The Kerleys were active participants in the War of 1812. Several members of this family served during that war. That was in mark contrast to the American Revolution. Few Kerleys served in the Revolution. As best I can determine there were only 2 or 3 Kerleys who served during the Revolutionary War on the Patriot side and maybe 2 or 3 Kerleys who sided with England during that conflict. That is not particularly surprising since when the Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, the Kerley clan had been living here for only about 20 years. Many of them, in fact, had been born in Ireland. So, at that point, they had divided loyalties. They were not yet firmly attached to their new country.
When the War of 1812 broke out a little over 30 years later, however, things had changed. At that point, the Kerleys had been living here in America for about 50 years and a sizable number of them had been born and raised here. For many of them, they only knew life as Americans. They had no loyalties to the birthplace or country of their parents. So, it was not surprising that quite a few of the Kerley men who were of age joined the battle on the American side. Here is a brief overview of the Kerleys who participated in the War and their service.
KENTUCKY
William3 (John,2 William1). William was the highest ranking Kerley serving in the war and also the oldest. When the war broke out he raised a company of volunteers in Madison County KY. This was Company K of the 1st Kentucky Rifle Regiment, serving under Col. John Allen. William was placed in command (as a captain) of this Company. He was 51 years old at this time. He served from August 15, 1812 to March 7, 1813.
William's unit took part in the Tecumseh Campaign, and was at the battle of the River Raisin on January 22, 1812. The Battle of Raisin River was a major disaster for the Americans. See https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/remember-raisin. So, William had the dubious distinction of being a participant in two of the more inglorious battles in early American history. The extent of his company’s participation in this particular battle is not clear. Judging, however, from the relatively few Company K men killed or captured, it is probable that his company was held in reserve for the main battle and thus missed the most of the action.
John4 (William,3 John,2 William1). John served in the 11th Regiment of the Mounted Kentucky Volunteers. John was in Captain Richard C. Holder's Company. Colonel William Williams (from Madison CO. KY) commanded this regiment which was organized on August 31, 1813, for the Thames campaign. (The Battle of the Thames, also known as the Battle of Moraviantown, was an American victory against Tecumseh's Confederacy and their British allies. It took place on October 5, 1813 in Upper Canada. The British lost control of Southwestern Ontario as a result of the battle; Tecumseh was killed, and his confederacy largely fell apart.) It is somewhat interesting that John did not serve in his father's unit. Perhaps he was a horseman and thus chose to serve with a mounted unit and not with his father's foot soldiers. His service began about six months after his father's service ended.
Benjamin D. (unknown). Benjamin served in the First Regiment of mounted Kentucky volunteers headed by Samuel Caldwell, Lt. Col. Benjamin was a private in Captain Moses Shelby's Company. He served from Sept. 18, 1812 to October 30, 1812. This unit came from "far west Kentucky" near Livingston County, KY (just across the Ohio River from Pope and Johnson Counties in Illinois - again locations where there were known Kerley presences). As of yet, Benjamion has not been tied into any known Kerley family.
TENNESSEE
William M.4 (William,3 John,2 William1). William M. was another son of the William described above. It is interesting to note that many of the records, military and land, pertaining to William M. all use his middle initial. Not many Kerleys used their middle initials.
This William began his service as a sergeant in Captain Thomas K Gordon's Company in Colonel Thomas McCrory's regiment of the West Tennessee militia on October 4, 1813. This was the same regiment in which his second cousin, James Kerley (see below), was serving. James and William were, however, in different companies. He was elected/promoted to a first lieutenant on December 11, 1813.
William M. served until January 4, 1814. He traveled 174 miles from Pulaski (in Giles County) to Fayetteville, where he was mustered in, and from Fort Strother where he was discharged. He received a total of $48.67 for his service. (Note that his purported monthly rate $11.50 (3 x $11.50 = $34.50) does not comport with his final total pay. He also received $10 for subsistence rations for a servant/slave he utilized during the time he served as a lieutenant. It was the termination of his service in the militia that led to his encounter with Andrew Jackson.
The story of this encounter is best told by this account in McCallum's "A Brief Sketch of the Settlement and Early History of Giles County, Tennessee."
Lieutenant Kerley and General “Hickory” Jackson. William M. Kerley came to the County in the early part of 1809 with Tyree Rodes and lived a year or two on his farm. He went out with the first troops under the call of the State in the fall of 1813, for service in the Creek Nation; and was Lieutenant in one of the companies from Giles County. He became somewhat conspicuous by resisting the authority of General Jackson at Fort Deposit, at a time when a portion of the troops were about leaving the army, believing their term of service had expired. I have read no account of the transaction, that is entirely correct according to my information, and none which does justice to Kerley and his comrades.
To fully understand the controversy between General Jackson and his soldiers, it is necessary briefly to recur to the terms of their enlistment. The massacre of Fort Mimms, the 30th of August, 1813, startled the whole country and caused a stampede of all the white settlers between Mobile and Huntsville. The legislature of Tennessee, being in session and fearing an immediate advance by the Indians, on her southern borders, without waiting to consult the general Government, authorized the Governor to call out 3,500 of the militia, in addition to the volunteers who had been discharged in the Spring, after their return from Natchez without limiting their term of service. and pledged the State to pay them if the United States Government refused.
The Governor ordered General Jackson to raise 2,000 of the number in his division; the balance to be raised in East Tennessee. Under the orders of General Jackson the militia rendezvoused at Huntsville, October 4, 1813, and were mustered into service without specifying the time they were to serve. Near the close of the year General Jackson, learning that the militia expected to be discharged, the 4th of January at the expiration of the three months, insisted that, having been raised under an Act that did not limit their term, and mustered into service without specifying the time they were to serve, by implication they were bound for the shortest time allowed by Act of Congress, which was 6 months.
The officers and soldiers insisted that they were enlisted with the express understanding and belief that it was for a three months campaign; that the militia raised in East Tennessee under the same Act was mustered into service for three months, and were received as such and claimed their discharge the fourth day of January,
General Jackson having received a letter from Governor Blount, indicating his acquiescence in the opinion of the militia, perceived it would be useless to try and hold them; but believing they were bound under the law to serve six months if required, he determined to hold them until reinforcements arrived. Accordingly he issued an order prohibiting them to leave without his permission.
“At half past ten on the morning of the fourth of January, (quoting from Kendall's Life of Jackson) neither the officer of the guard nor any of the sentinels were found at their posts. On the report of this fact general Jackson ordered the arrest of Lieutenant Kerley, the officer in question. He refused to surrender his sword, asserting that he was no longer subject to the orders of General Jackson. The General directed Colonel Sitler, the Adjutant-General, to parade the guards, and Captain Gordon's Company of Spies, and arrest Kerley at all hazards. The order was instantly obeyed.
Kerley was found at the head of his Company, which with the rest of the militia was formed and ready to march. Colonel Sitler ordered him to halt but he refused. The Colonel then order the guards to stop him, which was done; still he refused to deliver his sword. Sitler then ordered the guards to fire on him if he persisted in his refusal, and both parties simultaneously cocked their guns. At this critical moment General Jackson himself rode up and in person demanded of Kerley the surrender of his sword. Again Kerley refused imperatively.
The General drew a pistol from his holster and was leveling it at Kerley’s breast when Colonel Sitler placed himself between them, urging him to submit. A friend of Kerley’s drew his sword from the scabbard and presented it to Colonel Sitler who refused to accept it. Having been returned to Kerley he finally surrendered it to Colonel Sitler and was put under guard.”
Charles C. Abernathy of Giles County witnessed the transaction. He says the account given in Kendall's Life of Jackson is substantially correct, except as to Kerley’s giving up his sword. He says he had gone to the camp of Dr. Gilbert D. Taylor, then of Pulaski, who was a surgeon in the army; that Colonel Sitler stopped Kerley about twenty or thirty yards from Taylor’s camp, where he and Dr. Taylor were sitting; that when Kerley refused to surrender his sword “General Jackson, coming up with a pistol in his hand, declared to Kerley that if he did not give up his sword he would blow him through.”
At this crisis Dr. Taylor said to me: “this will never do,” and immediately left his seat and running to Kerley jerked his sword from his hand, and offered it to Colonel Sitler which Sitler refused to receive from him. Dr. Taylor then placed the sword back in Kerley’s hand and taking Kerley’s arm with the sword in his hand, extended it to Colonel Sitler, whereupon Colonel Sitler received it, and Kerley submitted to arrest.”
He says: “it is very doubtful whether Kerley would have voluntarily surrendered his sword.” That General Jackson certainly would not have parlayed long with him, and that but for the timely interposition of Dr. Taylor, there was no telling what would have been the result; that the opposing forces were nearly equal. He says “During the progress of the affair, I calculated on witnessing the bloodiest time I had ever seen, the result of which would have been the breaking up of the Creek War at least for a season.”
After Kerley’s arrest he asked pardon of General Jackson, and in explanation of his conduct stated that having promised his company to lead them home, he feared it would be considered a compromise of his courage and his honor to surrender his sword. He was soon released and his sword restored. (It is said that Kerley ordered his men not to fire on the soldiers in case the word was given, but to fire upon Jackson.) He was after afterwards at the friend of General Jackson. The tradition is that General Jackson said Kerley was too brave a man to punish. While the controversy was going on with Kerley, the rest of the Brigade with the exception of Captain Willis and about thirty of his men, marched off and no further effort was made to arrest them.
Note that William M's confrontation with General Jackson occurred on the very same day that James Kerley was discharged at Fayetteville.
James4 (William3, Henry2,William1). For James (and most of the other Kerley participants in the War), the War of 1812 involved fighting with Indians, not with the British. In August, 1813, a half-breed Creek chief named Red Eagle led a raid on Fort Mims in southern Alabama and massacred more than 200 white people. (At that time, Alabama was part of the Mississippi Territory). Red Eagle was the leader of a faction of the Creek Nation that favored a broad military alliance with the Shawnees (led by Tecumseh) for the purpose of making war on the palefaces all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada and pushing them back into the Atlantic Ocean whence they came. As war between the United States and England evolved, the British encouraged the Creeks to commit as much military mischief as possible on the frontier. To that end, the British smuggled guns and supplies to the Indians through Florida (which was still a possession of their ally, Spain).
When news of the massacre at Fort Mims reached Tennessee, Governor Blount appealed for 5000 volunteers for a three month tour of duty against the Creeks. On October 10, 1813, General Jackson began the long march south into Creek country. The little army passed through Huntsville (averaging an astonishing thirty-six miles a day on foot!) and pushed on to the southernmost point on the Tennessee River where they established a supply base called Fort Deposit. After resting only a few days, Jackson continued on, cutting a road across the Raccoon Mountains and the Lookout Mountains to get to the Coosa River. There he established an advance supply base called Fort Strother.
Alerted to the presence of a hostile Creek village called Tallushatchee about thirteen miles east of Fort Strother, Jackson ordered his mounted soldiers to attack it on the morning of November 3. (It is doubtful that James was part of the mounted component of Jackson's army). The attack was enormously successful. Jackson's troops killed each and every one of the 186 braves in the village while losing only five men. The news of Jackson's lopsided victory at Tallushatchee caused a number of Creek villages to switch their support from Red Eagle's war party to the more pacifistic faction of the Creek Nation. One of those villages was Talladega, a small community about thirty miles south of Fort Strother.
Red Eagle found out about Talladega's change of allegiance and ordered a thousand warriors to surround the village and destroy it. Jackson learned of this impending attack and immediately marched his entire army to meet the threat at Talladega. On the morning of November 9, Jackson baited Red Eagle's warriors into a battlefield trap and then closed it on them. Sergeant Kearley saw all the action he could have ever wanted on that day. When it was over, the Tennesseans had killed about 300 Indians while losing only fifteen of their own. About 700 Indians, however, escaped from the trap when the right side of Jackson's line faltered in a moment of confusion. Nonetheless, Talladega was another one-sided victory for Andrew Jackson and his men - their second in less than a week.
The army returned to Fort Strother and discovered to their chagrin that the supplies they were anticipating had not arrived. Days passed and the situation went from bad to critical as the long awaited provisions - especially food - did not appear. The men and field officers petitioned Jackson to return home to Tennessee. When the general refused, the militia (i.e., the draftees) broke camp and headed north anyway, Jackson managed to draw up the volunteers (who were still loyal) in front of the militia and force them back into Fort Strother. Incredibly, on the very next day, the roles were reversed; the volunteers mutinied and started for home, and the militia was called out to force them back to the fort! Not long afterward, frustration and discontent bubbled over again when an entire brigade prepared to head for Tennessee. Jackson prevailed upon these men to abandon their plans by pointing a loaded rifle at them and threatening to kill the first one who tried to leave. We do not know if James was in that brigade or not.
A few days later some supplies reached the fort, and the situation improved a little. Jackson was waiting on a General Cocke to arrive with more men so that he could mount a full-scale offensive against Red Eagle who was known to be camped about fifty miles south of Fort Strother. But on December 9, another brigade of volunteers threatened to leave, claiming that their term of enlistment was due to expire on the following day. (This was not James Kearley's brigade: his term of enlistment did not expire until 4 January 1814). Once again Old Hickory barely convinced them to remain - at least until the anticipated reinforcements from eastern Tennessee arrived - by pointing his artillery pieces at the men and ordering the gunners to prepare to fire. General Cocke marched into Fort Strother with 1500 fresh men on December 12 - none too soon - and the mutinous brigade was finally allowed to leave for home. On the following day (13 December 1813), James was promoted to quartermaster sergeant, a post that probably became vacant when the other brigade left. (James's promotion netted him a pay raise. He now got $12 a month).
General Jackson soon learned that most of Cocke's men's term of service was due to expire in a matter of days. He had little choice except to order Cocke to march them back home and discharge them. And to make matters worse, virtually his entire cavalry force, which had been allowed to return home temporarily to procure clothing and fresh mounts, had simply deserted as soon as they reached Tennessee. Governor Blount advised Jackson to abandon Fort Strother and retreat northward to the Tennessee frontier. The general was disgusted and emotionally devastated. He believed that he could deliver the decisive blow against Red Eagle if only he had a few more men, adequate supplies, and a little more time. He notified his remaining soldiers (of whom James Kearley was one) of the governor's recommendation, but he pleaded with them to remain with him and complete the campaign instead. The large majority of the soldiers, probably including James, gave Old Hickory a vote of “no confidence” with their feet as they immediately began leaving in droves. Jackson took their departure as a personal insult and wished them each “a smoke tail in their teeth, with a Peticoat as a coat of mail to hand down to there offspring.” See, Robert V. Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson (Harper & Row: New York, 1988).
Jackson remained at Fort Strother, was eventually reinforced, and went on to win his military reputation in a number of successful battles against the Indians. Sam Houston was one of the soldiers who stayed with him. The Creeks were utterly defeated later in 1814, and Red Eagle surrendered to Jackson personally.
Henry4 (William3, Henry2,William1) Henry followed in the footsteps of his brother, James, and enlisted on November 13, 1814, in a unit headed by a Colonel William Metcalf. He was a private in the infantry. His unit participated in the Battle of New Orleans in late 1814 and early 1815.
Daniel4 (James3, Henry2,William1). Daniel served in the 3rd Regiment of the East Tennessee militia. He enlisted on September 13, 1814, in the 3rd Regiment of the East Tennessee Militia. He was in Colonel William Johnson's Regiment and James Tunnell's company. This unit mustered at Knoxville and marched to the vicinity of Mobile, Alabama, via Camp Ross (present-day Chattanooga). The men were used primarily as road builders and wagon guards. While they were at Camp Mandeville (near Mobile) in February, 1814, there was much disease. Daniel, like many of his comrades, got sick. He was unable to be discharged when his term of service was up. He was mustered "sick, absent" and detained by sickness until after May 31, 1815.
In 1814, Daniel and his mother were living in Cumberland County, TN, and most of the men in this particular unit came from nearby counties. See, Regimental Histories of Tennessee Units During the War of 1812. (Available at the Tennessee State Library and Archives web-site). For some unknown reason, Daniel's request for a pension for his service was rejected. See warrant number 80-50-52576.
SOUTH CAROLINA
Arthur4 (Joseph Jr3, Joseph2,William1). Arthur and his brother, John, both served in the South Carolina militia. They were in Keith's 5th Regiment. Arthur was a private.
John4 (Joseph Jr3, Joseph2,William1). John and his brother, Arthur, both served in the South Carolina militia. They were in Keith's 5th Regiment.
NORTH CAROLINA
Larkin3(Henry2,William1). Larkin served in 2nd North Carolina Regiment (McGimpsey's command). This unit was organized in Burke County, NC where we know a large contingent of Kerleys were living at that time. (Some records classify this record as belonging to Larkin Kerby. So, it is possible that this may not be our Larkin.) (There was also a Joseph Kerby in this same unit.)