PROJECT

TO DEFINE ON A TOPOGRAPHIC MAP
THE LOCATIONS OF THE HOME OF ARCHIBALD AND FANNIE SCOTT
SCOTT’S STATION
THE LOCATIONS OF THE DANIEL BOONE WILDERNESS TRAIL
WITHIN THE BASIN FORMED BY THE HEAD OF WALLEN’S CREEK

By: Lawrence J. Fleenor, Jr.
Dale Carter
Copyright Lawrence J. Fleenor, Jr.
Big Stone Gap, Va. Dec. 2001
Retranscribed in ‘Word’ 7-8-15

Background

A significant amount of history has occurred within the semicircle of Powell’s Mountain where it forms the head of Wallen’s Creek in eastern Lee County, Virginia. The Great Warrior’s Path, later known as the Boone Trail or the Wilderness Road, passed through here. The militia party conduction the infamous Governor of Upper Canada, Henry ‘Hair Buyer’ Hamilton, into captivity spent the nighnt of April 28th, 1779 camping at “Scott’s Improvement” (1). The famous massacre by Chief Bob Benge of its first settler, Archibald Scott and his children, and the carrying off into captivity of his wife, Fannie Scott, occurred here in 1785. In 1793 the famous confrontation between Ensign Moses Cockrell and the same Chief Benge occurred here. The Holston Militia of The State of Virginia maintained a blockhouse garrison named after Scott here during this period. Scott’ home, and the later Scott’s Station are often blended in people’s minds into one, but were, in fact, different structures said to have been located ”near” the same site.

Further complicating the conceptualization of this basin as it existed in the last decde of the Eighteenth Century is the confusing evidences concerning the location of the above mentioned trail / road after it left Kane Gap atop {Powell Mountain on its way trough the basin at the head of Wallen’s Creek. The trail started off as a buffalo path, and ended up as a vehicular road. Not surprisingly, the topographic requirements of each are different, leading to different locations of what in reality were two different routes.

Methodology

The basic framework of the research is one of land grant analysis joined with the analysis of later deeds covering the same land, using the associated data from their surveys to locate the historic sites on a modern topographic map. Other data, such as from historic narratives, will be used to flesh out the survey data. The process will be spelled out step by step, and the underlying documents will be supplied, both to serve as a complete historic resource for future use, and to allow the reader to follow the process step by step. Scans of the resulting topographic maps, and a bibliography of sources will be attacked.

The Early Land Grants

Archibald and Fannie Scott had married at Castlewood, Russell County, Virginia. She was the sister of Humphrey Dickenson, who settled in Castlewood in 1769 (2). The 28th and 29th of October 1783 Scott had a 400 acre, a 336 acre, and a 396 acre tract surveyed. They had sometime earlier fulfilled the legal requirements of having “settled” on the land, which were that they had lived there long enough to have planted an acre of corn for each ten acres granted. The planting need not have been much more than ceremonial, and they did not have to continue to have “lived” here to have gained the right to a land grant for the nearly 1000 acres of land. The 400 acre tract was officially designated as the “settlement right”, but this does not necessarily imply that this is where they settled after they had been granted the land, as they were June 20,1785.

These land grants are available on the internet form the Library of the State of Virginia, and they and all other related grants will be designated by the system used by that source (3). The reference numbers for the three Scott grants are R-99, P-709, and Q-336. June 29, 17895 Archibald Scott and all his children were murdered by Chief Benge’s war party at their home on this land, and Fannie was carried off into captivity (4). She escaped and returned to the settlements August 11th, but may have been declared dead, as the land at the head of Wallen’s Creek passed to Archibald’s brother, James, who was listed as Archibald’s “heir-in-law. In July 1790 he sold these tracts to Thomas Johnson who became Fannie Scott’s second husband is unknown, as this Thomas Johnson for 220 Pounds (what relationship he may or may not have had to the Thomas Johnson who became Fannie Scott’s second husband is unknown, as this Thomas Johnson’s wife is listed as “Susannah” on the deeds (5). Thomas Johnson sold this land to Robert Duff (date unknown) (6). The texts of the land grants adjoining this property that list it as being Duff’s “settlement right” are an error.

Robert Duff, who had been born in Ireland 6-23-1755, and his wife Mary “Polly” Dickenson, settled on this land, and had ten children. Polly was Fannie Scott’s niece. After his death 6-20-1820 his estate, which consisted of the 978 acres of Archibald Scott’s land that he had bought, plus an additional 150 acres he had been granted from the State (Land Office 65-237), was divided among his ten children, with his son Thomas D. Duff getting a one tenth share, or 110 acres (7). Coale’s Wilburn Waters page 201 states, “Archibald Scott’s cabin was near the book was written in 1878, less that a hundred years after the Scott massacre, the information would seem to have reasonable likelihood of being accurate. With this being the case, the problem of identifying the site of the Scott slaying becomes one of locating on the topographic map the land of Thomas D. Duff.
This process begins with locating the three land grants of Archibald Scott on the topographic map. As all the descriptions of the metes and bounds of these three tracts are notated in terms of trees that have long since gone, the process becomes one of charting the adjoining land grants to those of Scott in an attempt to construct a ‘grand block’ of contiguous grants which would stand a greater chance of being situated on a modern map. Grants 65-237, 79-431, Q-336, 82-20, 112-490, and 81-330 are adjoined to the grants of Scott’s, but still not enough information exists to plot this block of grants on a modern map.

The Steel Tracts

About 1911 Fred R. Steel began to buy up the basin at the head of Wallen’s Creek. In 1934 he mortgaged the land, and a modern survey (9) was done, and one of the corners of this survey mentions the fact that it is a corner of the old Archibald Scott grant. Due to this property’s outer metes and bounds being the ridge crest of Powell Mountain, and due to the fact that this crest makes a horseshoe around the head of Wallen’s Creek, it is easily accurately postioned on a modern topographic map, thus locating a specific corner of the Archibald Scott block of grants in the process. (Steel Tract #1 point ‘A’ is the old Scott corner, or LO R-99 point ‘F’).

As the Steel land did not include the land formerly owned by Thomas D. Duff, the title analysis for the Steel land does not include a description of the Thomas d. Duff land. However, retrogressive deed analysis from the Steel title abstract shows earlier surveys of tracts that conveyed land from the Duffs to Steel (10), and which contain three survey references to the land of Thomas D. Duff. By this means the land of Thomas D. Duff can be topographically related to that of Archibald Scott.

The Jan. 18, 1884 deed from G. C. Duff to William P. Duff is accurately plotted on a topographic map not only because, it too contains the mountain crest rim of the horseshoe of Powell Mountain, but it contains a point at Kane Gap, a known entity. Point ’W’ of this survey is a common corner with one of Thomas D. Duff’s. It also shares common metes and bounds with the March 16, 1841 William Carnes to Thomas P. Carnes tract, which contains a point and a line with Thomas D. Duff. Using these geographic points of reference, one can approximately localize the tracts of Thomas D. Duff.

The Tracts of Thomas D. Duff

The records in the Lee County Court House at Jonesville contain the deeds of four tracts of land owned by Thomas D. Duff, and they are as follows:

A) John Crabtree to Thomas Duff et al, fifty acres, Oct 15 1839 DB #8 pg. 202
B) Polly Duff to Thomas D. Duff, 110 acres, March 23, 1840 DB #15 pg. 38-39
C) Robert Duff to Thomas Duff, 50 acres, Feb. 18 1841 DB #8 pg. 354
D) Polly Duff to Thomas Duff, 110 acres, Jan. 29, 1842 DB #8 pg. 452
The first tract contains a common corner and a line with Archibald Scott’s land, while the second is from the estate division of his parents, William P. and Elizabeth (Polly) Duff. The Scott and the Steel title abstract corners help locate the tracts of Thomas D. Duff on the topographic map.

The modern farm owned by Lawrence Tankersley contains the traditional site of Scott’s death and of the later station (11). Its location comes very close to the calculated location of the 110 acre tract sold to Thomas Duff by Polly for $100 and “love and affection”. It would seem likely that this tract was the site of the home of William and Polly Duff, and the widow in her old age was turning the homeplace over to tom, possibly in exchange for his caring for her. The metes and bounds of the Tankersley survey contains references to the “corner to the Polly Duff line” and to “Thomas D. Duff’s line”. Correlating these metes and bounds from the old and the modern surveys proves that the northern part of the current Tankersley farm is cut out of the northern part of the 110 acre Polly to Tom Duff tract, plus some of the land from the Duff tract to its west. This proves that the traditional general sites of Scott’s home and Station are correct.

There are other substantiating evidences to support this conclusion. The topographic map (12) identifies the creek coming from the northwest and joining Wallen’s reek at the Duff Cemetery located north of LO P-709, as being “Scott’s Branch”. The current road map of Lee County that is painted on the wall of the Clerk’s Office in the Jonesville Court House labels the intersection of Scott’s Branch and highway #612 as being “Scott’s”. The Duff Cemetery located on this tract is said to have been started by the graves of Scott and his children.

Until very recently, springs were critical in the location of people’s homes. Even more importantly, it was an invariable requirement that a good reliable spring be located within easy rifle shot from every frontier fortification. This was to insure that an individual going out of the fort for water could be covered by rifle fire from within the fortification. As a practical effect, every frontier fortification in the region was located no more than about 75-100 yards from a good spring. The spring located to the northwest of the current log Duff house (presumed to have been the home of Thomas D. Duff) and on the eastern bank of Scott’s Branch, is now dried up, but was the source of water to this house, as well as to the houses cross the road to the south, and to the Powell Academy School which was located across Scott’s Branch to the west, well into the last half of the Twentieth Century. (13)

This is as far as present information will take us. Only an archeological examination of this site is likely to produce greater documentation.

The Location of the Daniel Boone Wilderness Road
From Kane Gap to Scott’s Cabin

The evolution of the Trail or Road is, in general, well known. It started of as a buffalo trail, passed through a prolonged phase as a human foot trail, and for a brief period as a vehicular road.

The first improvements were made by Daniel Boone in 1775 when he and his party of axmen improved the old Indian Trail all the way to Boonesboro, Ky. It is known that the only earth moving that they did was on the “Dug Road” segment on Pine Mountain’s eastern face at Moccasin Gap. Soon, however, the trail was improved to the point that it would accommodate darts as far as Martin’s Upper Station at Rose Hill, Virginia. Bishop James Madison’s official map of the State of Virginia of 1807 (14) (see Madison’s Map file) shows that the Kane Gap route had been abandoned in favor of the current passage of US 58 and 421 through Eller’s Gap near Pattonsville.

There is ample evidence of two routes for the Great Warrior’s Path – Wilderness Road – Boone Trail from Kane Gap to Archibald Scott’s. Coal’s Wilburne Waters pg. 153-154 says that Ensign Moses Cockerell ran two miles from Kane Gap to Scott’s Station to escape Chief Benge. Pusey gives that distance as recorded in a pioneer’s journal as having been three miles (15). Well into the Twentieth Century mail was carried from the depot at Duffield across Kane Gap by horseback. The trail used by the mailman on horseback came down the western bank of the head of Wallen’s Creek which states right at Kane Gap, and came straight on down the slope of the mountain to the road designated on the topographic map as running east from Thomas D. Duff’s home parallel to Wallen’s Creek to the foot of the mountain. Wagons were unable to use this bridal path due to its grade (16). The wagon road leaving the northern lip of Kane Gap takes the eastern bank of the head of Wallen’s Creek and uses the curving slope of Powell Mountain to make a near 180 degree turn as it slowly descends to the basin at the head of Wallen’s Creek Valley, and to rejoin the foot trail at Thomas D. Duff’s estate division.

Inspecting the roads from Kane Gap, itself, one can see lots of evidences of the foot trail, and vehicular trail is still very much in use by horses and all terrain vehicles, and is marked on the topographic map.

Buffalo spilling over the Gap to the north would have paid no attention to grade, and would have taken the shortest route to the valley floor, just as the deer trail of today does. The trail to the left (west) of the head of Wallen’s Creek and Kane Gap is easy to see and to follow for its first couple of hundred yards. There are no signs of excavation. However, one can see trough like depressions created by a mix of centuries of foot traffic and by erosion. Going through a hillside of stones, one notes that there are none down one of these linear depressions for the ground on both sides is littered with them, and notes further that the deer make current heavy use of this line of travel, just as surely did the buffalo and the Indian and pioneer foot travellers that followed them. The trail gets lost as the mountain gets steeper, and it can no longer be followed to the valley floor. The grade is close to the maximum practical limits that a horse and rider can negotiate, and exceeds what an be accomplished by a horse drawn vehicle.

The mileages noted above are significant. It is two miles from Kane Gap to the traditional site of Scott’s Station by the foot trail, and three if one were to take the vehicular road. This observation explains and ratifies the two distances noted in the historic documents above.

The survey contained within the deed of the tract of land sold by James J. Dickenson to William P. Duff on May 21, 1877 defines a leg of that tract running N62W from Kane Gap with “an old road” (17). This is the bearing of the foot trail as it leaves Kane Gap to the north along the left hand bank of the head of Wallen’s Creek.

Incidently, the western leg of this survey is along “the old wagon road” which was called earlier the Great Kentucky Road and later the Fincastle Turnpike, and demonstrated that the road then took a northeastern rather than a northwestern course out of Eller’s Gap. This routing replaced the foot trail and the vehicular road through Kane Gap before 1807.

In summary, there are ample evidences of both the earlier foot trail, and the later vehicular trail running from Kane Gap to the floor of Wallen’s Creek Valley.

Bibliography:
1) The Bear Grass, a History – by Lawrence J. Fleenor, Jr. pgs. 56-59
2) “The Killing of Humphrey Dickenson” by Emory Hamilton
3) http:image.vtls. com/collections/LO.html
4) Benge! – by Lawrence J. Fleenor, Jr.
5) Russell County, Virginia Deed Books 1-131, 1-126, 1-129
6) Russell County, Virginia Deed Books 1-168, 1-69
7) Title Abstract entitled “Duff / Steel Property” made by the law firm Irvine & Morison Feb. 1911, owned by Eunice and Mary Ruth Laster
8) Published originally in the 19th century by the editor of an Abingdon newspaper, and republished separately, or as part of Summers’ Annals of Southwest Virginia vol. II by the Overmountain Press
9) Lee County Deed Book 87 pg. 463; a cp[u os om a compilation of related material entitled “Duff / Steel Property” owned by Eunice and Mary Ruth Laster
10) Pgs. 39 and 48 of #6 – G. C. Duff & Mary E. Duff to William P Duff Jan 18, 1884; survey descriptions of tracts 7 & 8 of a law suit between John W. Carnes V. Eliza A. Carnes (Lee County 1866)
11) Lee Co. Deed Book 421 pg. 771
12) US Dept. of Interior Geologic Survey 7.5 Map, Duffield Quadrangle
13) Mrs. Lawrence Tankersley, owner of this tract today; and Mr. Jim Young, who lives in the house south of the road, and who used to get his water from the spring until it went dry
14) Located in the Rare Book Room of Alderman Library at the University of Virginia
15) Pusey, The Wilderness Road to Kentucky – pgs. 26-114
16) Communication to the author by Mr. Eunice Laster, who has spent his life in the head of Wallen’s Creek
17) ibid #6 above, pg. 38 – Lee Co Deed Book 18, pg 66

Postscript

As if there were not enough pathos already associated with Scott’s Station, while looking over the Duff Family Cemetery at the site of Scott’s Station, I became immersed in the tragedies of the next generation of Duffs. Three of Robert P. Duff’s grandsons died in the Civil War. In the center of the grave yard is a single shaft engraved on four sides. It looks at first like a tomb stone, but it is rather a memorial to family members buried elsewhere. On the one side is a memorial to Robert Duff, Jr., who had moved east to Staunton, Virginia. The monument records that he died and was buried in Staunton in 1888. On a second side of the shaft is an inscription to his son William Washington Duff, “born April 12, 1844 and who died June 5, 1864: buried at Point Lookout, Md.” The stone says no more.

Point Lookout was opened by the Union Army after the Battle of Gettysburg and became on the largest of the Confederate Prisoner of War camps. It came to imprison over 52,000 Southern soldiers and southern sympathizers, of whom over 14,000 died. The camp was built at the tip of the peninsular formed by the junction of the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. The land was marshy and the conditions were over crowded. The Confederate prisoners were made to suffer for the conditions t the confederate POW camp at Andersonville. The prisoners at Point Lookout were purposefully deprived of rations, causing them to eat rats. Diarrhea, malaria, scurvy, tuberculosis, and exposure killed prisoners at a rate at a rate as great as many of the bloody battles. The Union officials were in a state of denial over this, as they were in process of executing the commandant of Andersonville for having presided over much the same obscenity, and the government only admitted to 3,384 deaths at Point Lookout. Among those modern records list as being among the unadmitted victims buried at the prison cemetery at Point Lookout is listed “Duff, W. W., CO H 5th Va., P/W Died while P/W At Pt. Lookout, Md.”

“The Bloody Fifth” Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment was organized April 13, 1861 in Augusta County, of which Staunton is the largest town. Company ‘H’ was called the “Augusta Rifles”. The Fifth became part of the Stonewall Brigade, and no unite saw heavier combat. Few survived the war. We do not know when W. W. Duff was captured, but in less than a year after the Battle of Gettysburg, in which the Stonewall Brigade played a prominent role, William Washington Duff was dead at Point Lookout.

Another side of the stone shaft in the Duff Cemetery at Scott’s Station memorializes another of Robert Duff, Jr.’s sons, Thomas Jefferson Duff. He was “born 7-31-1842 and died May 5, 1864; CSA: Killed in the Battle of the Wilderness – God defends the right.” We do not know his unit, but it is possible that he also had joined the Fifth Virginia along with his brother William Washington. The Stonewall Brigade played a prominent part in the Battle of the Wilderness.

Nearby is the monument to “Our Soldier Boy”, Robert Duff III, who it notes was born in 1844, the same year as his cousin William Washington, and who was “killed at Chancellorsville 5-2-1863: CO G 50th Reg., Va. Volunteer Line.” Toward the end of the War, the remnants of the Stonewall Brigade were combined with what was left of other units, the 50th among them.

So, here in this seemingly most isolated and peaceful valley lie recorded events of tragic violence unimagined by the passer by of today. Archibald Scott killed in his bed, his daughter’s brains dashed out as she was being held in her mother’s arms; and to the grandsons of this first generation we see memorials of their deaths in distant places, buried far from home, and mourned in absentia by those who remained.

Bibliography to Postscript:

1) The tombstones of the Duff Cemetery
2) Robertson, James I. – The Stonewall Brigade
3) http://www.geocities.com/tcbflash_98/
4) http://www.interment.net/dataus/md/stmarys/ptlookout/
5) http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/1850/5thvainf.html

TANGIER ISLAND, MAX MEADOWS, THE GERMAN BRETHREN, AND THE WILDERNESS ROAD

By: Lawrence J. Fleenor, Jr.
Copyright and All Rights Reserved
March 2015

Significant assistance from Edgar A. Howard

In 1745 a most pregnant comment was made by Col. John Buchanan. Buchanan was chief surveyor for the Loyal Company of Virginia, and was travelling west down a version of the Wilderness Trail to examine the lands he, in the name of the land company, had jurisdiction over along its course. He stopped at William Mack’s home at today’s Max Meadows, which –though transliterated – were named after him.

Buchanan’s entries in his Wood’s River (old name for the New River) Land Entry Book for October 16, 1745 states “…. Buchanan road on to William Mack’s place at present Max Meadows. Mack was probably from the noted Mack milling family in Schriesheim, Germany, whose father Yost Mack founded the German River Baptist (Dunkard) faith.

“Buchanan found Mack dead in his cabin but with him several “Long Beards” or Siebentangers from Ephrata Cloister, Lancaster, County, Pennsylvania. Newly arrived, they would build a settlement called Mahanaim.”

“The next day Buchanan with Adam and Jacob Harmon appraised Mack’s estate agreeing with the “Long Beards” to gather the crops ….”.

The Harmons (Hermann) were also German, but seemed to have come to the New River Valley before the Dunkards. They settled on the Northern side of current Radford by 1738.

Col. Buchanan’s facility with German is all the more surprising given his use of the spelling “road” for “rode”.

The Wilderness Road

Buchanan had been born in Ireland, and settled in the ‘Irish Tract’ in present Augusta County (Staunton), Virginia. The entire tract was named ‘Beverly Manor’. His notations in the Land Entry Book indicated that he had started his October 1745 trip in the Upper James River, which is that part that lies to the north of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Buchanan had patented the ‘Cherry Tree Bottoms’ along the James River right where the James burst through on the northwest side of the Blue Ridge. The main branch of he Wilderness Trail crossed the James there at Looney’s Ferry. A town later grew up there that is named after him.

The Wilderness Road (Trail) was the main Indian path in the Eastern United States. It ran from the Hudson River Valley to the Blue Grass of Kentucky. Through out the Great Valley of Virginia it had several variants. The main trail, more or less followed by US 11, had the disadvantage of a precipitous climb up Christiansburg Mountain. Many pioneers took either of the two alternatives to the main route from Buchanan to Draper’s Meadows (Blacksburg / Christiansburg), which were either up Catawba Creek or Craig’s Creek. Buchanan noted that he had taken the Catawba Creek Trail.

If the traveller had taken the main route of the Wilderness Trail, he would find himself facing a crossing of the New River at southwest Radford, at Ingle’s Ford / Ferry / Bridge. This today is close to the route of I-81. If he had taken either of the alternative routes, he would have found himself on the road to Pepper’s Ferry, which crosses the river just north of US 11. Buchanan correctly records that he was on the road that led to Max Meadows, which is on the Pepper’s Ferry route. The two routes come together at Wytheville, which is one of the reasons for that town’s existence.

Just south of Max Meadows by State 121 lies Fort Chiswell on the main Wilderness Trail (US 11 & I-81). US 52 runs from there to (Winston-Salem). It also was the Lead Mines of Austinville’s face to the world. The fort was built in 1761 as part of the French and Indian War as a wintering quarters for the expedition of Col. William Byrd III, which had been dispatched to the relief of Fort Loudoun on the Little Tennessee River. That November Major Andrew Lewis built a military road from Fort Chiswell to the Long Island on the Holston (Kingsport Tennessee), which is called “the Island Road”, and is followed today by I-81.

The Berbers

The Berbers are the indigenous Caucasian people of Northwest Africa. They had been forcibly converted to the Muslim faith by their Arab conquers. In 711 the Berber Governor of Tangier, Morocco was invited to intervene in a Spanish civil war. He took his Berber army with him to Spain, and after winning the war, assumed possession of the Iberian Peninsular. Hundreds of years of warfare between the Christian Spaniards and the Berber Spaniards ensued. In 1492 the Christian forces won, and started a genocide of the Muslim Berbers. Tens of thousands were murdered, or sold into slavery in the New World. Many wound up in Virginia and in North Carolina. Some converted to Christianity (Conversios) and were sent as settlers into the New World. North Carolina, along its border with Virginia, had a string of fortified settlements of these people. In 1588 Spain abandoned most of its North Carolina settlements in the withdrawal to St. Augustine, Florida caused by the planned invasion of England by the Spanish Armada.

Some Conversios, joined by some Caribbean French Huguenots, became pirates, praying upon the Spanish treasure galleons as they passed up the Carolina and Virginia coasts on their way to Spain. The Spanish term for these pirates was ‘Picaroons’.

Tangier Island

Tangier Island lies in the Chesapeake Bay just south of the Maryland / Virginia line. It had long been used as a base of operations against English shipping in the Chesapeake Bay area, and was finally settled by the Picaroons. They named the place Tangier Island, in memory of their homeland, Tangier Morocco. Among the first settlers were the French Huguenots, the Crocketts. This surname remains the most common surname on the Island.

The German Brethren

In the early 1700’s in the lower Necker River Valley around Heidelberg a small group of Pietists broke away from the Lutheran Church. They were esthetics, and did not believe it state religions. They are closely related to other similar German Pietist sects, such as the Amish and Mennonites, and are all theological descendants of John Huss. Some of them considered Saturday to be the Sabbath, and some did not baptize, and some required total immersion. The men never shaved their beards, hence Buchanan’s having referred to them as “the Long Beards”. They never numbered more that 200 in Germany. They organized in 1708. They were persecuted, and scattered to the four winds. Records of all of them do not exist. The group easiest to follow is that led by Alexander Mack, Sr. of Schriesheim, who led a group to the Brethren community of Ephrata Cloister in Pennsylvania in 1729. It is significant to note that there were already unspecified groups of them there when Mack got there. Alexander Mack died in 1735, and the Brethren community began to fragment.

Is should be noted that Buchanan gave all the correct information about this individual, including the fact that he had come from a family of millers in Germany. However, he gave his common name as ‘Yost’.

There is a common confusion over the given names of German Americans because of the difference in the naming traditions of the Germans and of the British. In Britain the common name is the first name, but in Germany in the majority of cases the first name was the name of the Saint on whose day the infant was born, and the elective common name is the second name. This second name is the name the individual’s family used to call them by, and the one used by friends who were close enough to have used his “calling name”. Their British American neighbors often thought that their common name was their first name, and often wrote this second name down in records as the first name. Likely Mack’s name was Alexander Yost Mack.

Alexander Mack, Jr. led a portion of the Ephrata Cloister community “into the Wilderness” “beyond Christian civilization” to Dunkard’s Bottom on the New River in Virginia. He had a son named ‘William’ who is often confused with the William Mack that Buchanan had found dead in his cabin at Max Meadows in 1745. William, the son of Alexander Mack, Jr., was not born until 1747, and served in the Revolutionary War. No other William Mack can be identified in this family cluster. Quite likely we are dealing again with the naming pattern problem, and are confusing first names with given names. No one knows who this William Mack was, or whether “William” was his first or second name.

Incidentally, this pattern of using the second name as the common name still exists in Southwest Virginia.

When the Dunkards first came to the New River bottom land that would be named after them, they found living there “a kind of white people who wore deer skins, lived by hunting, associated with the Indians and acted like savages”. The only likely source of these white people living with the Cherokee was the Berbers.
The Siebentanger

The most startling aspect of Buchanan’s comments about the events in William Mack’s cabin on Reed Creek at Max’s Meadows is his having called the seven Long Beards present at the wake as “Siebentanger” from Ephrata Cloister. This German term translates as “seven men from Tangier”. Note that this term does not differentiate between Tangier Island, and Tangier, Morocco. Also note that Buchanan equated the two slang references “Long Beards”, and “Tangers”, at the same time acknowledging that they were from Ephrata Cloister, Pennsylvania, and hence German Brethren.

The implication of this is significant. Buchanan felt that his readers throughout Virginia would equate the terms “Tanger, Long Beards”, and Brethren or Dunkards. How could this be so? Why would the term ‘Tanger” be term that would first occur to a Virginian for a Brethren?

Histories of Tangier Island do not mention the Brethren. However, the first cases of Maple Syrup Urine Disease ever discovered were discovered around Tangier Island. It is a genetic disorder among members of the German Pietist sects, specifically the Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren. In fact, another name for this condition is “Tangier Disease”.

The churches on Tangier Island are mostly either Baptist or United Methodist. In both cases, these specific churches on Tangier Island say that they are descended from Churches of the Brethren. Early on in America the Churches of the Brethren split into divisions that were described as being either “like the Baptist” or “like the Methodist”. In fact, the current United Methodist Church nationally is the result of the union of the Evangelical United Brethren and The Methodist Church.

Similarly, there are concentrations of Brethren Churches in Tangier, Ohio, and in Tangier, Indiana. There are even Brethren churches in the vicinity of Morocco, Indiana. This last reference is all the more tantalizing because the Berber Picaroons who first founded a settlement on Tangier Island were originally from Morocco.

An affinity between Brethren and Tangier Island and of Tangier, Morocco is further documented by the fact that the Brethren maintained a church mission in Tangier, Morocco in the mid 19th century.

The Midwest was settled soon after the Revolutionary War. There is no documentation, either direct or indirect, of the Brethren being on Tangier Island after their exodus to Ohio and Indiana. They emigrated to the Midwest, leaving only their religion, and Tangier Disease, behind. None of the German Dunkard’s surnames remain on Tangier. However, this data brackets the time period of Brethren residency on Tangier Island, which would have been roughly 1730 to 1800. This represents three and a half generations.

Col. John Buchanan’s 1745 comment in Max Meadows calling the seven Brethren gentlemen from Pennsylvania “Tangers” shows that to that generation of Virginians, Brethren were equated with Tangierians.

But the mindset of Virginians even extended further back into history than that. Recall the Picaroons? During the American Revolution, Tangier Island remained a Loyalist bastion. A small navy of Loyalist Tangierians preyed upon Rebel shipping in the Chesapeake. The rebels of Maryland and Virginia referred to these people, and to their fleet, as the Picaroons. Maryland and Virginia attacked the Picaroon Fleet in what has been called the largest naval battle of the Revolution, and destroyed it.

This state of affairs may have been the event that sent the pacifist Long Beards fleeing from Tangier Island. There are no German names listed among the participants in this fighting. Yet, after 3½ generations on Tangier Island, the Brethren seem to have acquired a pleasant sense of identity with the place, as they carried its name to their new homes in the Midwest. The related issues of their naming one of their new homes in Indiana “Morocco”, and their decision to establish a mission in Tangier, Morocco raise the question of whether or not their association with the Berbers of Morocco may not have been of longer standing than their sojourn on Tangier Island, Virginia.

It is a fact that the French and Indian War pushed the Dunkards out of Dunkard’s Bottom and into the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina, where they continued to live with the Berbers they had met in the New River Valley of Virginia and on Tangier Island.
Bibliography:

Johnson, Patricia Givens – The Early New River Settlement
Buchanan and the Siebentanger –
rootsweb

White Savages of Dunkard’s Bottom
waymarking.com

Fort Chiswell, Island Road, and Maj. Andrew Lewis
Fleenor, Lawrence – The Bear Grass, a History

Berber Conquest of Spain
britannica.com

Berber Picaroons of the Cheasapeake Bay and of Tangier Island
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/VAMONTGO/2000-02/0950992885
Shores, David – Tangier Island – Place, People, and Talk
books.google.com

Ephrata Cloister
wikipedia.org

Dunkard’s Bottom
waymarking.com

Brethren of Tangier Island
rootsweb

Tangier Disease (Maple Syrup Urine Disease)
ghr.nlm.nih.gov
the-scientist.com

Brethren Churches in Tangier, Ohio and Indiana
books.google.com

Brethren Churches in Morocco, Indiana
wikipedia.org

Brethren mission to Tangier, Morocco
library.manchester.ac.uk – NOT WORKING

Revolutionary War and the Tangier Island Picaroons
Rhoads, James – Somerset County
books.google.com

BAKER’S FLATS

Copyright

Lawrence J. Fleenor, Jr.

Big Stone Gap, Virginia

June 2014

Revised April 2016

Baker’s Flats is a plateau located in Virginia, but touching the Kentucky state line.  It is where Black Mountain, Indian Mountain, and Pine Mountain come together, and is the take off for Roger’s Ridge, which separates Roaring Fork from Black Creek.  It is about a mile north to south, its long dimension.  It overlooks the origins of Roaring Fork, Guest’s River, and both the South and North Forks of the Pound River at Fox Gap and at Flat Gap.  Just off its northern edge, and into Kentucky, the head spring of the Poor Fork of the Cumberland River starts at the head of Robert’s Branch Hollow.  The spring is just under the level of the flats.

A few hundred yards to the east, after having passed the state line back into Virginia, is the start of the South Fork of the Pound River, one of the head waters of the Big Sandy River.  It also starts in a spring coming from a coal seam lying under Baker’s Flats, in this instance at the head of Phillips’ Creek.  There is a massive ancient rock house built into the face of the bluff by the spring.  Baker’s Flats, and the land under the bluff, have been heavily strip mined, but the bluff has not been disturbed because of its massive near vertical positioning.  The spring and the rock house have thusly been preserved.

Access to Baker’s Flats is best obtained by way of Roaring Fork in Virginia.   From Business US 23 pick up State 603 at Kent Junction and proceed to the old mining camp of Roaring Fork, and proceed north off of the paved road that turns to the left, and go up the dirt mining road officially called The Roaring Fork Road.  Many people today have come to refer to this road as the Pine Branch Road.  Staying as close to the creek as possible, follow the road to the headwaters of the creek, and then follow the road up the face of the mountain toward the current wind gage in the center of the flats.  To get to the rock house, proceed north on ATV trails not suitable for 4-wheel drive highway vehicles, and go to the edge of the strip mine.  You will have to poke around a bit to find the spring and rock house, but there is an ATV trail that comes up from Phillips’ Creek Hollow that accesses Baker’s Flats that you can follow from the Flats to the rock house and spring.

Before it was strip mined, the flats were the site of active farming well into the mid Twentieth Century.  The name “Baker’s Flats” is widely known in the community of Flat Gap, and formerly so among the people of Dunbar.  No one recalls a family of Baker’s having lived there, and the name of the place seems to go back to forgotten times.

Roaring Fork was much favored by long hunters, as were the other long sheltered hollows on both sides of Black Mountain.  Buffalo, elk, and deer spent their summers in the open meadows on top of the mountain, and sought shelter in the deep hollows in the winter.  Access from Virginia was gained by coming up the Big Stoney Creek trail and over High Knob and across Little Stone Gap to the top of Little Stone Mountain, where the trail dropped off to Kelly View and current Kent Junction, where the mouth of Roaring Fork is.

The name Pot Camp Creek is a living testament to the long hunters having frequented the current locations of Dunbar and the former Pardee.  Bold Camp, near Pound, Virginia, was settled primarily by people coming up Roaring Fork and dropping down into the head waters of the South Fork of the Pound River, which they followed to the mouth of Bold Camp.

Just who were Baker’s Flats named after?  The most likely candidate is Captain John Baker, who was a documented long hunter from Ashe County, North Carolina.  Ashe County is a very common site of origin for the earliest inhabitants of far southwest Virginia, especially the region about Black Mountain.  These settlers came down the New River through Mouth-of-Wilson.

Baker was born in 1758.  In 1769 at age 11 he joined a party of about 40 long hunters led by James Knox.  Following common operating procedure, the party went as a group before dispersing at Flat Lick just west of present Pineville, Kentucky.  All that is documented is that they were gone for over a year before they met each other again at Flat Lick, and then returned to Ashe County.

It would seem likely that Baker followed the Cumberland River to its head spring, and there found his own private mountain top meadow filled with game.  He built a combination blind and living quarters over the major spring used by the game, and just waited for dinner to come to him.

The presence of the many carefully placed large stones within the structure of the rock house show that its builder was there for a long time.

Modern DNA evidence has shown that this ‘historic’ John Baker really was more than one individual of that name.  Assignation of the various bits of information to a particular one of them is still a work in progress.

However, quite by accident, a land grant (LO 110-665) on file at the Library of Virginia, and available on line, has been found, and which contains an 1853 survey call for a line that is identified as “passing Baker’s Rock House”.  This proves that the structure in the accompanying photograph, and which is known traditionally locally as ‘Baker’s Rock House’, is the same one identified by this survey.

This grant is of further historic interest for several reasons, among them is the fact that the recipients of this grant were William Carnes and Loring Tyler.  Carnes had also bought a grant in this vicinity in partnership with William D. Duff.  Duff was the son of Robert Duff and his wife Polly.  Polly was the niece of Fannie Scott.  Fannie Scott was the famous survivor of the Chief Bob Benge’s raid at Scott’s Station at the head of Wallen’s Creek on the Wilderness Trail of 1779 in which her children and husband, Archibald, were murdered.  The Duffs had acquired all the Scott land after that massacre.

The calls of LO 110-665 also note that the last survey corner was “70 poles north of Gabriel Church’s house”.   This comes to about 300 yards.  This notation is remarkable in its uniqueness of calling attention to a house located at that great a distance from the survey.  Church (1802-1875) was a well known character in what was to become Wise County.  He was born in Wilkes Co., North Carolina, and was highly regarded as a musician.  He lived on Gabe’s Branch, which was named after him.  It was said to be a tributary of Roaring Fork, but its exact location has been lost to record.  This survey call places it on the eastern slope of Fork Ridge just to the west of the southern end of Baker’s Flats.

Church was well known for having written the ballad “Poor Goins” about the murder of Alexander Goins at Mud Lick on Callahan Creek in 1844, which is on the western side of the Nine Mile Spur directly across from Gabe’s Branch.  It is intriguing that Goins’ sister, Elizabeth Jane, lived with her husband Michael Peter Craiger one hollow to the east of Gabriel Church, on Black Creek.  Craiger served with the “Yankee Catchers” in the Civil War.  This group was one of the Confederate bushwhacking outfits.  Elizabeth Jane’s descendent who wrote about her says that the Goins and Craiger families were from Wallen’s Ridge in Lee County, Virginia.

Bibliography:

1 – Peyton, J. Lewis –  History of Augusta County

2 – Chestnut, David – “Long Hunters” – RootsWeb.com

3 – Hamilton, Emory – “The Long Hunter” – printed in the Spring 1984 “The  Mountain Empire Genealogical Quarterly”

4 – Virginia Land Office Patents and Grants / Northern Neck Grants and Surveys

http://lva1.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/F/?func=file&file_name=find-b-clas30&local_base=CLAS30

5 – Fleenor, Lawrence J. – Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail Assn.  – “Scott’s Station”

https://danielboonetrail.com/history-perspectives/scotts-station/

6 – Fleenor, Lawrence. J. – Black Mountain, the Mother of Today pgs 56-64

7 – http://www.bakerdna.net

8 – http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jrbakerjr/dna/dna.html

The stone wall to the left is part of the original structure.  The sawed lumber frame in the front is from the more modern era when the shelter was still inhabited.  The head spring of the Cumberland River is to the right of and down about 20 feet from the structure.

BENJAMIN SHARP

Commentary Copyright: Lawrence J. Fleenor, Jr.

All rights reserved

January 2001

Big Stone Gap, VA

Following below is a letter written by Benjamin Sharp in 1842 to the editor of a history magazine entitled “The American Pioneer”, and which was published in Cincinnati, Ohio by John S. Williams. The letter was printed in the June 15th issue of that periodical. It tells first hand accounts of the Battles of Long Island Flats at Kingsport, and of the Indian fighting around Black’s Fort in Abingdon, both during the early phases of the Cherokee War that started as a part of the American Revolution. Following the text of the letter will be a summation of what little biographical material exists on Benjamin Sharp, himself.

MR. SHARP’S LETTER
Warren County, Missouri, June 15th, 1842
Dear Sir – In the year 1776, about the time American independence was declared, all that part of West Virginia now contained in the counties of Wyth, Smyth, Washington, Russell, Lee, and Scott, with the adjoining counties in North Carolina (now Tennessee) of Sullivan and Washington, were broken up and the inhabitants driven into strongholds. About the last of June or the first of July, the traders fled from the Cherokee nation with the alarming news, that the Indians were coming in great
force, and in a few days would break into the settlements. A few of the
militia, perhaps one hundred and fifty or two hundred, hastily assembled
under the command of captains James Thompson, James Shelby, and William
Cook and proceeded to the frontier house, about fifteen miles in advance
of the settlement, and begun to build a kind of stockade fort with fence
rails; but before they could finish their fort their spies gave them
notice that a large Indian force was within a few miles. It was then
debated, which would be the most prudent, to await their coming in their
crazy fort or march out boldly and meet them in the woods. The latter
proposition prevailed, and before they had proceeded more than five
miles, they discovered nine or ten Indians, who threw down their budgets
and fled. This threw the men into disorder, curiosity drawing them
around the Indian plunder in a crowd; but presently they heard a noise
like distant thunder, and looking round they saw the whole Indian force
running upon them at full speed – they made a hasty retreat to a rising
ground, where they rallied; and the Indians came running up with savage
yells, as if intending to rush among them with their tomahawks. A sharp
engagement ensued, lasting from one-half to three-quarters of an hour,
when the Indians disappeared, as if by magic, leaving the white men
masters of the ground. Of the whites none were killed and only four
slightly wounded. Eleven or twelve Indians lay dead upon the field and
many trails of blood were found where the dead were carried off or the
wounded had escaped. My oldest brother and a brother-in-law were in the
action.
A curious incident occurred during the engagement. An Alexander Moore,
a strong, athletic, active man, by some means got into close contact
with an Indian of nearly his own size and strength; my brother-ion-law,
William King, seeing Moore’s situation, ran up to his relief, but the
Indian adroitly kept Moore in such a position that King could not shoot
him without shooting Moore. The Indian had a large knife suspended at
his belt, for the possession of which they both struggled, but at length
Moore succeeded and plunged it into the Indian’s bowels; he then broke
his hold and sprung off from Moore, and King shot him through the head.
The victorious party now returned to the fort, and instantly dispersed
to take care of their own families and concerns. In the meantime the
whole settlements were breaking up and the people fleeing from every
quarter. We had collected some horses and loaded them with such
necessaries as we could hastily pack up, and about the middle of the day
my father, an old man, set off with them and the females of the family
to seek a place of safety, he know not where. I was dispatched on foot
to accelerate the escape of a brother’s and sister’s families, the one
living four and the other six miles directly toward the point of
danger. I was a little turned of fourteen years of age; the day was
warm, but I was light and active and had no encumbrance but my gun and
shot-pouch, and I traveled rapidly.
On my arrival I found the families had fled, and I turned to pursue my
father. I had twelve miles to go to gain the great road, which I did as
the day was nearly closing. In my whole route I not seen a human face,
but here the road was full of people moving hastily along; they were all
strangers to me, but learning my situation one man generously proposed
to carry me behind him till I could regain my friends or hear some
intelligence of them. This offer I gladly embraced, and after some time
we came to the farm of a captain Joseph Black, where Abington now
stands, where we found four or five hundred souls of all descriptions
collected together to build a fort, and here I found my connections.
The next day, when all hands were engaged in procuring materials and
building fort Black, we received the news of the battle of long Island,
which gave us much encouragement, and business was suspended till a
prayer of thanksgiving was offered up by the Rev. Charles Cummings, a
Presbyterian minister. Not more than two or three days after this a
captain James Montgomery, who lived about eight miles off, came to the
fort; he had concluded, with two other families, to defend his own
house, but not knowing what was going on he had rode out to try to find
some people or get some intelligence. He was earnestly beset to bring
the families instantly to the fort, and men and horses were sent to
assist him. They soon returned with the families and some of their
effects, and went back for more, but to their surprise they found the
houses plundered and all in flames. They retreated hastily to the fort,
and spies were appointed and sent out – but for several days they made
no discovery, but at length they came in one night after dark and
reported that they had discovered afire on the bank of the river above
Mongomeies, which they supposed to be the Indian camp. An express was
sent off to another fort, requesting their men to meet our men at a
certain place at a certain hour that night. A party set off with the
spies and was met by the men from the other fort according to
appointment, and the spies conducted them to the spot. They cautiously
surrounded them from the river below to the river above them with strict
injunctions to preserve a profound silence till the report of the
captain’s gun should give the signal for a general discharge, and in
this position they waited for day. As soon as day had fairly dawned
the Indians arose and began to move about the camp, when the crack of the
captain’s rifle was followed by a well directed fire from every quarter;
the Indians fled across the river, exposed all the way to the fire of
the whites, if any fell or sunk in the river it was not known, but if I
recollect right eleven lay dead at and around the camp. The men crossed
the river and found various trails of blood, one of which they traced up
to where the fellow had crept into a hollow log; they drew him out by
the feet and found him mortally wounded: he requested them by signs to
shoot him in the head, which request they granted.
When the men returned all safe, with the Indian spoils and scalps,
there was great rejoicing, and the scalps were suspended to a pole and
fixed as a trophy over the fort gate. But we did not enjoy this triumph
long, for shortly after a different scene took place. One morning three
parties prepared to go out; one in which were my father, my two
brothers, and two brothers-in-law, went early and was unmolested, they
went to visit some plantations twelve miles off, and knew of nothing
that had happened behind them, and did not return till late at night.
Of the other two, one went to a field about a mile off, I think to
secure some flax, and the other about the same distance to the house of
the Rev. Charles Cummings, to bring his books, and some of his effects
to the fort. Both these parties were attacked at the same time in full
hearing of the fort; and here an undescribable scene of disorder took
place, the women and children screaming, wives clinging to their
husbands, mothers to their sons, and sisters to their brothers, to
prevent them from going out, and crowding the fort gate, so that the men
could hardly pass or repass. However a number of the men broke through,
and ran to the rescue as fast as possible, but before they could arrive
the Indians had done their work and were gone; one man was killed and
one wounded in each party. A man by the name of Blackburn, was shot,
tomahawked, and scalped, and yet was found alive, brought in, and
recovered of his wounds. He was a long time an object of compassion.
The gallantry of two young men in this affray deserves to be recorded
here. William Casey had a sister, a beautiful little girl, about
sixteen years of age, along with the party at the field; and as he was
running for his life, discovered the Indians in close pursuit of his
sister; and at that moment his eyes falling upon another young man, by
the name of Robert Hasold, he called to him to come and help him to save
Nancy; Hasold obeyed, and although there were four or five Indians in
pursuit, (some said seven,) they rushed between them and the girl, and
by dexterously managing to fire alternately, still keeping one gun
loaded when the other was discharged, they kept the Indians at bay till
they gave up the pursuit, and they brought the girl in safe. Such acts
of generous bravery ought at all times be held up as examples to our
youth. Ever after, these two young men stood prominent in society.
During the summer several murders were committed; two men were killed
almost in sight of the neighboring fort, who had gone out to bring in
their horses. Of two men who went with an express from fort Black, one
was killed and the other made his escape. It had been early determined
to carry an expedition into the Indian country: and troops begun to
assemble at the long Island, the place of rendezvous, and build a fort,
which was called fort Henry. A company was enrolled at fort Black, and
taken under pay, to guard the fort and escort the provision and baggage
wagons going to, and returning from the rendezvous. In this company I
engaged, which was the first of my military service.
I think some time in November, the army, one thousand five hundred, or
two thousand strong, under the command of colonel William Christian, of
Virginia, moved on the Indian towns. I cannot recollect that this army
killed any Indians, or took any prisoners; but they burned down all
their villages, destroyed their corn, and every article of subsistence
they could find, which reduced them to such a state of starvation, that
before spring they sent in a flag for peace, which resulted in the
treaty of the Long Island, in 1777.
I attended this treaty only one day, and that before the conferences
begun and can report nothing of my own knowledge; I will only mention an
oratorical figure in a speech of the Raven, the principal Indian chief.
A great many Indians with their squaws and children had collected, and
were quartered in the island, surrounded by a guard to prevent improper
intercourse with the whites; but notwithstanding this precaution, some
abandoned fellow shot across the river and killed an Indian. This
produced great confusion; the Indians thought they were betrayed, and
prepared to fly, and it was with much exertion the officers and
commissioners could convince and pacify them. Afterwards when the
council met, the Raven opened the conference on the part of his people
by a speech, in which he reverted to the case of the murdered Indian.
He said, least that unhappy affair should disturb the harmony and
sincerity that ought to exist at that time between the white and red
brethren, each party ought to view it as having happened so long ago, as
if when the Indian was buried an acorn had been thrown into his grave,
which had sprouted and grown, and become a lofty spreading oak,
sufficiently large for them to sit under its shade, and hold their
talk. This speech was much talked of at the time, and many thought it
equal to any thing in the celebrated speech of Logan. Thus ended the
first Cherokee war.
I am, with much esteem &c.
Benj. Sharp
Biography
Benjamin Sharp is a phantom of our regional past, a sense of whose importance to our heritage needs to be regained. The only widely known reference to him in our historic literature is his cryptic commentary on the death of Chief Bob Benge recorded in Summer’s History Southwest Virginia and of Washington Co. and in the author’s Benge!
Benjamin was born in Lancaster County Pennsylvania on January 23, 1763. He was the son of John Sharp, who was born in Scotland about 1720, and who died in Sullivan County Tennessee July 1796. John’s home, where Benjamin was raised, was on the South Fork of Holston River, a few miles above the present dam.
Benjamin acquired excellent social and business contacts by his and his family’s’ marriages. He married Hannah Fulkerson, who was the daughter of James Fulkerson, and the niece of Abraham and sister of Peter Fulkerson. Her mother was Mary Vanhook, whom his father had married when this assortment of families were living in North Carolina. The Fulkersons were Dutch Huguenots, and were part of that group that migrated across America to finally settle in Washington County, Virginia, after having first settled in Elk Garden, Russell County. Other clan names that were in that group of wandering Huguenots were the Dyes and the Vanhooks.
The Fulkersons were high up in the social structure of Washington Co, and Abraham became a Colonel in the Holston Militia, a rank usually reserved for the Scots-Irish. The Fulkersons seemed to serve as intermediaries between the Scots-Irish community and the sizable German one. As a ranking officer in the Holston Militia, Abraham had been a special target of Chief Benge on his last raid in 1794, when Benge sought to attack Abraham’s house near Hiltons, Va.
The Fulkersons were aggressive and prosperous land speculators in Washington, Scott, and Lee Counties, Virginia. Benjamin would profit much from this connection.
Benjamin was also the brother-in-law of one of the several William Kings, whose family is connected with the salt works at Saltville, King College, Kingsport, and Steel Creek in Bristol. They were easily the wealthiest family in the region at that time.
Early records of Benjamin’s activities in the Holston Valley are sketchy. He got a land grant in Elk Garden amongst his wife’s relatives, he got land on Beaver Creek, and moved to the Mendota Community on the North Fork, according to the historian Goodpasture. This made him neighbors with the Livingstons, Benhams, and the Hobbs, all of whom were to be swept up in the infamous last raid of Chief Benge.
Virginia made money in two ways off of its land sales on the frontier. First of all, it issued land warrants which entitled the holder to claim a specified acreage of unpatented land. These warrants were traded for cash on the secondary market. Then, of course, the Virginia Land Office charged a fee for the land itself, after the purchaser had presented a warrant and a survey of his claim. The land could, then, be sold on the secondary market. The Fulkersons were aggressive traders of both Land Warrants and of Land.
About 1790 several families from the Mendota community moved to Turkey Cove (Dryden) in Lee County. Their motives involved land speculation, hunting, and community defensive needs. The Cherokee War had raged in sanguine passion since 1776, and in 1777 the Cherokee had run all the settlers out of Lee County save for the eastern most garrison at Rocky Station. Late in that war the Holston Militia decided to deploy a rapid deployment force of rangers at Yoakum’s Station in Turkey Cove. Among those settlers of the Mendota Community that relocated to Dryden were the brothers Absolum and Vincent Hobbs, Jr, and likely Vincent Hobbs, Sr., John Benham, and Benjamin Sharp, who bought 620 acres as the assignee of his brother-in-law Peter Fulkerson. The land was next to Absolum Hobbs.
This started a process that was oft repeated. He either bought warrants or the land itself from Peter Fulkerson, all through Lee County. The land was spread throughout the county, and often was the less desirable left overs after wealthier speculators had gotten the cream. Before the process was over he had acquired 2,622 acres in Lee County in his own right, and was part owner of 1,083 more. He also bought 273 acres on the North Fork of the Clinch near Duffield in Scott County.
He followed the common pattern of that era, and sold his Lee County holdings so that he could reinvest his profits in land further west, and wound up dying in Warren County, Missouri on January 1, 1844.
His only claim to lasting fame is his commentary on the actions of the Yoakum’s Station Militia in the killing of Chief Bob Benge in Wise County in 1794. That party was composed of his neighbors Absolum and Vincent Hobbs, Jr., and James Huff and others of the Turkey Cove community. His narrative is written with such authority that one could think that he was one of the members of that party whose name James Huff could not remember half a century later, when he told of that event to a Louisville Newspaper.
Sharp’s narrative of the Benge killing is rumored to be somewhere in the same periodical that this letter of his was published in. “The American Pioneer” is on microfilm at Alderman Library at the University of Virginia, the source of this narrative. Perhaps someday someone will be able to locate it. In the meantime, this article will serve to restore the memory of Benjamin Sharp to its rightful place in local history.
special thanks to Dale Carter for his help on this article, and to the
Lonesome Pine Regional Library for its help in procuring a photocopy of
the microfilmed Sharp document.