Bush gets bust of Revolutionary War ancestor

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn, presented a bust of Jonathan “James” Weir to the president, Weir’s direct descendant, on Monday.

Weir and other soldiers gathered Sept. 25, 1780, for the “Muster of the Overmountain Men,” which marked the beginning of the two-week campaign that led to the victory at the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina.

“The Battle of Kings Mountain was the turning point in the Revolutionary War in the South,” Alexander said. “The gathering of 1,000 volunteers at Sycamore Shoals in Carter County, who then crossed the mountain and surprised and defeated the British at Kings Mountain, is one of the great stories of American history.”

Alexander, whose John Alexander also fought in the historic battle, accepted the bust on Bush’s behalf in September, at the production of “The Wataugans” by the Overmountain Victory Trail Association.

The bust was carved by Larry Nowell of Knoxville from a branch of the Pemberton Oak, a 500-year-old white oak tree that stood near the Virginia-Tennessee border on the muster site of Capt. John Pemberton’s Sullivan County militia company.

When the Pemberton Oak fell on Aug. 2, 2002, it was the last living artifact of the Campaign of the Overmountain Men.

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