Eleanor was known for her sharp tongue in the face of the enemy, as family friend Milton A. Haynes, Esq. would later recount.
As General Cornwallis and his army marched from Charlotte to Winnsboro, they stopped at Eleanor’s home and she was forced to serve the General and his staff dinner. During the evening General Cornwallis artfully endeavored to enlist her sympathies for the King. He gave her personal assurance of advancement for her husband and sons should they rally to his standard. Eleanor replied that her sons were indeed dear to her, and that she would do anything in her power to obtain their preferment. “But,” she added, “I have this day sent my seventh son, Zaccheus, who is only fifteen, to join his brothers in Sumter’s army, and, sooner than have one of my family turn back, I would myself enlist under Sumter’s standard and show my husband and sons how to fight, and die, if need be, for the cause of liberty!”
Eleanor is recognized as Patriot of the American Revolution for supplying rations in North Carolina.
Eleanor died in 1801 with the legacy of being one of the most heroic women of the American Revolution. She is buried next to Robert in the Steele Creek Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Charlotte, North Carolina.
A Washington, D.C., chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution was organized by a descendant and named in Eleanor’s honor.