By June 1780 the southern campaign of the American Revolution had run very badly for the patriots. The British had captured Savannah, then Charleston in May, and on May 29 Banastre Tarleton's dragoons had cut to pieces a small Continental force at the Waxhaws - the engagement that gave Tarleton his infamous reputation. The British, in complete control of South Carolina and Georgia, established outposts in the backcountry to recruit Loyalists and suppress the Whigs. One outpost stood at Rocky Mount under Lieutenant Colonel George Turnbull's New York Volunteers. Another at Shirer's Ferry on the Broad River served as a rallying point for Tory militia. In early June, a Tory band camped at Mobley's Meeting House, about twelve miles north of Shirer's Ferry, on a high embankment in Fairfield District. They had been raiding Whig properties - members of the Hampton family had been particularly harmed, with John and Henry Hampton sent as prisoners to Cornwallis at Camden. The Tories sat at Mobley's, fat with stolen goods, waiting for British assistance.

Richard Winn, a prominent local Whig leader, began to rally supporters. By June 7 he had between one and two hundred men in the New Acquisition District - roughly today's York County. The Whig officers included Colonel William Bratton, who had led militia since the war began in 1775; Edward Lacey, John McClure, Samuel Watson, the men named Cooper and Hill. Much of the force had just the day before scattered another Tory gathering at Beckhamville. Bratton was elected overall field commander. The Whigs rode for Mobley's Meeting House and arrived in the early morning hours of June 8. They found the camp surprisingly relaxed about security - blockhouse and church both sturdy, but the picket line poorly maintained. The attackers planned a surprise.

The assault came at daybreak from three sides - the fourth left open because no one expected anyone to use it. The Whig accounts say they suffered no casualties; the Tories suffered a few killed and some captured. But the most striking detail is what happened on the embankment side. As Tories in the church and blockhouse panicked and tried to escape, many of them simply ran down the embankment everyone had assumed was impassable. They fell. They tumbled. They broke arms and legs and skulls on the way down. According to the surviving accounts, falls down the embankment caused more injuries than the firefight itself. The plundered goods were recovered and returned to their owners. The prisoners were marched north to North Carolina. The whole engagement lasted minutes.

Colonel Turnbull at Rocky Mount sent the New York Volunteers - the 'Green Coat Tories' under Captain Christian Huck - in reprisal. Huck's column went on a small rampage, destroying Richard Winn's plantation, the home and parsonage of the Reverend John Simpson, and attacking the small Whig force defending Colonel William Hill's ironworks. They burned the ironworks. The cycle of raid and counter-raid kept escalating, drawing more men into the militia camps - and ultimately leading to the rise of Thomas Sumter as a major regional commander. In July, the Whigs caught up with Huck at Williamson's Plantation and killed him. The British would still win big set-piece battles at Camden and Fishing Creek in August. But the slow, scrappy summer of small Whig victories - Beckhamville, Mobley's Meeting House, Huck's Defeat, Ramsour's Mill - kept the South Carolina resistance alive through what its participants called 'these dark days.' The decisive turn at Kings Mountain in October was still months away. The marker today stands on SSR 18, about a mile and a half west of where the meeting house once stood. The road and the path are gone.