Capt. Wm. Henry Mouzon II had been friends with Banastre Tarleton since their boyhood school days in France, yet Tarleton burned the Mouzon Plantation House on August 7, 1780. Ann Mouzon, age eleven, first saw the British and alerted the rest of the family, and Mouzon escaped into Puddin' Swamp on the Black River beside his home. Soon afterward, British Major James Wemyss burned out Patriots and Loyalists alike across a swathe 15 miles wide and 70 miles long from the Santee River to Georgetown, including the area along the Black River.