Kerenhappuch Norman Turner, Revolutionary War Heroine

Most ancestors you find are ordinary people, farmers or laborers.  Some bore arms or even gave their lives for their country.  I am grateful for the sacrifices and hardships borne by those who helped to build a better life for their descendants.  But often there is not much known about people beyond where they lived and died.  Occasionally you find a criminal or a scoundrel, or a prominent townsperson.  But every once in a while, you run across a really interesting and heroic person.  I just discovered that the following woman is my 8th great aunt (via the families Coburn->McCulloch->Moss->Norman). 

A Heroine of '76
Mrs. Kerenhappuch Turner
Mother of Elizabeth
The Wife of Joseph
Morehead of N.C. And
Grandmother of Captain
James and of John Morehead
A Young N.C. Soldier Under
Greene, Rode Horse-back from
Her Maryland Home and At
Guilford Courthouse Nursed
To Health A Badly Wounded Son

Kerenhappuch Norman was born about 1710 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia.  Her magnificent name comes from one of the three daughters of Job (her sisters Kesiah and Jemima certainly got easier names).  Her husband was a tobacco farmer named James Turner and they had 8 children. 

In the Revolution, she served as a courier.  As an older woman, she was able to travel freely on horseback without raising supsicion.  Her son was wounded at the battle of Guilford Court House.  Upon hearing about this, she rode on horseback from Maryland to North Carolina to care for him.  She fashioned a dripping tub over his wound to keep his infection clean and cool, and also treated other injured soldiers.  For her deeds, she is remembered with a statue (the first dedicated to a heroine of the Revolution) at the battlefield. 

As impressive as her feats were in her 60's, she must have continued to maintain an active lifestyle. She died after a fall from a horse while hunting with her grandsons in 1804, when she was likely in her 90's. 

Link: Address at dedication of her statue