J. E. Autry was the grandson of  John Autry, who served with a brother Alexander Autry, both of them captains in the Wilkes County, Georgia Militia, in the American Revolution.  They served under General Elijah Clarke, "Georgia's most illustrious partisan-militia leader in the Revolutionary War".  During the War John Autry was originally a 1st Lieutenant in Robert Carr's Company, which garrisoned a fort on the Wilkes County frontier named Carr's Fort.  Robert Carr was killed by Indians in 1778, and John Autry became Carr's successor as captain of Carr's Company and commander of Carr's Fort. 

John and Alexander Autry (variously spelled Aughtery, Ottery, Autree... and almost anything what passed for a clerk in Colonial times could dream up) came from Sampson County, North Carolina, to Georgia together and though they seem to have actually lived there before that, in 1773 when it opened for sale they were among the first purchasers in "the Ceded Lands" granted to the British crown in payment debt for trade goods bought by the Cherokee and Creek Indians from George Galphin who was both one of the most prominent traders with the Indians as well as the Indian Agent for the Colonial (and later the Revolutionary) government of Georgia.  The Ceded Lands purchase records were similar to census documents in that they gave the sex and approximate ages of purchasers' children and the number of their slaves.  Those records show that at least living with him at the time, Alexander had only daughters.  John had several sons.  Writings about the Battle of Kettle Creek indicate that Alexander Autry bought land at Kettle Creek after the War and farmed it.  However, my interpretation of the land documents particularly the surveys, leads me to believe that one of the most important battles of the Revolution in Georgia was fought on the land that Alexander Autry had bought in 1773.  Although the land records show no sons for Alexander, in 1778 Captain John Autry had not just one, but TWO Alexander Autrys serving under his command in Carr's Company... one an officer, the other a private.  My best guess is that the officer was his brother and that the private was one of his own sons.

It is hard to say exactly what Captain John Autry did during the Revolution, in part because of his early death.  However, men who served under his command mentioned him leading raids on Cherokee towns, and in describing their own service there is some suggestion that John Autry may have fought at King's Mountain, but so far I have not been able to determine if he was actually there, or if perhaps those present were perhaps just one or two men who had previously served under his command.  With the arrival of major British forces in Georgia the Wilkes County militia packed up their families and evacuated them to what was then the western Carolinas, later known as Tennessee... and all of Georgia was for awhile firmly in British hands.  The Wilkes County Militia served on in exile in the Carolinas, and because of this exile their captains of that time were called "refugee captains".  John Autry's Revolutionary War bounty lands in Greene County, approved by his commander Elija Clarke, specifically named John Autry as a "refugee captain".  Other colonies had governments that were displaced but Georgia's was eliminated.  There are numerous references in pension records of Georgia Militia officers serving "without commission".  There was no Georgia government which could issue officers' commissions... but still the Wilkes County Militia persevered... till the British temselves withdrew from Georgia and with South Carolina Colonel Andrew Pickens, Clarke's Georgians returned and decisively beat the Tories and their Indian allies at Kettle Creek.  After some more hard fighting they were eventually able to reclaim Georgia for the Patriot cause.

After remaining neutral for years and being starved of needed trade goods by both sides, the Creeks finally came partly into the Revolution on the side of the British just as the British lost.  As a result, they were required to cede more lands to the state of Georgia and an uneasy peace ensued.  Generally, Georgia frontier settlers were required to remain north and east of the Oconee River.  Clarke "attempted to expand Georgia's territory at the expense of the CREEK INDIANS."  Eventually Clarke "established the TRANS-OCONEE REPUBLIC in 1794 in defiance of Georgia and the United States."  But some six years before that, on 2 February 1788, Captain John Autry was killed and scalped by the Creeks on Richland Creek near Scull Shoals on the Oconee River.  He was buried on the spot where he was killed.  Elijah Clarke reported John Autry's death in a letter to the governor of Georgia dated 8 February 1788. (The preceding quotations concerning General Elijah Clarke are from the Encyclopedia of Southern History, David C. Roller and Robert W. Twyman, editors, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge and London, 1979, page 235.  The information about Captain John Autry is from The Family and Descendants of Captain John Autry by Mahan Blair Autry, self-published, Corsica, Texas, 1964 and various other sources, especially Georgians in the Revolution: At Kettle Creek (Wilkes Co.) and Burke County by Robert Scott Davis, Jr., Southern Historical Press, Inc., Easley, South Carolina, 1986.)

This page was grafted from
John English Autry's page
on 4 October 2009.