30 Facts About Francis Marion

Francis Marion was born in Berkeley County, Province of South Carolina, around 1732.

Francis Marion's father Gabriel Marion was a Huguenot who emigrated to the Thirteen Colonies from France at some point prior to 1700 due to the Edict of Fontainebleau and became a slaveowning planter.

Francis Marion was born on his family's plantation, and at approximately the age of 15, he was hired on a merchant ship bound for the West Indies which sank on his first voyage; the crew escaped on a lifeboat but had to spend one week at sea before reaching land.

Francis Marion began his military career shortly before his 25th birthday.

At this point, Francis Marion was still hobbling on his slowly healing ankle.

Francis Marion thus missed the battle, which resulted in a British victory.

Francis Marion showed himself to be a singularly able leader of irregular militiamen and ruthless in his terrorizing of Loyalists.

Francis Marion's Men operated from a base camp on Snow's Island in Florence County.

Francis Marion rarely committed his men to frontal warfare but repeatedly bewildered larger bodies of Loyalists or British regulars with quick surprise attacks and equally sudden withdrawal from the field.

Once Francis Marion had shown his ability at guerrilla warfare, making himself a serious nuisance to the British, Governor John Rutledge commissioned him as a brigadier general of militia.

Francis Marion fought against freed slaves working or fighting alongside the British.

Francis Marion received an order from Rutledge to execute all Black people suspected of carrying provisions or gathering intelligence for the British "agreeable to the laws of this State".

Francis Marion commanded the right wing under General Greene at the Battle of Eutaw Springs.

When Francis Marion returned to Pond Bluff, he discovered it had been destroyed during the war.

At the age of 54, Francis Marion married his 49-year old cousin, Mary Esther Videau.

Francis Marion served several terms in the South Carolina State Senate.

Francis Marion died on his plantation in 1795, at the age of 63, and was buried at Belle Isle Plantation Cemetery in Berkeley County, South Carolina.

The public memory of Marion has been shaped in large part by the first biography about him, The Life of General Francis Marion, written by Mason Locke Weems and based on the memoirs of South Carolinian soldier Peter Horry.

Walt Disney Productions produced The Swamp Fox, an eight-episode mini-series about Francis Marion that aired from 1959 to 1961.

The truth is that people like Francis Marion committed atrocities as bad, if not worse, than those perpetrated by the British.

Francis Marion enjoyed generally good relations with his slaves, including Peggy, the mixed-raced daughter of a Native American man and an African American woman.

Oller writes that there is no proof, either, that Francis Marion personally committed any atrocities during the Anglo-Cherokee War, at least as a matter of choice, although he participated in some by order of his commander James Grant.

Graham referred to what he describes as "the unchallenged work of South Carolina's premier historian Dr Walter Edgar, who pointed out in his 1998 South Carolina: A History that Francis Marion's partisans were "a ragged band of both black and white volunteers.

Francis Marion was a man of his times: he owned slaves, and he fought in a brutal campaign against the Cherokee Indians.

The city of Francis Marion, Iowa holds an annual Swamp Fox Festival.

Francis Marion University is located nearby in Florence County, South Carolina.

In Washington, DC, Francis Marion Park is one of the four large parks in the Capitol Hill Parks constellation.

The Francis Marion Hotel is a historic hotel in downtown Charleston, South Carolina.

In 1994, Francis Marion was posthumously inducted into the US Army Ranger Hall of Fame.

The Brigadier General Francis Marion Memorial Act of 2007 passed the House of Representatives in March 2007, and the Senate in April 2008.