Background
She was daughter of Charles and Mary Moore, and the eldest of ten children.
She was daughter of Charles and Mary Moore, and the eldest of ten children.
Kate was instrumental in helping to warn the militia of the coming British before the Battle of Cowpens in 1781. According to legend, she tied her toddler to the bedpost while she rode out to warn neighbors that the British were coming. Her warning helped to prepare the colonial forces to defeat the British governor, Cornwallis and his men and drive them north, out of the state of South Carolina.
She knew the Indian trails and shortcuts where almost no patriots lived.
Barry was a spy and message bearer for the militia when the Battle of Cowpens was fought on January 17, 1781. The Battle of Cowpens (January 17, 1781) was a decisive victory by Continental army forces under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, in the Southern campaign of the American Revolutionary War.
lieutenant was a turning point in the reconquest of South Carolina from the British. Kate Barry was an ancestor of the actress Amanda Blake (1929-1989), remembered for the role of the red-haired saloon proprietress "Mission Kitty Russell" on the television western Gunsmoke.
Blake placed a cameo-sized portrait of Barry owned by her family in the Spartanburg, South Carolina local history museum, where it remains on display to this day.