aw, before Colonel
Adam Alexander, one of the magistrates of the county, and audited and
countersigned by Ephraim Alexander, George Mitchell and James Jack,
the bearer of the Mecklenburg Declaration to Congress. The pay of a
Captain was then 10s. per day; of a 1st and 2nd Lieutenant, 7s. each;
of a first Sergeant, 6s. 6d.; of a 2nd Sergeant, 5s. 6d.; of the Clerk
and "Shurgeon," 6s. 6d.; and of each private, 5s.

James Hall, one of the privates in this expedition, afterward became a
distinguished Presbyterian minister of the gospel, and was elected on
two occasions by his own congregation, in pressing emergencies, to the
captaincy of a company, and acted as chaplain of the forces with which
he was associated. The late Rev. John Robinson, of Poplar Tent Church,
in Cabarrus county, in speaking of him, said, "when a boy at school in
Charlotte (Queen's Museum), I saw James Hall pass through the town,
with his three-cornered hat, the captain of a company and chaplain of
the regiment." In Captain Polk's manuscript journal of his march,
under Gen. Rutherford, through the mountains of North Carolina, then
the unconquered haunts of wild beasts and savage Indians, he says: "On
September 15th, 1776, Mr. Hall preached a sermon," prompted, as it
appears, by the death of one of Captain Irwin's men on the day before.

This was probably the first sermon ever heard in these secluded
mountainous valleys, now busy with the hum of civilized life. (See
sketch of his services under "Iredell County.")

Humphrey Hunter, first a private and afterward lieutenant in Captain
Robert Mebane's company in this expedition, also became an eminent
minister of the gospel, and presided at the _semi-centennial_
celebration of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, on the
20th of May, 1825. (See sketch of his services under Gaston county.)

William Shields was the gallant soldier of General Sumter's command,
who discovered a bag of gold in the camp of the routed enemy after the
battle of Hanging Rock. Not less generous than brave, steady on the
march, and true on the field, he voluntarily carried the gold to his
commanding general, and requested him to use it in the purchase of
clothing and shoes for his ragged and suffering fellow-soldiers. It is
needless to say that this brave and meritorious officer faithfully
applied it according to the request of the honest and generous
soldier.

Thomas Shelby, a relative of Colonel Isaac Shelby, of King's Mo