Shelby  states,  that  the  action  continued  an  hour  before
the  enemy  were  repulsed  in  front  of  the  breast-work  ;  while
McCall  asserts,  that  it  was  "but  a  few  minutes  after  the
contest  began,  when  so  many  of  the  Provincial  officers  were
either  killed  or  wounded,  and  "the  men  tumbled  down  in
heaps,  without  the  power  of  resistance,''  when  the  survivors
retreated  under  Captain  Kerr.f  Probabty  Colonel  Williams'
recollection  of  the  length  of  the  battle  before  the  retreat,
written  within  a  few  days  thereafter,  is  approximately  cor-
rect ;  and  possibly  well  nigh  an  hour  may  have  been  con-
sumed by  the  time  the  enemy  were  driven  across  the  ford,  and
took  refuge  in  the  mill.  "This  action,"  says  Colonel  Hill's
manuscript,  "  was  one  of  the  hardest  ever  fought  in  the
country  with  small  arms  alone  ;  the  smoke  was  so  thick  as

*  Statement  in  Virginia  Gazette,  September  27th,  1780,  of  William  AUraan,  of  Colonel
Stiibblefield's  regiment  of  Virginia  militia,  who  was  captured  at  Gates'  defeat,  and  subse-
quently escaped  from  Camden.
t  Captain  James  Kerr  was  probably  a  resident  of  Long  Island  or  Connecticut,  from
whose  refugees  most  of  the  Queen's  Rangers  were  raised,  in  which  corps  he  was  a  Captain.
After  the  war,  he  retired  on  half-pay,  first  to  New  Brunswick,  and  then  to  King's  county,
Nova  Scotia,  where  he  was  made  Colonel  of  the  militia.  He  died  at  Amherst,  in  that
Province,  in  1830,  at  the  age  of  seventy-six,  leaving  a  widow,  who  survived  him  ten  years,
dying  at  seventy-four.  Three  sons  and  a  daughter  preceded  him  to  the  grave,  but  twelve
children  survived  him.
