USA > Virginia > Augusta County > Augusta County > Annals of Augusta county, Virginia, from 1726 to 1871 > Part 19
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Colonel John Lewis, the pioneer, was a member of the Greenbrier Company, and acquired landed possessions in the region named. We have seen that he and his son Andrew, were prospecting in that region, in 1751. The Indian wars checked the proceedings of the Company, and retarded the settlement of the country, but a few families moved there and made two settlements, holding on in spite of the dangers to which they were exposed.
Colonel Lewis died February 1, 1762, having attained the age of eighty-four years. His will, executed November 28, 1761, and ad- mitted to record November 18, 1762, expressed the writer's pious hopes. He was buried on the farm where he lived, two miles east of Staunton. The executors were the testator's three sons, Thomas, Andrew and William. Charles is named in the will, but no mention is made of Samuel. In person Colonel John Lewis is described as having been tall and muscular, and he is said to have been the best back- woodsman of his day. He was born in the reign of Charles II, and
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lived through the reigns of James II, William and Mary, Queen Anne, George I, George II, and during two years of the reign of George III.
The proceedings of the vestry, in 1762, furnish to us several curious items. Samuel Craige was allowed {6, 25. 6d. "for keeping a Dutchman ; " and another item was allowed on account of " goods for the Dutchman." An order was entered in November, 1762, au- thorizing the purchase of one hundred acres of land, within ten miles from Staunton, on which to erect a poorhouse. The buildings were to have wooden chimneys, and to cost not more than £30-$100. In 1763, the building was postponed for a year, and the work was not re- sumed till November, 1764.
In 1762, Hugh Green preferred a bill against the parish for keep- ing Mary Leeper, a pauper, and for her funeral expenses. Among the items of the latter were three gallons of liquor, 9s .; a bushel of flour for cakes, 3s .; and three and a half pounds of sugar, 2s. IId.
In the same year an account of the widow Young against the parish was recorded in the Vestry Book as follows : "To laying- in, and charges with the attendance of two children ; also half pound of pepper, and half pound of allspice, and three quarts and one pint liquor. I likewise acted as granny for Elianor Dunn-{2." Among the items of another account was one "for three pints of wine for sacrament-3s. 9d."
Dr. William Fleming was practising his profession at Staunton, in 1762. For professional services to paupers the parish was indebted to him £15, 1IS.
The parish church at Staunton was finished early in 1763, and was accepted by the vestry June 25th. Two members of the vestry,- Sampson Mathews and John Poage,-voted against receiving the build- ing, they " supposing the brick in the church to be insufficient."
As heretofore stated, Canada was conquered by the English in 1760, and for several years afterwards the Indian allies of the French professed to be at peace. Consequently, since 1759, we have had little to record of Indian outrage. Withers' Border Warfare is our only authority for the raid on the Upper James River, in 1761, he says, in which the Renick family suffered so greatly. As we have seen, however, "The Preston Register " gives the date of that occurrence as 1757 ; and Withers is so inaccurate in respect to dates and names, that it is unsafe to follow him implicitly.
The historian Francis Parkman, in his work called The Conspiracy of Pontiac, gives a full and graphic account of the renewal of the war and its main events. All the military forts held by the French, on and near the great lakes, having been given up, were occupied by the
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English, the garrisons of most of them, though far in the wilderness, being very few in number .- The conquerors took no pains to conciliate the Indians, but on the contrary treated them with neglect and a de- gree of contempt. Thereupon, Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, a tribe occupying the territory in Canada opposite Detroit, who had fought on the side of the French at Braddock's defeat, instigated by resent- ment of wrongs, real or imaginary, and tempted by the feeble con- dition of the forts generally, formed an alliance with many tribes to wage a general war against the English. Moreover, the French fur traders persuaded the Indians to take up arms, telling them that their King had been asleep, but was now coming to their assistance.
The war began by an attack on the fort at Detroit, the first of May, 1763, and this fort and Fort Pitt were the only two that escaped capture. The Indians invested Detroit for six months, and the garri- son at Fort Pitt was relieved by Col. Bouquet in August, 1763, after the battle at Bushy Run. The whole frontier from New York to Georgia suffered the horrors of Indian warfare for eighteen months ; but we can relate only a few occurrences affecting the inhabitants of Augusta county.
Cornstalk, the celebrated Shawnee warrior, appears in history for the first time in 1763. Nothing is known of his youth. It is said that he was born in the Kanawha Valley, about the year 1727.
Mrs. Dennis, who was captured by the Indians in 1761, or 1757, on the upper James river (now Botetourt county ), made her escape, as stated, in 1763. She left the Chillicothe towns in June of that year, under pretext of gathering herbs for medicinal purposes. When her flight was suspected, she was pursued and fired at by the Indians, but managed to conceal herself in the hollow limb of a fallen tree. Cross- ing the Ohio river on a log, and subsisting on roots, herbs, and wild fruit, she arrived, nearly exhausted with fatigue and hunger, on the Greenbrier river. There, after giving up all liope of surviving, she was found by Thomas Athol and others, and taken to the settlement at Archibald Clendenin's, called the Levels. Remaining at this place for a time to recuperate, she was then taken on horseback to Fort Young [Covington], from whence she was conducted home to her relations.
We have two independent accounts of the immediately succeeding occurrences-one by Withers, and the other by Colonel John Stuart, of Greenbrier, in his " Memoir of the Indian Wars." We shall main- ly follow the latter.
A few days after Mrs. Dennis had gone from Clendenin's, a party of about sixty Indians, headed by Corustalk, came to the settlement on
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Muddy creek, one of the only two white settlements in Greenbrier. It is supposed that these Indians were in pursuit of. Mrs. Dennis. They professed to be friendly, and were treated hospitably by the white people, who imagined that the war was over. Small parties of them were entertained at the various cabins, until, to the astonish- ment of the unprepared settlers, the savages rose on them and toma- hawked all except a few women and children, whom they reserved as prisoners.
From Muddy creek the Indians passed over into the Levels, where some families were collected at Clendenin's-numbering between fifty and one hundred persons, men, women and children. There, says Colonel Stuart, they were entertained, as at Muddy creek, in the most hospitable manner. "Clendenin having just arrived from a hunt, with three fat elks, they were plentifully feasted. In the mean- time, an old woman with a sore leg, was showing her distress to an Indian and inquiring if he could administer to her relief ; he said he thought he could, and drawing his tomahawk instantly killed her and all the men almost that were in the house.
" Conrad Yolkom only escaped, by being some distance from the house, where the outcries of the women and children alarmed him. He fled to Jackson's river and alarmed the people, who were unwilling to believe him, until the approach of the Indians convinced them. All fled before them ; and they pursned on to Carr's creek [now Rockbridge county], where many families were killed and taken by them.
" At Clendenin's a scene of much cruelty was performed ; and a negro woman, who was endeavoring to escape, killed her own child lest she might be discovered by its cries.
" Mrs. Clendenin did not fail to abuse the Indians, calling them cowards, etc., although the tomahawk was drawn over her head with threats of instant deatlı, and the scalp of her husband lashed about her jaws.
"The prisoners were all taken over to Muddy creek, and a party of Indians detained them there till the return of the others from Carr's creek, when the whole were taken off together. On the day they started from the foot of Keeney's Knob, going over the mountain, Mrs. Clendenin gave her infant to a prisoner woman to carry, as the prisoners were in the centre of the line with the Indians in front and rear, and she escaped into a thicket and concealed herself. The cries of the child soon inade the Indians inquire for the mother, and one of them said he would bring the cow to the calf." Taking the child by the heels he beat its brains out against a tree and throwing it in the
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path the savages and horses trampled over it. "She told me," says Colonel Stuart, "she returned that night in the dark to her own house, a distance of more than ten miles, and covered her husband's corpse with rails which lay in the yard where he was killed in endeavoring to escape over the fence with one of his children in his arms." Mrs. Clendenin seems to have been partially crazed from the beginning of the massacre. That night, after giving what burial she could to her husband's body, she was seized with mortal terror, thinking she saw a murderer standing over her. Upon recovering her reason, she re- sumed her flight, and reached the settlements in safety. Colonel Stuart states that the Indians continued the war till 1764, making incursions within a few miles of Staunton.
Thus the last vestiges of white settlements in the Greenbrier country were exterminated. The number of whites living there is be- lieved to have been at least a hundred. From 1763 to 1769 the country was uninhabited. In the latter year John Stuart, whose nar- rative we have just quoted, and a few other young men, made the first permanent settlement there.
Withers makes no mention of either of the massacres of Kerr's creek. Stuart merely alludes to the first, in 1763,* writing the name, however, "Carr's" instead of "Kerr's." For the only detailed ac- count of these tragedies we are indebted to the Rev. Samuel Brown, of Bath county, who collected the incidents from descendants of the suf- ferers many years ago.
The settlement on Kerr's creek, says Mr. Brown, was made by white people soon after the grant of land to Borden in 1736. The families located there consisting of Cunninghams, Mckees, Hamil- tons, Gilmores, Logans, Irvins, and others, thought themselves safe from the dangers of more exposed parts of the country.
The Indians who exterminated the Greenbrier settlements are de- scribed by Colonel Stuart as following Conrad Yolkom to Jackson's
* There is much uncertainty as to the date of one of the Kerr's creek massa- cres. One of them, which Mr. Brown thought was the first, occurred July 17, 1763, as proved by the record in the old Family Bible of the McKee family .- Mrs. Jenny McKee is recorded as having died on that day, and it is known that she was killed by Indians. But the probability is that this was the second raid, and that the first occurred several years earlier, probably in 1759. Mr. Brown merely gathered and published the traditions of the neighborhood, and his nar- rative is somewhat confusing. There were two Thomas Gilmores, father and son. The father and his wife, named Elizabeth, were killed in one of the raids; the son was killed in 1763, and his administrators qualified September 20, 1763. The wife of the latter, whose name was Jenny, was carried off by the Indians, but afterwards returned home.
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river, and there Mr. Brown's narrative takes them np. He says, some knowledge of their approach had been obtained, and they were met by a company of men under command of Captain Moffett, at or near the mouth of Falling Spring Valley, in the present county of Alleghany. The whites fell into an ambush, were taken by surprise, and some of them slain. Among the slain was James Sitlington, a recent immi- grant from Ireland. After this, the Indians went some miles down Jackson's river, and came up the valley of the Cowpasture, to the resi- dence of a blacksmith named Daugherty. He and his wife and two children barely made their escape to the mountain, while their house and shop were burned.
From Daugherty's, the Indians passed up the Cowpasture to a point near the site of Old Millborough. There they divided their com- pany, the larger party returning westward, and the smaller moving towards the settlement on Kerr's creek.
Let us, like Mr. Brown, first follow the larger band of Indians on their retreat. After leaving Millborough, they killed a man whom they met in the narrows, at the Blowing Cave, and whose body fell into the river. They crossed the Warm Spring mountain and camped at the head of Back creek. In the meanwhile, a company of men hastily raised under command of Captain Christian, was in pursuit of this band of savages, and came upon them at the place last mentioned. The assault was made by the whites prematurely ; but, nevertheless, the Indians were routed, a number of them killed, and nearly all of their equipage was taken. Among the spoils, was the scalp of James Sitlington, which was recognized by the flowing locks of red hair. Captain John Dickinson, of Windy Cove, and John Young, who lived near the church since known as Hebron, were with Captain Christian, and also, it is said, some of the young Lewises of Augusta. Thomas Young, brother of John, was slain in the fight. His body was buried on the field, but his scalp, torn from his head by the Indian who killed him, was brought home and buried in the Glebe grave yard.
The Indians who escaped from Christian and his men were again encountered by a company of white men coming up the south branch of the Potomac. More of them were killed, and the remainder driven into the fastnesses of Cheat mountain.
The smaller band of Indians made their descent upon Kerr's creek, on the 17th of July. Their number was twenty-seven, Robert Irvin having counted them from a bluff near the road at the head of the creek. Some weeks before, two boys, named Telford, reported that when returning from school they had seen a naked man near their path. This report was not much thought of till the massacre,
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when it was supposed that the man seen by the boys was an Indian spy sent out to reconnoitre.
Leaving the site of old Millborough, the savages passed over Mill mountain at a low place still called the "Indian Trail." Coming on the waters of Bratton's Run, they crossed the North mountain, where it is now crossed by the road leading from Lexington to the Rock- bridge Alum Springs, and where there is a large heap of stones, sup- posed to have been piled up by Indians. From this point they had a full view of the peaceful valley of Kerr's creek. Hastening down the mountain, they began the work of indiscriminate slaughter. Coming first to the house of Charles Dangherty, he and his whole family were murdered. They next came to the house of Jacob Cunningham, who was from home, but his wife was killed, and his daughter, about ten years of age, scalped and left for dead. She revived, was carried off as a prisoner in the second invasion, was redeemed, and lived for forty years afterwards, but finally died from the effects of the scalping. The Indians then proceeded to the house of Thomas Gilmore, and he and his wife were killed, the other members of the family escaping at that time. The house of Robert Hamilton came next. This family consisted of ten persons, and one-half of them were slain. By this time the alarm had spread through the neighborhood, and the inhabi- tants were flying in every direction. For some reason the main body of the Indians went no farther. Perhaps they were sated with blood and plunder ; most probably they feared to remain longer with so small a band. A single Indian pursued John McKee and his wife as they were flying from their house. By the entreaty of his wife, McKee did not wait for her, and she was overtaken and killed. He escaped. His six children had been sent to the house of a friend on Timber Ridge, on account of some uneasiness, caused probably by the report about the naked man .*
The Indians hastened their departure, loaded with scalps and booty, and unincumbered by prisoners. As far as known they joined the party left at Muddy creek, in Greenbrier, without being assailed on the way.
" From one cause," says Mr. Brown, "the lives of some were saved no doubt. A number had gone that day to Timber Ridge church, where services were conducted by the Rev. John Brown. During the intermission between the morning and evening sermons some alarm was given, but such reports were frequently started with- out foundation, and therefore not much attention was paid to this.
* See "The McKees " at the end of Chapter VII.
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The people went into the church for the second sermon, when a mes- senger arrived with the sad tidings from Kerr's creek. All was immediately confusion and dismay. The congregation was dismissed, and fled in every direction it was thought would afford them safety."
An account of the second and more disastrous raid upon Kerr's creek, said to have occurred about a year after tlie first, remains to be given. The lamentable occurrence just related spread alarm through- out the county. Some persons residing in Staunton fled across the Blue Ridge. Measures of defence were, however, immediately adopted. At the August court, Andrew Lewis qualified as lieutenant of the county, or commander-in -chief of the county militia ; William Preston qualified as colonel, and the following persons as captains : Walter Cunningham, Alexander McClanahan, William Crow and John Bowyer. John McClanahan, Michael Bowyer and David Long quali- fied as lieutenants, and James Ward as ensign.
The Wilson family also suffered severely from an assault by Indi- ans during the same month, July, 1763. Of this affair we have an account written by Mrs. Margaret Hanna, of Greenbrier county, at the dictation of her father, Col. John Wilson. Mrs. Hanna died in 1878, at the age of eighty-seven years. Her manuscript having come into the hands of Dr. John P. Hale, was published by him in The Kanawha Gazette, of December 27, 1887, and we extract from it as follows. The scene of the occurrence was in the present county of Highland, near Stony Run church :
"Just at this time the Wilsons were erecting a new and larger log-house than the original cabin that hitherto served them.
"John had gone to Dickinson's Fort, not far away, to get some help for the house-raising next day ; while William, Jr., (called Thomas by others), had gone to a little mill, about a mile distant, to get some ineal ground for the house-raising party.
" Two of the sisters, Margaret and Elizabeth, were out on the river bank washing flax-tow ; Mrs. Wilson, who was in feeble health, had walked out to where they were at work ; an Irishman had a loom in the yard and was weaving ; two of the sisters, Susan and Barbara, were in the cabin ironing the family clothes, and the father, with some otlier men, were at work on the new house logs, when the attack was made.
" In returning from the Fort, John encountered the Indians sud- denly, in a turn of the road. They fired on him, and a ball passed through his clothes just under his arm, cutting the gusset of his shirt. He wheeled his horse quickly and fled back to the Fort to get imnie-
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diate help to go to the rescue of the family, and about twenty returned with him.
" The Indians had passed on to the cabin. The girls at the river washing, saw them coming and started to run, and at the same time tried to help their mother away, but she told them to go and save themselves and leave her. In passing, an Indian threw a tomahawk at the old lady, and severely wounded her in the wrist as she threw up her hand to save her face. The Indians did not pursue them, but hurried on to the cabin. They fired at the Irish weaver, but he escaped with a flesh wound in his shoulder.
"As they entered the cabin, one of the girls, Barbara, ran out and was knocked down and her skull probably fractured, but she was not scalped. The girl remaining in the cabin, Susan, closed the door, and when an Indian put his hand in to try to open it, she mashed and burned his fingers with a hot smoothing iron.
" By this time, the father and his men from the new house foun- dation came up, and attacked the Indians with hand-spikes and foot- adze ; the latter, in the hands of Mr. Wilson, and drove them off.
"When John and his party arrived it was dark, and they were unable to see what mischief had been done. They ascended an ele- vated point near by, to see if they could discover any fire-light or other evidences of life about the cabin.
"Seeing none, they concluded or feared that the family had all been destroyed. In nearing the cabin other dangers suggested them- selves; the family had several fierce dogs, which had been trained to great watchfulness, some were taught to sleep at the back door of the cabin, and some at the front, so as to give warning of approaches from either direction ; it also occurred to them that if any of the family sur- vived, they would have sentries stationed to watch for a possible return of the Indians during the night, and that these sentries might fire on them. In the uncertainties, John Wilson himself took the lead, cautiously approached the cabin, and succeeded in reaching it without accident or alarm.
"Upon entering the cabin he was rejoiced to find his father and sister Susan present and unharmed, but was at the same time pained to find his sister Barbara badly wounded, and his mother, two sisters, his brother William and the Irish weaver all missing, and their fates unknown.
"At early dawn next morning, John and his party started out to search for the missing ones. He tracked his mother by her blood about a mile up the river, to where she had alternately walked and crawled, probably not knowing whither she went. When found she
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was entirely out of her mind and did not recognize her son and friends, supposing them to be Indians still pursuing her ; she rallied however, and lived for many years afterward.
" William, Jr., though he usually wore moccasins, had on the day before put on a pair of shoes. Going toward the mill the searchers found by his shoe-tracks where he had attempted to run when the Indians discovered him-where he had slipped and fallen and been captured by them-where, further along, they had tied him to a tree, and afterwards loosened him again, and taken him off with them. His father always thought that if he had had on moccasins instead of shoes he would have escaped and avoided capture. His pursners were confident that he had made his shoe-track 'sign' as conspicuous as possible, so as to enable them to follow the trail, but they never over- took him, and he was carried off to the Indian towns beyond the Ohio.
" A returned prisoner reported to the family, some time after, that she had seen him at the Chillicothe towns, but was not allowed to talk with him. She said he had been adopted by a widow who had lost a son, and was kindly treated. He never got home, but died in captivity."
Another account, by John W. Stephenson, Esq., of Bath, a de- scendant of Colonel John Wilson, is as follows :
"John Wilson, on the day of the raid, was returning from Staunton, where he had been to get nails to be used in putting up the new house, and had purchased a new hat. When the Indians shot at him his hat fell off, and he stopped his horse and picked it up. The Indians were so close he could hear their peculiar grunt of satisfaction, thinking they had killed him. He went to a stockade fort, near where Williamsville now is, and got the men to return with him that night. One of the men was David Gwin, then about eighteen years of age. He was afterwards a captain in the Revolution, one of the largest land-owners of Bath county, and grandfather of the Rev. Daniel W. Gwin, D. D., of Kentucky, a distinguished Baptist minister."
Mr. Stephenson states that the son of William Wilson, who was carried off by the Indians, was named Thomas.
A fragment of a letter, which was probably written by Colonel William Preston to his brother-in-law, the Rev. John Brown, and pre- served by Colonel John Mason Brown, of Kentucky, throws some light upon the state of the times. It is dated " Greenfield, 27th July, 1763." The writer says :
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"Our situation at present is very different from what it was when we had the pleasure of your company in this country. All Roanoke river and the waters of Mississippi are depopulated, except Captain English with a few families on the New river, who have built a fort, among whom are Mr. Thompson and his family. They intend to make a stand till some assistance be sent them. Seventy five of the Bedford militia went out in order to pursue the enemy, but I hear the officers and part of the men are gone home, and the rest gone to Reed creek to help in James Davies and two or three families there that dare not venture to travel.
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