John McKnitt Alexander

In the record (6)

1. 1775 · 1775-05-20

   The Mecklenburg Historical Association (publisher of meckdec.org) maintains, as an advocacy position defending the tradition, that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was a real and distinct event from the Resolves, citing 1830s eyewitness testimony, John McKnitt Alexander's surviving fragmentary notes referencing 'the 19th and 20th of May 1775,' and the persistence of the story across multiple independent family and militia traditions as evidence the document existed even though it was never found; historians classify this as a heritage-advocacy rather than a neutral scholarly source.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderSamuel C. Alexander

   Source · checked 2026-08-13

2. 1780

   A widely repeated but undocumented version of the legend holds that Cornwallis exclaimed something like 'Let's get out of here; this place is a damned hornet's nest' as he prepared to depart Charlotte after his roughly sixteen-day occupation; no primary source records this specific wording, and local news retrospectives explicitly note 'no written proof exists' for the quote, attributing its spread to John McKnitt Alexander beginning in the early 1800s.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderSamuel C. AlexanderLord Cornwallis

   Source · checked 2026-08-13

3. 1780

   The famous attribution of the phrase 'hornet's nest [of rebellion]' to Lord Cornwallis describing Charlotte/Mecklenburg has NO surviving contemporary 18th-century documentary source -- no letter, diary, or dispatch written by Cornwallis or his officers during or shortly after the 1780 occupation contains the quote. According to multiple secondary historical accounts, the earliest known appearances of the story in writing come from local Mecklenburg figures John McKnitt Alexander and William Polk, writing in the early 19th century (i.e., 30+ years after the events), meaning the quote as popularly repeated is oral tradition/local legend rather than a documented historical fact.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderSamuel C. AlexanderThomas PolkLord CornwallisWilliam Polk

   Source · checked 2026-08-13

4. 1800 · 1800-04-06

   Heritage tradition holds that the original 1775 Mecklenburg Declaration papers, kept by county clerk John McKnitt Alexander, were destroyed when a fire consumed the home of Alexander's son-in-law in April 1800, which is cited as the reason no contemporary copy survives; historians note this fire claim itself cannot be independently verified and conveniently explains the total absence of primary evidence.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderSamuel C. Alexander

   Source · checked 2026-08-13

5. 1819 · 1819-01-01

   The text of the Mecklenburg Declaration was first published in 1819 in the Raleigh Register, 44 years after the alleged May 20, 1775 event, having been reconstructed from memory by John McKnitt Alexander (who had died in 1817) and forwarded to U.S. Senator Nathaniel Macon, making the claimed 1775 document's public debut coincide suspiciously with the buildup to the 1826 semicentennial of American independence.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderSamuel C. AlexanderNathaniel Macon

   Source · checked 2026-08-13

6. 1838

   Historians, following the argument first advanced by Peter Force and later developed rigorously by William Henry Hoyt (1907), conclude that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was most likely a mistaken 19th-century conflation: elderly witnesses giving testimony decades after 1775, combined with a memory-reconstructed text prepared by John McKnitt Alexander after the alleged 1800 fire, blended the genuine, comparatively modest May 31, 1775 Mecklenburg Resolves with an imagined, more sweeping 'declaration of independence,' producing a spurious document that nonetheless became entrenched in North Carolina civic identity and state symbolism.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   George AlexanderAbraham AlexanderSamuel C. AlexanderRobert HenryPeterWilliam Henry HoytPeter Force

   Source · checked 2026-08-13