USA > Virginia > Augusta County > Augusta County > Annals of Augusta County, Virginia, with reminiscences illustrative of the vicissitudes of its pioneer settlers (A Supplement) > Part 12
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Colonel Campbell in a vote of thanks for their services in protecting the frontier. Throughout the war of the Revolution he was actively em . ployed, holding important command in Southwest Virginia, and his official papers show that he was a man of more than ordinary culture. He died at Smithfield in 1783, leaving eleven children, of whom five were sons. One of his sons, General Francis Preston, was the father of William C. Preston, of South Carolina. His descendants are very numerous, and many of them have been highly distinguished.
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CHAPTER VI.
INDIAN WARS, ETC., FROM 1764 TO 1775.
We now rapidly approach the end of Indian troubles in Augusta county. As white population advanced, the savages receded, and the people of Augusta, as it now is, were de- livered from danger and alarm. Indeed, none of the massacres, of which we have given an account, occurred within the present limits of the county ; but the scenes of disaster being, at the various times mentioned, parts of the county, the incidents could not be omitted in our history. We presume no reader will think we have devoted too much space to the history of these times. The events related were of thrilling interest. The narrative shows what toil and suffering our ancestors endured to obtain homes for themselves, and to transmit a goodly heritage to us. As we now sit under our vine and fig tree, with none to molest or make us afraid, let us devoutly thank God for present peace and safety.
In October, 1764, says Withers, [Border Warfare, pages 72, 73,] about fifty Delaware and Mingo warriors ascended the Great Sandy and came over on New river, where they sepa- rated-one party going towards the Roanoke and Catawba (a small stream in Botetourt county), and the other in the direc- tion of Jackson's river, in Alleghany. They were discovered by three white men, who were trapping on New river-Swope, Pack and Pitman-who hastened to give warning, but the Indians were ahead of them, and their effort was in vain. The savages who came to Jackson's river passed down Dunlop's creek, and crossed the former stream above Fort Young. They proceeded down that river to William Carpenter's, where there
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was a stockade fort in charge of a Mr. Brown. Meeting Car- penter near his house they killed him, and coming to the house captured a young Carpenter and two Browns, small children, and one woman. The other people belonging to the place were at work some distance off, and therefore escaped. Despoiling the house, the savages retreated precipitately by way of the Greenbrier and Kanawha rivers.
The report of the gun when Carpenter was killed, was heard by those who were away at work, and Brown carried the alarm to Fort Young. The weakness of the garrison at this fort caused the men there to send the intelligence to Fort Dinwid- die,24 where Captain Audley Paul commanded. Captain Paul immediately began a pursuit with twenty of his men. On Indian creek they met Pitman, who had been running all the day and night before to warn the garrison at Fort Young. He joined in the pursuit, but it proved unavailing. This party of Indians effected their escape.
As Captain Paul and his men were returning they encoun- tered the other party of Indians, who had been to Catawba, and committed some murders and depredations there. The savages were discovered about midnight, encamped on the north bank of New river, opposite an island at the mouth of Indian creek. Excepting some few who were watching three prisoners, recently taken on Catawba, they were lying around a fire, wrapped in skins and blankets. Paul's men, not knowing there were cap- tives among the Indians, fired into the midst of them, killing three, and wounding several others, one of whom drowned him- self to preserve his scalp. The remaining Indians fled down the river and escaped.
The three white captives were rescued on this occasion, and taken to Fort Dinwiddie. Among them was Mrs. Catherine Gunn, an English lady, whose husband and two children had been killed two days before, on the Catawba. The Indians lost all their guns, blankets and plunder.
24 Fort Dinwiddie was on Jackson's river, five miles west of the Warm Springs. It was called also Warwick's fort and Byrd's fort. Washington visited it in the fall of 1755, coming from Fort Cumber- land, on a tour of inspection. There was no road between the two points, but the trail he is said to have pursued is still pointed out.
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Young Carpenter, one of the prisoners captured on Jackson's river, came home some fifteen years afterwards, and became Doctor Carpenter, of Nicholas county. The younger Brown was brought home in 1769, and was afterwards Colonel Samuel Brown, of Greenbrier. The elder Brown remained with the In- dians, took an Indian wife, and died in Michigan in 1815. It is said that he took a conspicuous part in the war of 1812-14.
We pause here to give the sequel of the above story, as related by the late Colonel John G. Gamble, premising that Colonel Gamble's mother was a sister of Colonel Samuel Brown's wife.
Colonel Gamble says : "The last time I visited Colonel Brown I met there Colonel Brown's aged mother, a Mrs. Dickinson, a second time a widow. She was a very sensible and interesting old lady, and at that time could think and speak only of her long lost first-born, who had been to see her some time before my visit.
"Colonel Brown's father had formerly lived in what is now Bath county, then a frontier settlement. In one of the inroads made by the Indians, they pounced upon a school-house near . Mr. Brown's residence, killed the teacher, captured the chil- dren, and among them Colonel Brown's elder brother, then a little white-headed chap, and carried him off; and for more than fifty years afterwards he was not heard of. The child fell to the lot of an Indian who lived on Lake Huron, and thither he was taken. Some time afterwards a French trader,. who had married and lived among the Indians, bought the boy, adopted him, and taught him to read. The lad, grown up, married a squaw and became a chief He had remem- bered and retained his name of 'Brown,' and the circum- stances of his capture were such as not to be obliterated from his memory. Fifty years afterwards, upon a meeting of the Indians and whites for the purpose of making a treaty, he met with a man who knew his family, and assured him that his mother was still living. The old chief at once determined to visit her, and, attended by a son and daughter and some of his warriors, came to his brother's, in Greenbrier, and remained some months with his family. What a meeting between the aged mother and her long lost son !
"Every effort was made to induce him to remain, but of course unavailing ; for no Indian chief was ever prevailed upon to ex- change his mode of life for a residence among the whites.
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" His son and daughter were described to me as being fine specimens of their race, and the daughter as possessing uncom- mon beauty. Much persuasion was used to retain her ; but the girl was in love, and was to be made the wife of a young chief on her return home. How could they expect her to remain ?
"At the death of their father Brown, the law of primogeniture was in force in Virginia, and the old chief was the legal owner of all the paternal property, which was in fact nearly all that Colonel Brown possessed. The old chief was made acquainted with his rights, and before his departure conveyed to his brother all his title in the property."
It will be observed that Colonel Gamble makes no allusion to the taking off and return of the younger Brown. Moreover, the interval of fifty years between the capture and return of the older brother is inconsistent with the dates given by others. Without attempting to reconcile discrepancies, we resume our narrative.
Withers is silent in regard to an Indian raid upon Kerr's creek, in 1764, or at any time. He refers, as we have seen, to an assault upon the settlement on Catawba, in Botetourt, in . October, 1764, but this, if he is correct, was by Delawares and Mingoes. The Rev. Samuel Brown states that the second Kerr's creek massacre was perpetrated by. Shawnees, and in regard to this there can be no doubt, as the prisoners carried off, some of whom returned, would know to what tribe the Indians belonged. In his published narrative, Mr. Brown mentions October 10, 1765, as the date of the inroad; but he is now satisfied that it occurred at least a year earlier, proba- bly in the fall of 1764.
The people on Kerr's creek had repaired the losses they sus- tained in 1763, as far as possible. For some time, says Mr. Brown, there had been vague reports of Indians on the warpath, but little or no uneasiness was excited. At length, however, the savages came, but more cautiously than before. They crossed the North mountain and camped at a spring in a secluded place, where they remained a day or two. Some one discovered their moccasin tracks in a corn-field, and then, from the top of a hill, saw them in their camp. Their number is supposed to have been from forty to fifty.
The alarm being given, the people, to the number of about a hundred, of both sexes and all ages, assembled at the house of
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Jonathan Cunningham, at the " Big Spring." They were pack- ing their horses in haste, to leave for Timber Ridge, when the savages fell upon them. A Mrs. Dale, who was hidden a short distance off, witnessed the awful tragedy. The terror-stricken whites ran in every direction, trying to hide; and the Indians, each singling out his prey, pursued them round and round through the weeds, with yells. The white men had but few arms, and in the circumstances resistance was vain. The wife of Thomas Gilmore, standing with her three children over the body of her husband, fought with desperation the Indian who rushed up to scalp him. She and her son, John, and two daugh- ters, were made prisoners. The bloody work did not cease until all who could be found were killed or taken prisoners.
Very soon the Indians prepared to leave, and gathered their prisoners in a group. Among the latter were Cunninghams, Hamiltons, and Gilmores. An entire family of Daughertys, five Hamiltons, and three Gilmores were slain. In the two incursions, from sixty to eighty white people were killed, and in the second, from twenty-five to thirty were carried into captivity, some of whom never returned.
Late in the evening the Indians, with their captives, reached their first encampment near the scene of the massacre. Among the booty found at the " Big Spring" was a supply of whiskey. This was carried to the encampment, and that night was spent by the savages in a drunken frolic, which was continued until the afternoon of the next day. The prisoners hoped all night that a company would be raised and come to their relief, as the Indians could easily have been routed during their drunken revels. But there was a general panic all over the country, and those who might have gone in pursuit were hiding in the moun- tains and hollows. Some had fled as far as the Blue Ridge. The captives related that the Indians took other prisoners as they returned to Ohio. These, Mr. Brown thinks, were taken on the Cowpasture river, as it is known, he says, that some were cap- tured there about that time. Withers, however, as already related, attributes the captures on the Cowpasture, in Octo- ber, 1764, to another band of Indians.
During the march westward the savages dashed out against a tree the brains of a sick and fretful infant and threw the body over the shoulders of a young girl, who was put to death
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the next day. On another day an infant was sacrificed, by having a sharpened pole thrust through its body, which was elevated in the air, and all the prisoners made to pass under it.
After crossing the Ohio, the Indians, elated with their success, demanded that the captives should sing for their entertainment, and it is said that Mrs. Gilmore struck up, with plaintive voice, the 137th Psalm of Rouse's version, then in use in all the churches-
"On Babel's stream we sat and wept."
The Indians then separated into several parties, dividing the prisoners amongst themselves ; Mrs. Gilmore and her son, John, fell to one party and her two daughters to another. The last she ever heard of the latter was their cries as they were torn from her. No intelligence was ever received in regard to their fate. After some time, the mother and son were also parted, she being sold to French traders and the boy retained by the Shawnees. Finally he was redeemed and brought back by Jacob Warwick to Jackson's river, where he remained till his mother's return, when they were united at the old homestead.
A number of other captives were eventually found and brought back by their friends, among them Mary Hamilton, who had a child in her arms when the attack was made at the spring. She hid the child in the weeds and found its bones there when she returned.
With this painful narrative we close our account of Indian massacres in Augusta county.
In the meanwhile a general war between the whites and Indians was raging. Colonel Bouquet defeated the latter, Au- gust 2, 1764, at Bushy Run, in western Pennsylvania. Soon afterward, however, the British government made various efforts to establish friendly relations with the Indians. Colonel Bou- quet, commanding at Fort Pitt (now Pittsburg), issued a pro- clamation forbidding any British subject from settling or hunting west of the Alleghany mountains without written permission; and in the fall of 1764, proceeded with a body of troops to the Muskingum, in Ohio, then in Augusta county. On November 9, he concluded a treaty of peace with the Delawares and Shaw- nees, and received from them two hundred and six white pri- soners. Of these, ninety were Virginians, thirty-two men and fifty-
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eight women and children. Some of the captives, who had been carried off while young, had learned to love their savage asso- ciates and, refusing to come voluntarily, were brought away by force.
Mrs. Renix, who was captured on Jackson's river, in 1761, was not restored to her home till the year 1767. In pursuance of the terms of Bouquet's treaty, she was brought to Staunton in the year last mentioned. Her daughter died on the Miami; two of her sons, William and Robert, returned with her; her son, Joshua, remained with the Indians and became a chief of the Miamis.
A corps of Virginia volunteers accompanied Bouquet's expe- dition, and was assigned the places of honor on the march, a portion of them forming the advance guard and the remainder bringing up the rear. A part, if not all, of this corps were Au- gusta men. Charles Lewis and Alexander McClanahan were captains of companies, and John McClanahan was one of the lieutenants. As late as 1779, John McClanahan being then dead, his infant son was allowed two thousand acres of bounty land for his father's services in the expedition.
The County Court of Angusta did not meet in October, 1764. At April court, 1765, a vast number of military claims were ordered to be certified-for provisions furnished to the militia, for horses pressed into service, etc. William Christian, William McKamy and others presented claims "for ranging," and An- drew Cowan " for enlisting men to garrison Fort Nelson." The orders are curt and unsatisfactory, giving no clue as to when and where the services were performed.
Almost every neighborhood in the county has traditions in regard to Indian inroads, but all are vague and uncertain as to dates and circumstances. It is related that at one time the Indians came into the Churchville neighborhood, and carried off a boy named McNeer, who lived on Middle river, at the mouth of Jennings's branch. This boy was taken to Georgia, it is said, and lived and died with the Indians, visiting, how- ever, his relations in Augusta repeatedly. A man named Clen- denin, who lived near Shutterlee's mill, was shot in the shoulder by an Indian lurking in the tall weeds on the bank of the river, at some time now unknown. The Anderson farm, near Shut- terlee's, is known as the "Burnt Cabin place," from the fact that
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a cabin which stood there was burnt by the Indians. It is said also that, in 1763, the Indians captured and carried off one of the Trimbles from near the site of Churchville, seven miles northwest of Staunton.
The papers in a law suit, tried in the County Court of Au- gusta, in 1766, give some facts in regard to an Indian invasion of 1764, which do not appear elsewhere. It seems that in March, 1764, a party of Indians came into the upper part of the county, now Botetourt or Montgomery, and rifled the house of David Cloyd, carrying off upwards of {200 in gold and silver. They were pursued by a party of the militia, and one of them was killed on John's creek, at a distance of thirty miles or more from Cloyd's house. The dead Indian was found in possession of £137, 18s. A dispute arose among the militia as to whether the money belonged to them or to Cloyd, and until the question should be settled, the coin was deposited in the hands of James Montgomery. It was distributed by Montgomery to the militia, many of whom, however, returned their portions to Cloyd, to the amount of £106, 17s. 2d. Cloyd thereupon paid to each of the men who returned the money, the sum of thirty shillings ($5), the reward he had previously offered, and sued Mont- gomery for the remainder-£31, 1od. The suit was decided November 27, 1766, in favor of Cloyd, but an appeal was taken to the General Court, and we do not know the result. Gabriel Jones was attorney for Cloyd, and Peter Hogg for Montgomery.
It is interesting to see the names of the coins then in circu- lation. The sum of £137, 19s. 812d. was made up as follows: "13 Double Loons, 36 Pistoles, I Half Double Loon, 4 Guineas, 4 Loodores, 16 Round Pistoles, 3 Half Pistoles, 2 Half Johannas, 9 Dollars, and some small silver."
The pistole was a Spanish coin, worth $3.60; the doubloon was also Spanish, and worth $7.20; the guinea was English, and worth $4.66; the louis-d'or, called loodore, was French, worth $4.44; and the Johannas, called joe, was Portuguese, worth $8.
The story of Selim, "the converted Algerine," falls in here; at least, it may be related here as well as elsewhere. It belongs in great part to Augusta county, and is too interesting to be omitted. For the earlier part of the narrative we are indebted to the Rev. David Rice, a Presbyterian minister who removed
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from Virginia to Kentucky before the present century. Bishop Meade collected the latter part, and preserved the whole in his work called "Old Churches," &c.
About the close of the war between France and England, called in Virginia " Braddock's War" (probably 1763 or '4), a man named Samuel Givens, an inhabitant of Augusta county, went into the backwoods of the settlement to hunt. He took with him several horses to bring home his meat and skins. As he was one day ranging the woods in search of game, he saw in the top of a fallen tree an animal, which he supposed to be some kind of wild beast. He was about to shoot it, but discovered in time that it was a human being. Going up, he found a man in a pitiable condition-emaciated, evidently famishing, entirely naked except a few rags tied round his feet, and his body almost covered with scabs. The man could not speak English, and Givens knew no other language. He, however, supplied the forlorn creature with food, and when he had acquired sufficient strength, after several days, mounted him on one of his horses and took him to Captain Dickinson's, near the Windy Cove. There he was entertained for some months, during which the stranger acquired sufficient knowledge of English to communi- cate with the hospitable people into whose hands he had fallen.
He stated that his name was Selim, a native of Algiers, in Africa, and the son of a wealthy man ; that he had been educated in Constantinople, and while returning to Algiers the ship he was aboard of was captured by a Spanish man-of war. Spain was then in alliance with France, and the Spanish ship falling in with a French vessel, Selim was transferred to the latter and taken to New Orleans. After some time he was sent up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to the Shawnee towns, and left a prisoner with the Indians. A white woman captured on the frontiers of Vir- ginia, was held as a prisoner by the Indians at the same time, and from her Selim learned by signs that she came from the east. He was sufficiently acquainted with geography to know that the English had settlements on the eastern shore of the continent, and inferred that the woman came from one of them. He there- upon resolved to escape, and constantly keeping to the rising sun finally reached the border settlement of Augusta county, in the plight mentioned.
On a. court day, Captain Dickinson brought Selim with him
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to Staunton, where he attracted much attention. Among the throng of people was the Rev. John Craig, who immediately riveted the attention of the Algerine. The latter afterwards explained that in a dream a person like Mr. Craig had appeared to him as a teacher or guide, able to impart valuable instruction. He expressed a desire to accompany Mr. Craig to his home, and was kindly taken there. The minister of course sought to im- part to the Mohammedan stranger the truths of the Christian religion, and his efforts were aided by Selim's knowledge of the Greek language, being thus able to read the New Testament in the original tongue. He soon professed conversion, and Mr. Craig, being satisfied of his intelligence and sincerity, publicly baptized him in the old stone church. He was afterwards seized with a desire to return to his native land, and his new friends could not dissuade him from it. Mr. Craig therefore raised a sum of money for him, and giving him a letter to the Hon. Robert Carter, of Westmoreland county, then living in Wil- liamsburg, sent him on his way. Mr. Carter did all that was asked of him, furnishing more money to Selim, and securing for him passage to England.
Some time after this Selim returned to Virginia in a state of insanity. In lucid intervals he stated that he had found his way home, but had been rejected and driven off by his father when he learned that the son had abjured Mohammedanism and be- come a Christian. He came again to Captain Dickinson's, and from thence wandered to the Warm Springs, where he met a young clergyman named Templeton, who put a Greek Testa- ment in his hands, which he read with great delight. From the Warm Springs he went to Mr. Carter's residence in West moreland. He awakened the sympathy of all who knew him. Governor Page, while a member of Congress at Philadelphia, took him to that city, and had his likeness taken by the artist Peale. From Philadelphia he went home with a South Carolina gentleman. He was also once, or oftener, in Prince Edward county, where he learned to sing Watts's hymns. For a time he was confined in the Lunatic Asylum at Williamsburg, but he finally died in a private house, where and at what time are not mentioned.
From 1764, for about ten years, no war or rumor of war dis- turbed the inhabitants of Augusta. They appear to have pur-
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sued the even tenor of their way in comparative security. On court days Staunton was doubtless crowded with people. Liti- gation was brisk ; the number of causes tried in the county court exceeded anything known in modern times. Hunting or trapping wolves was one of the most important industries. Every year the court granted certificates for hundreds of wolf heads, and for more or less winter-rotted hemp, for which also the law offered a bounty.
The last hostile inroad by Indians into the Valley occurred, it is said, in 1766.2 We mention it because it was the last, although it did not occur in Augusta. A party of eight Indians and a white man crossed Powell's Fort mountain to the south fork of the Shenandoah river, now Page county. They killed the Rev. John Roads, a Menonist minister, his wife and three sons. A daughter, named Elizabeth, caught up an infant sister and escaped by hiding first in a barn and then in a field of hemp. Two boys and two girls were taken off as prisoners, but one of the boys and both girls were killed while crossing Powell's Fort. The other boy returned home after three years. The place where one of the lads was killed while endeavoring to escape is still called Bloody Ford.
At a court martial held by the militia officers of the county, April 11, 1766; Lieutenant Michael Bowyer was fined for ap- pearing at the general muster on the moth without a sword.
From the proceedings of the vestry of Augusta parish, and also from Hening's Statutes at Large, it appears that in 1752 an act was passed by the Assembly at Williamsburg on the petition of Mr. Jones, the rector, increasing his salary from £50 to £100. This act was repealed by proclamation of the king in 1762, and the rector's salary stood as before, at £50 a year. But until 1765 payment had been made at the rate of £100, and the ves- try then refusing to pay more than the £50, Mr. Jones threatened to bring suit. At the meeting of October 21, 1765, it was ordered that Sampson Mathews "get of Mr. Gabriel Jones a
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