Yes that happened to my ancestors in Herkimer County NY and the Susquehanna River Valley in PA
One family member was burnt to death when the rebels fired the house and a teenage girl died in prison...
another ancestor was a POW and was killed escaping from the prison..
Even an old grandmother and young children were imprisoned...
Both families had their lands confiscated and had to flee north to Canada
The women and children spent the next few years in Sorel the refugee camp near Montreal..
They never got their property or land back...
A son from one family married a daughter from another..
My 4th great grandparents..
Tennessee Nana UE
Legends of people crowded into a building, a schoolhouse or a farmhouse, and being burned to death by opposing forces obviously stick in memory and have grown over the centuries. These things did occur, just not so widespread, and they occurred at the hands of Loyalists and British soldiers as frequently as not.
In this neck of the woods, it was more retaliatory on the part of Patriots or “rebels” as you term them, which is very interesting to me as a southerner. We had Banastre Tarleton to contend with, Bloody Ban. There are those apologists who have attempted to rehabilitate Tarleton’s repute but I have copies of ancestors’ records, pension applications and contemporary accounts, that describe in detail the deliberate, terrorizing tactics employed by that man. “Tarleton’s Quarter” was no fabricated legend.
The “Tory routing parties” were provoked into existence by the excesses of British and Loyalists/Tories. The fighting was exacerbated, here at least, by other indicators of allegiance such as familial ancestry and religion.
I’m descended from nothing but old Tory fighters and indian fighters before that, unless you’re talking about indian ancestors themselves, who chose the wrong side again. They had that knack. They were Tory, two of them. Hid out in the mountains and rode it out. The Scotch-Irish and the Cherokee did discover an affinity for one another, once they stopped killing each other.