for their help in seeking the correct location of Tory’s Den.

[7] Tory’s Den Cave and Waterfall Trail.

[8] A Stokes County historical map from a respected series (Hughes 1977) places Ambrose on a 1761 tract just upstream from Martin Creek, on the northwest side, west of modern Walnut Cove. The map shows Winston’s 1779 grant literally across the creek.

[9] Hughes, Fred, Surry County, North Carolina, Historical Documentation, Custom House, 1977.

[10] Lewis 2010; quotation, number killed, and Stanly’s fate are from Caruthers. The story of the search, Martin, and Horton is confirmed by Thomas Shipp, mentioned later, in Graves 1840.

[11] Not to Joseph Martin as reported in some sources, according to DNA testing (per “John ‘Jack’ Martin…”).

[12] According to his great-granddaughter, quoted in Carroll.

[13] Graves 1840. Neither Nancy nor her brother say Martin fought in the Cherokee campaign or at Guilford. Later sources appear to have confused him with Col. John Martin of the Guilford County Militia, who did. Nancy and Thomas do not mention Clapp’s Mill by that name, instead referring to Alamance Creek, but Clapp’s was the only significant action on that stream.

[14] “John ‘Jack’ Martin…”

[15] The Danbury Reporter.

[16] No records indicate Martin owned slaves until after 1790 (Jobe 1970). If some were forced to build the house after the war, as lore claims, they may have been rented.

[17] Jobe.

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