Battle of Lindley's Mill

On September 13, 1781, forces clashed in Orange County, North Carolina, in a fight that would later fall within Alamance County's boundaries. This clash unfolded during the American Revolutionary War and became known by two names: the Battle of Lindley's Mill and, alternatively, the Battle of Cane Creek. The engagement drew its name from a mill standing at the battle site along Cane Creek. That location lay along a road linking Hillsborough, then serving as North Carolina's temporary capital, with Wilmington.

Background

On September 12, 1781, loyalist forces struck Hillsborough in broad daylight, seizing Governor Thomas Burke along with thirteen prominent Whig officeholders. Colonels David Fanning and Hector McNeill led the militia responsible for this bold strike. Their plan called for marching the prisoners down toward Wilmington, where British forces waited to take custody of them. Brigadier General John Butler, who lived in the vicinity, gathered 300 patriot militiamen from the Hillsborough District Brigade and prepared a trap at Lindley's Mill, springing it the following day.

Battle

Cane Creek, a branch of the Haw River, ran alongside the site where Lindley's Mill stood, and it became the setting for a carefully laid ambush. As the loyalists advanced, the patriot militia sprang the trap they had prepared, catching Fanning and his troops off guard. To reach the patriot line, positioned atop a plateau above the water, the loyalists had no choice but to wade across the creek itself. Hector McNeill, an aging officer leading a company of loyal Highlanders, fell early in the fighting while guiding Fanning's vanguard through the ford. For a time the British could not budge the patriots from their position, but the tide turned once Fanning led a larger force across the creek at a point upstream from Butler, striking the militia's flank. That maneuver forced the militia into a defensive stance, and the fighting dragged on for four hours before mounting losses left Butler with little choice but to order a withdrawal. Even so, a handful of his men refused to abandon their ground, holding out until Fanning finally drove them from it.

Deaths of Major Nall and Colonel McNeill

At Lindley's Mills, a moment of personal violence unfolded when Colonel McNeill and Major John Nall came face to face in direct combat. Each man discharged his weapon at the exact same moment. Nall took McNeill's shot near his left pap, while McNeill was struck in the forehead by Nall's ball. Neither man survived the exchange; both fell dead where they stood.

Aftermath

The engagement left somewhere between 200 and 250 men dead or wounded, and the Tories felt the loss keenly since McNeill was killed and Fanning himself took wounds serious enough to send him into hiding in the woods once his column pressed onward. Dr. John Pyle numbered among the injured, a man who had once led a doomed body of loyalist militia at what became known as Pyle's Massacre. Once his own wounds healed, Pyle turned to nursing, restoring health to numerous other injured men without regard to which side they had fought for. Governor Alexander Martin later granted Pyle a pardon for his loyalist dealings in recognition of that care. As for the governor himself, no patriot rescue materialized, and he ended up confined on James Island. Historians have noted that rather than crushing patriot resolve, Burke's capture and the patriots' loss instead fueled a rise in support for their cause.