May Term 1782. John Sevier a Commissioner of Confiscated property for the year 1781, made return that he sold Two Slaves Confiscated of the estate of Thomas Barker at the price of thirty four Hundred pounds, and that he have the money ready to Return. Aug. Term 1782. The Court Order that Mrs. Ann Barker wife of Thomas Barker who stands charged with joining the British & was taken at Kings Mountain a prisoner, by the Americans & after that his estate was Confiscated by the County Court of Washington--On her application in behalf of her Husband for Tryal by Jury the same is Accordingly Granted. These musty old records kept at Jonesboro, stitched together like an old-fashioned copy-book, unbound, “unhonored and unsung,” have slumbered for more than a century. They contain history so sacred, however, that not a mouse or a moth has dared to touch them; the paper is still good and the ink and penmanship clear and legible; and, if properly cared for, they will be as enduring almost as the principles of justice and integrity that guided the men who made them. Connected with, growing out of and clustering around some entries and orders in these almost forgotten archives of a bygone century, there are stories and traditions which, if they could be unravelled, touched up and then put together again by a skilful and painstaking historian, would thrill with awe, admiration and wonder many of the present generation, and arouse in them sentiments and sympathies far more ennobling and exalting than those aroused by the ephemeral literature of the day. One only of these stories and traditions have I been able to trace and treasure up, for the purpose of giving it to the public at such time as I should think proper. I have grouped the three entries given above, for the purpose of publishing (for the first time, so far as I know) one of the saddest and most pathetic of the many sad and pathetic stories of the times. The mere reading of these three short entries suggests not only to Tennesseans, but to Americans, a whole history: the Revolutionary War, King’s Mountain, treason, confiscation, imprisonment, wife and children reduced to want, the faithfulness of the wife and her final appeal in person to the court for a trial of her husband by jury. But these entries have their own peculiar and painful history, which will be related briefly, as obtained from sources which would make doubt, on my part at least, undutiful and discrediting to my ancestors.