Ramsour’s Mill: The Battlefield in Miniature

An important source of information on the battle of Ramsour’s Mill is Wallace Reinhardt's interview of Adam Reep. Reep was an elderly veteran of the battle; Reinhardt's grandfather owned the land on which the battle was fought. From their discussions, Reinhardt prepared a map of the battle. One version of the map can be found in this report (.pdf); a zoomable version can be found at this website. The linked report includes a figure that shows how the terrain features in the Reep/Reinhardt map approximately correspond with a modern map of the area. Using this assessment, I have prepared my own map, and a miniature model of the battlefield.

Ramsour's Mill Battlefield Map. Water courses are shown in blue, roads are brown, and the outline of a ridge is shown in grey. The greater part of the fighting took place on the southern end of this ridge (i.e., towards the bottom of the map). Key: A) Ramsour's Mill on Clark's Creek; a mill pond is north of the mill. B) Green's Road. C) Tuckaseegee Ford Road. D) Sherrill's Ford Road.

Ramsour's Mill Battlefield in Miniature.

The battlefield was constructed by drawing a grid on the battlefield map, with the lines at 1,000-foot intervals. Then, a comparable grid was drawn onto a piece of white poster board. Because the model is at a 1:20 scale with 15mm-high miniatures, the grid lines were drawn 5.72 inches apart (for the underlying math, see here). Next, I sketched the terrain features onto the poster board, using the grid lines as visual aids, and I punched holes in the poster board for trees. After that, I painted the various terrain features with acrylics, and spread a semi-gloss varnish over Clark's Creek and the mill pond. Then, I doused the wooded and grassy areas with diluted white glue and flocked them with a Woodland Scenics turf blend. Finally, I added trees, bushes, fences, and the mill.

The fence is not a terrain feature shown on the Reep/Reinhardt map. It was included because of comments by Joseph Graham and others suggest the presence of a fence in the approximate area shown.

A number of buildings stood on the battlefield. Most were omitted because, at 1:20 scale, each building is 20 times too long and 20 times too wide, and takes up much of the space occupied by the combatants. I included the mill because it was situated outside the area in which the fighting took place. Not a lot of effort went into it, as it may not appear in the forthcoming images of the fighting. "Ramsour's mill" is the same building I used previously to serve as Hill's Ironworks, but with the addition of a mock water wheel.