June and Carroll Brady of Tryon recently attended the dedication of a new monument to Col. Frederick Hambright at the Old Shiloh Cemetery in Grover, N.C.

June Brady, along with her brother, Philip Hamrick, and her sister, Sally Jo Carter, are direct descendents of Col. Hambright through their mothers side.

Mother did all the Hambright research so she could join the Daughters of the American Revolution, June Brady said.

With a relation to Col. Hambright, that membership was assured.

Col. Hambright, who immigrated to America from Germany as an 11-year-old, was a pioneer in the Catawba Valley and was elected to the Third Provincial Congress in 1775 to represent Tryon Country. After a year of fighting the Cherokee Indians in the Carolinas and Georgia, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

On Oct. 7, 1780, Col. Hambright, 53, was leading the Lincoln County troops, the South Fork boys, against the Redcoats at Kings Mountain. Three musket balls pierced his hat that day and a fourth hit him in the thigh, yet he kept climbing the mountain. According to the history books, he got close enough to hear British commander Patrick Ferguson calling out his last commands before dying.

A young woman named Mary Dover helped the colonel off the battleground that day. They were later married and lived near the battlefield in a two-story farmhouse, where he experimented with new agricultural methods and became an elder in the Shiloh Presbyterian Church. Col. Hambright lived until March 9, 1817 and died at the age of 90.

Edward F. Butler Sr., president general of the National Society, Sons of the American Revolution (SAR), was among those making remarks at the grave marking ceremony for Revolutionary War Patriot Colonel Frederick Hambright at the Old Shiloh Presbyterian Church Cemetery.

One of the SARs projects is to repair old cemeteries and gravestones, June Brady said. This particular cemetery seems to have been abandoned in the 1800s, so all of the gravestones were very old and hard to read.

There were several hundred in attendance, she said, including about 30 men in various Revolutionary War uniforms, carrying old guns and flags.