Read time: 6 min.

Some Revolutionary War stories burst with battlefield heroics, but others unfold quietly, carried by Patriots whose names history nearly forgot. Robert Watkins belongs to the latter group. His life was a long, winding journey through service in militias, frontier marches, and westward settlement. It’s one that would eventually stretch from the Carolina foothills to the early communities of Indiana.

To mark the United States’ 250th birthday, the Daughters of the American Revolution has joined forces with America250, the nationwide commemoration of our country’s semiquincentennial, to pay tribute to Revolutionary War Patriots. As part of the celebration, I’ll be sharing the stories of those laid to rest in Delaware County, with help from Kathi Hirons Kesterson -the regent of the Paul Revere Chapter of Muncie’s DAR– over the next several Fridays.

Robert Watkins was born in 1754¹. At twenty-six, his world turned upside down when a band of Tories captured him near his South Carolina home and hauled him to Gilbert Town, North Carolina. There, he was handed over to British commander Colonel Patrick Ferguson. Watkins remained a prisoner for four long weeks before finally being released on parole on a Thursday. The following Saturday, Ferguson fell at the Battle of King’s Mountain! Watkins didn’t waste a moment²: as soon as word of the Patriot victory reached him, he “entered into the service of my own accord into a company that was then called Militia³.” 

Watkins fell in with Captain George Avery, Lieutenant Goven Gorden, and Ensign Phillip Anderson in Colonel Thomas Branden’s regiment. Their first march carried the group to the mouth of the Green River, where they camped for about a week before pushing deeper into the backcountry. The regiment moved on to the headwaters of the Reedy River, crossed the Little River of the Saluda, forded the Bush River, and trekked through a patchwork of frontier settlements in pursuit of roving bands of Tories. Years later, Watkins remembered that his “company was in hearing of the battle of the cowpens though not ingaged in the batter neither were we apprised of it until we heard the guns⁴.”

Robert Watkins remained in Captain Avery’s company until the following spring, when his responsibilities shifted. Colonel Branden tapped him to serve as a bearer of dispatches -an order runner- in a trusted role he carried out for roughly three months as the war’s momentum shifted through the Carolinas. Watkins also slipped into service with other outfits when needed, including a stint with Captain Shadrach Wright of the Georgia Militia during a push to drive Tories from the Broad River region.

All told, Robert Watkins logged about a year and eight months of service before Captain Avery finally issued him a verbal discharge. Even then, he didn’t truly lay down his guard. As he recalled, “the country was infested by the tories for several months after Cornwallis’s defeat⁵,” and he wasn’t effectively released from duty until after the following July.

After the war, Watkins spent two decades in South Carolina before pushing into Kentucky for four years, then briefly into Ohio, and finally on to Indiana, where he would spend the rest of his life. By about 1830, he had settled in Delaware County. On November 13, 1832, Watkins stepped into open court before Associate Judges Samuel McCulloch and John Tomlinson of the Delaware Circuit and Probate Courts. There, after nearly half a century, he laid out his Revolutionary War service in hopes of receiving the pension he had long earned.

Although he had no written discharge to prove his service, Robert Watkins didn’t stand alone. He brought with him the support of Robert Gorden, Jeremiah Stilwell, and Henry Mossburgh, each ready to swear that they believed Watkins had fought in the Revolution. With their assistance, the court reached its conclusion. As the record puts it, “the said court do hereby declare their opinion, after the investigation of the matter and after putting the interrogatories prescribed by the War Department, that the above-named applicant was a revolutionary soldier and served as he states⁶.”

Not long after making his pension declaration, Robert Watkins packed up once more and headed to Tippecanoe County with at least one of his sons⁷. The move came at an unfortunate moment: because he left Delaware County so quickly, his paperwork was never forwarded on to officials in Washington, D.C⁸. His abrupt departure also created a puzzle for later historians, who assumed he must have died soon after he appeared in court. That assumption made its way into stone: the cenotaph placed for him at Muncie’s Beech Grove Cemetery records 1834 as the year Watkins died.

For decades, local stories held that Robert Watkins was buried about half a mile south of the old John Truitt homestead along the road once known as the Muncie–Selma Pike, today’s State Road 32⁹. We now know that tradition had it wrong: Watkins was actually laid to rest in Granville Cemetery, just west of Lafayette in Tippecanoe County. He lived to the remarkable age of ninety-one¹⁰.

Robert Watkins’ life is a reminder of how easily the stories of ordinary soldiers slip into the margins. Nearly two centuries later, we’re still piecing together the truth of his journey- untangling local tradition, second-guessing cenotaphs, and tracking his path from South Carolina to the Indiana frontier. His grave in Granville Cemetery may sit far from the Delaware County landscape he briefly called home, but his story belongs to all of us who still walk the ground shaped by the sacrifices of soldiers whose names never made the headlines. Remembering Robert Watkins accurately and fully is one small way of honoring that legacy.

Sources Cited
1 Cummings, B. (2010, January 31). Patriot Graves. Personal Communication.
2 Builders of a Nation (1910, May 12). The Muncie Star. p. 4. 
3 Delaware County, Indiana, Probate Court Records, “Application of Robert Watkins for a Pension,” 13 November 1832; transcription by Norma Lasley, 2013; privately held by the compiler.
4 In the matter of the Application of Robert Watkins for a Pension (1832, November 13). State of Indiana, Delaware County [Muncie]. Transcribed by Betty Cummings. 
5 (See footnote 3). 
6 (See footnote 4). 
7 (See footnote 1). 
8 Kesterson, K. (2025, November 24). Robert Watkins. Personal Communication. 
9 Barnet, B. (1976, July 3). Pvt. Polen Watched Redcoats Quit on Grandest Day in World History. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 35.
10 (See footnote 1).