Nancy and her Stinson (Stephenson) family (with brothers James and William) moved to America in 1772 under the pastoral care of radical Presbyterian minister, Rev William Martin, and settled at Rocky Creek, a branch of the Catawba River in Chester County, South Carolina.
Just before she left her homeland, Nancy married a Co Antrim kinsman William Anderson and on arrival in South Carolina they were allocated a track of land given as bounty by the colonial authorities as inducement to emigration from Europe.
By 1773, William Anderson had built a log cabin and set about planting some Indian corn to complement the foods that he would readily find by fishing in the rivers and hunting in the forests.
Gradually, the Anderson homestead advanced in size and with three young children (Mary, Robert and William) to feed and clothe William and Nancy had to work long hours to ensure they had a reasonable level of return from what then was effectively an outer frontier region.
The Revolutionary War, which had started, heightened tensions in the area and, even at church worship on a Sunday, the settlers were confronted with the stark choice on how they should react - either succumbing to the rule of the Crown forces or throwing in their lot with the American patriot cause.
For the Rev William Martin, an old-style Presbyterian pastor with strong views on independence for his people and a deep mistrust of the British, there was only one option.
"My hearers," William Martin said in his broad Ulster accent to faithful worshippers like William and Nancy Anderson, "Talk and angry words will not do. We must fight."
After hearing the Rev William Martin, William Anderson felt he had a patriotic duty to fulfil - to join the local militia and take up the fight.
His wife Nancy fully understood the predicament, but as William bade her and the children farewell at the cabin door before heading off on horseback to join the local unit, she might not have imagined that it would be the last time they would see each other.
A bout of smallpox was visited on Nancy and the family and, with William away, British dragoons stopped off to maliciously plunder on the homestead and drive off the stock in the fields.
Other cabins belonging to Scots-Irish settlers were raided in similar fashion and the nearby Presbyterian meeting house where the Rev William Martin was pastor was burnt down as a reprisal against the patriot militiamen and their supporters.
Nancy was in a hopeless position and for food she had to roast the ears of green corn, or dry the corn in milk and grate it on a rough stone into coarse meal, from which she made mush for herself and her sick children.
William Anderson, meanwhile, joined the forces of General Thomas Sumter under Captain John Steel at Clem's Branch, east of the Catawba River, and he fought at the battles of Williamsons, Rocky Mount, Hanging Rock and Carey's Fort.
But two months after he left William was shot dead in a Redcoat attack on his unit. Nancy was now a widow, left alone to look after three young children. Indeed, in the small Rocky Creek neighbourhood four other women were widowed by the deaths of their husbands in battle.
Eventually, the smallpox epidemic cleared and the children recovered, but the onerous tasks of harvesting and attending to the daily painstaking chores of the home kept Nancy and the other widows fully occupied.
The stock had gone, but Nancy Anderson pulled her flax, watered and put it through the break before scuttling it with the hand-scuttle and hackling it on the coarse and fine hackle. She then carefully spun the flax in a manner she had been taught back in her Ulster homeland.
Nancy did receive some help from her brother William Stinson, who was engaged at the Battle of Kings Mountain and paid regular visits to Rocky Creek. He had to be very careful as British and loyalist forces were constantly passing through the area, and regularly harassed Nancy Anderson and the other women.
The food which Nancy Anderson and her children lived on over that winter was mainly bread, although occasionally a little meat was given to her by patrolling patriots, after hunting in the forests. Nancy had to be adaptable and she learned to fish in the adjoining river and streams, using traps, and the catches she got did provide a staple and a very welcome change of diet.
Throughout her ordeal, Nancy Anderson never wavered from her strong Covenanting faith and she constantly prayed for a betterment of the situation. This was to come in a rather unusual way in the form of a stranger Daniel Green, thought to be a soldier, who accidentally came upon the Anderson homestead at Rocky Creek.
The tall, quite apprehensive Green introduced himself to Mrs Anderson and her children and after giving her some firm assurances about his reasons for being in the area, he was invited to partake of a meal.
Nancy and the stranger talked for hours about the extremely difficult personal plight both found themselves in and while he said he needed to borrow a horse, there was a marked reluctance to take the lone sorrel mare which the poor widow Anderson had.
Several days elapsed and the friendship between Nancy Anderson and the stranger developed into a mutual relationship which grew stronger as time passed. Even a week on the bleak landscape of the American frontier was a lengthy period for a vulnerable widow and a soldier uncertain about his future. Nancy and Daniel had only known each other five days.
Obviously there was not time to hang around and, after borrowing a horse, the stranger rode with Nancy Anderson to the home of the local Justice John Gaston, where, after a short legal ceremony, the pair were pronounced man and wife. A dollar payment was passed over - all the money Daniel Green possessed in the world.
Mrs Anderson became Mrs Green in a lightning marriage which led to raised eyebrows among the strict very conservative Presbyterian Covenanting community of Rocky Creek. Acquaintances were scandalised that Nancy had dispensed with the marital formalities laid down by the church.
In Presbyterian Covenanting tradition an intended marriage had to be published by the minister on three successive Sundays. This Nancy and Daniel Green did not do. Nancy, however, was undeterred by the criticism. It was her judgment and personal choice that Daniel Green was a loving partner, and a suitable, caring step-father for her three young children.
Daniel was a man of commanding stature, said to be frank and honourable in his dealings, aptly disposed to trust and possessing a sound intellect. Nancy had learned that Daniel was born of a poor family background in New Jersey about 1752 which made them around the same age.
During the early part of the Revolutionary War he had served in Canada and moving to Philadelphia, he had a spell in the marines. He returned to military service as a patriot soldier and was captured by the British and held on a prison ship at Charleston, before escaping along with a number of Scots-Irish lads from Chester, York and Lancaster counties of South Carolina.
Daniel and Nancy Green eventually overcame their adversities caused by the War, and the murmurings within the Rocky Creek community about the standing of their hurried marriage within church confines. Their prosperity increased, but they had no children and Daniel lovingly treated Nancy's daughter and two sons as his own.
Daniel joined Nancy as a committed churchgoer and he repaired the Presbyterian church at Beckhamville, which was damaged in the War, and built an ornate granite wall around the burial ground. Daniel did not belong to any particular denomination, unlike his wife, but he was highly esteemed by members of different faiths as an excellent man, a sincere Christian.
Nancy lived until she was 77, passing away in June 1827 after a lengthy illness. Daniel, on the day of her funeral, remarked that they had been together for 50 years and tasted real happiness.
"We have been blessed in our basket and our store, flourishing like a green bay tree beside the waters, but this is not our abiding place. How soon I too may go the way of all living, I know not," he said.
Daniel survived Nancy by only a few weeks. He was a man in his late seventies and had grown very tired nursing and watching his ailing wife in her final days. A severe attack of fever led to his death.
Funeral arrangements for Daniel were made by his step-son William Anderson, a highly respected colonel in the American patriot militia. Just before Nancy's death, William had gone to the spot where his father William had been buried and removed the remains to where he expected soon to open a grave for his mother.
Heavy rains had resulted in the original burying ground being flooded, with the bones of people buried there being brought to the surface.
It was a harrowing experience and extremely distressful to Nancy Anderson Green when she was told. But due to her very poor state of health, she was unable to be present at the transfer with other family members.
In a quiet reserved spot near the banks of the Catawba River which flows through the beautiful countryside which straddles South Carolina and North Carolina, Nancy Anderson was buried between her two soldier husbands, alongside her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Nancy was most certainly a woman of extraordinary character and courage, typical of those who settled in the 18th century American frontier, and against great odds made a settled home and reared a family.
Maritime records show that James Stinson, NancyÕs brother, emigrated from Larne in Co Antrim to Charleston in South Carolina on August 25, 1772 on the James and Mary sailing ship.
The James and Mary was one of five vessels which that year carried 467 families (more than 1,000 people of Covenanting Reformed Presbyterian) stock from Co Antrim to America on a historic passage arranged and led by the Rev William Martin.
James Stinson was a militia captain under Colonel John Sevier at the Battle of Kings Mountain in October 7, 1780 and his brother William also fought there.
William Stinson is listed on a memorial to 65 Revolutionary War soldiers from the Rev William Martin's Catholic Presbyterian Church at Chester County, South Carolina. Most of the soldiers were either north of Ireland born or first or second generation Ulster-Scots.