Biography
Thomas Brown was a young English-born settler in the Georgia backcountry who refused to join the Patriot cause. In August 1775 a party of Sons of Liberty came to his home near Augusta to force him to sign their association; when he refused, they beat him, fractured his skull with a musket, partially scalped him, burned his feet so badly that he lost two toes, and tarred and feathered him — earning him the derisive nickname “Burntfoot Brown.” He survived to become one of the most effective Loyalist partisan commanders in the southern backcountry, and after the war went into exile in the Bahamas.