After a time General Marion and Colonel Lee led up troops for the siege of Fort Motte. Fearing that British reinforcements were on the way, they decided they must make an attack at once. The best way seemed to be to set fire to the main building. The American leaders, knowing that this was the home of Mrs. Motte, took counsel with her. "Do not hesitate a moment," was the prompt reply of the patriotic woman. Then she added, "I will give you something to facilitate the destruction." So saying, she handed to General Lee a quiver of arrows from the East Indies which, so she had been told by the ship captain who brought them to Charleston, would set on fire any wood against which they were thrown. Two of the arrows were fired from a gun without result, but the third set fire to the shingles of the house. The efforts of the garrison to extinguish the flames were in vain, and before long the fortress was surrendered to the patriots. In later years, when Mrs. Motte was praised for her part in the siege, she was accustomed to say, "Too much has been made of a thing that any American woman would have done." After the war Mrs. Motte returned to the house in Charleston. The daughters married, and numerous grandchildren played in the rooms where the British officers lived during the occupation of Charleston. The youngest of these granddaughters lived in the house in 1876, when the story of Rebecca Motte was written for the Women's Centennial Executive Committee. During her last years in the old mansion, Mrs. Motte was proudly pointed out to visitors to the city. One of her great-grandchildren said that at the time "she was rather under-sized and slender, with a pale face, blue eyes, and grey hair that curled slightly under a high-crowned ruffled mob-cap. She always wore a square white neckerchief pinned down in front, tight sleeves reaching only to the elbow, with black silk mittens on her hands and arms; a full skirt with huge pockets, and at her waist a silver chain, from which hung her pin-cushion and scissors and a peculiarly bright bunch of keys." The body of this gracious patriot was buried in old St. Philip's Church, another of the Revolutionary landmarks of the Palmetto City. The mansion which she made famous should be called the Brewton House, or the Motte House. But a Motte married an Alston, and an Alston married a Pringle, and so many families of the latter name have been associated with the place that their name is popularly given to it. [Illustration: INDEPENDENT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, SAVANNAH, GA. _Photo furnished by Rev. Rockwell S. Brank, Savannah_ See page 340] LXXVII THE INDEPENDENT CHURCH, SAVANNAH, GEORGIA FOR WHICH KING GEORGE II MADE A LAND GRANT