As we continue to move toward our nation’s semiquincentennial, I’m still focusing on elements of the Revolutionary War effort of attaining independence and the related contributions and connections of families of the Fork, the Knox County lands between the French Broad and Holston Rivers.
We’ve already talked about how not everyone who contributed toward our nation’s independence did so willingly, such as those who were enslaved. And then there were those who didn’t volunteer but were drafted or conscripted into service. Of course, we know that many who fought early on were just trying to make a point to the British that the colonists deserved equal representation in the decision-making process that governed them. However, they really didn’t want to separate from the mother country. But what about those who resisted independence after it was declared?
John Götz was born in about 1730 to German parents who were probably among the early immigrants to colonial Pennsylvania. The family was obviously closely associated with the Wyricks, because the two families resided near one another there and in colonial Virginia. There, John Götz and Nicholas Wyrick participated in British Governor Dunmore’s border wars against the Native Americans in 1774, as settlers pushed westward. In that same year, before the colonists decided they were declaring independence, John served in the Virginia militia under Captain Robert Doak and owned land along Doak’s Mill Creek, a branch of Reed Creek near the New River…