Editor of the Daily News:

     In response to your Oct. 2 article on Martha McGee Bell's role in the Revolution and of her having been the only North Carolina Revolutionary heroine singled out in the current National Geographic Magazine's article entitled "Patriots in Petticoats", I wish to say that it is disappointing that other brave women were overlooked. There was Elizabeth, the wife of Sion Harrington of Pittsboro who with her infant in arms rode horseback to Elizabethtown 80 miles down the Cape Fear to plead successfully for the release of her husband (Sion was the great-grandfather of Charles Duncan McIver, founder and president of what is now U.N.C. at Greensboro).

     In Bladen County, where I was born, there is a historical marker to Harmony Hall, home of Col. James Richardson, which tells of his wife's overhearing the plans of Gen. Cornwallis, quartered in her home, and dispatching a slave with the information to her husband with Greene's army in South Carolina--thus aiding in the defeat of the British and eventually the retreat of Cornwallis.

     In the same county another patriot named Sally Saltar (sic.) crossed the Cape Fear River under the guise of an egg peddler and spied out the strength and position of the Tories which enabled the small forces of Colonels Robeson and Brown to overwhelm and put to flight the much larger army of the Tories; thereby breaking Tory power on the Cape Fear and returning Elizabethtown, the county seat, to the Whigs.

     Sally Salter was born Sarah Lloyd, sister of David Lloyd, one of the early settlers in the county. Her husband, William Salter, was in the General Asembly of 1774-75 and a member of the First Provincial Congress which met at New Bern Aug. 24-27, 1774. It is recognized as the first such action in defiance of British authority in the colonies.

     In 1775 William was appointted (sic.) to the Safety Committee to the Wilmington District. Gary E. Tradwick accounted for Sally Salter's heroism in an article published in The State Magazine of Oct. 14, 1969. Lawrence Scott Barringer, founder and former president of the Barringer Hotel Chain, was a Salter descendent and he describes the part played by Sally Salter in the Battle of Elizabethtown, however he was wrong in thinking that William Salter took part in that battle. See "Family Facts for Future Generations" in Charlotte Library.

     James Iver McKay, member of Congress and Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee from 1843 to 1849, was a grandson of Sally Salter. He left a history of the Salter and McKay families, which record now rests in the State Archives at Raleigh. Added to this record is the story of Sally Salter as was handed down in the family. On the Bladen County Court House Square a monument was erected to the memory of this brave lady by descendents and members of the Elizabethtown Chapter of the Daughters of The American Revolutions. (sic.)