| Sources |
- [S394] Ancestry.com, Public Member Trees, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2006;), Database online., Skinner/Schinzel-Ahlemeyer/Haines Tree J_Ahlemeyer.
Record for Alexander Vance
Vance's Station & Harrison's Fort in Sinking Creek, Holston,Washington Co, Virginia
Jeremiah Harrison's Fort
This fort was located on the North Fork of Holston. In the year 1782 tithables of Washington County, Virginia, three adult Harrisons were listed. They were Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and from the Biblical names they are assumed to have been brothers. Jeremiah bought a tract of 400 acres and the later took up a tract of 340 acres. The 400 acre tract was on Sinking Creek of the North Fork of Holston and is dated in the Fincastle Survey, May 28, 1774. Yet the 340 acre tract appears in the Washington County Survey Book, and it is this tract he sells to David Smith on June 14, 1787. (31) Washington County was formed in 1776 from part of Fincastle. The north part of Washington later formed Russell County in 1786.
The first mention of any fort here comes in a letter of Arthur Campbell to William Preston, dated October 6, 1774, (32) in which he says: "He was stationed on the main path to Clinch, opposite the Town House (33) to protect the settlers, and he mentions the families of Vance, Fowler, Harrison, etc., including John Campbell who had been serving as an Ensign to Captain Daniel Smith on Clinch."
This Jeremiah Harrison and others, probably brothers, must have come to the area very early as the settlement certificate mentions settlement in 1772. They certainly appear to be the same family as lived in Augusta County, Virginia, from the earliest times, for instance, entry of 15th of September, 1742, shows Jeremiah Harrison and Isaiah Harrison as delinquents in the company of Hugh Thompson. (34) They appear to be sons of Joseph Harrison who died in early 1748, with Isaiah as Administrator of his estate appointed on May 18, 1748, (35) with Jeremiah as his security.
In the summer of 1774, Jeremiah Harrison was paid for the pastureage of 135 steers for use at the Maiden Springs Station. (36) There were two Jeremiah Harrisons in Augusta County and they have different named wives. Apparently Jeremiah Harrison left the Holston and moved on to Kentucky where he is listed in a deposition at Woodford Courthouse, Kentucky, dated July 14, 1781. (37) That these men were old, or aging, when Dunmore's War broke out is likely as they are not reflected in any muster lists.
Isaac Crabtree in making a supporting statement to his brother Abraham's pension application filed in Wayne County, Kentucky, in 1828, tells of their being sent to Jeremiah Harrison's Fort in 1776, and Jacob Crabtree, says that he was discharged from the militia at this fort in 1776.
It is fairly evident that Harrison's Fort was a stockaded affair, but probably small due to the fact that it did not lie on an exposed frontier, and how long it remained in use is unknown, as no reference have been found concerning it, other than those above mentioned.
Vance's Station
This was a sister station to Jeremiah Harrison's Fort, and about five miles separated the two forts on the North Fork of Holston. This fort, like some others came to light in Revolutionary War pension statements. Vance's Station was no doubt the home of old Alexander Vance. The station is mentioned in both the pension statements of Abraham and Isaac Crabtree, who lived with their father, William Crabtree, on the North Fork of Holston, near the present Saltville, Virginia. The Crabtree brothers mention going to Vance's Station after a tour of militia duty at Blackmore's Fort and at the Flat Lands, which is believed to be another early name for Flat Lick, that section around Duffield down to Pattonsville in present Scott and Lee counties.
Old Alexander Vance owned 289 acres of land on the North Fork of the Holston River surveyed and recorded in Washington County, Virginia, in June, 1783, although he had been living on the land many years prior to this survey and entry. This land included the mouth of Beaver Creek. Somehow, later, this land became the property of General William Tate who lived at Broadford in Smythe County, just upstream from Saltville.
There were two Vance families in the area, one living on the North Fork of Holston River and the other on Beaver Creek near Bristol.
In 1818, one Abner Vance (the brother of Alexander) of the North Fork of Holston family was hanged at Abingdon for murdering a member of the Horton family who had debauched Vance's daughter. Vance felt he had gotten an unfair trial and while in prison wrote a very stirring and tragic ballad which in early days virtually became a folk song and was widely sung around the hearthside of the pioneers and known as the "Vance Song."
On October 6, 1774, Colonel Arthur Campbell wrote concerning Vance and Harrison's Stations in this manner, and this may be the clue to the dates one, if not both of these forts were built.
"Upon the alarm of (Samuel) Lammey being taken Vance and Fowler's wives, with several other families convened at Mr. Harrison's, which lies upon the main path to the Clinch in the Rich Valley, opposite the Town House. Upon request of several inhabitants on both sides, I ordered six men to be stationed there for ten days, two of which were to be out ranging. Henry and John Dougherty moved their families to this side of the mountain, disagreeing with ye majority of ye inhabitants, as to the place to build a fort. Mr. John Campbell's wife has been on this side of the mountain this past two months and (Campbell) himself has acted as Ensign to Captain (Daniel) Smith on Clynch ever since that Gent was ordered to duty.
Archibald and John Buchanan's families and Andrew Lammey came here, (to Royal Oak) who has continued on this side yet. Captain Wilson went immediately with 15 men, and ranged near a week in the neighborhood where Lammey was taken," and left four of his best woodsmen with neighbors for several days longer. I also ordered two of the most trusty persons I could get to act as Spys along Clinch mountain for ten days, which they performed, I am satisfied, faithfully; besides the six men at Harrison's I ordered Mr. Vance's and Fowler's wives three men a week, particularly to assist about saving their fodder, which they got secured safely." (38)
Campbell's reference to a disagreement between the settlers as to the proper place to build a fort, it undoubtably the beginning of both Vance and Harrison's Stations, thus placing their erection in the year 1774.
Samuel Lammey was taken captive by the Indians on Holston, carried into captivity and never returned. He was taken by a band under the leadership of the Shawnee Black Hawk
http://www.newrivernotes.c om/swva/hssv-4.htm
Shawsvil le yard may be site of Revolutionary fortArchaeological clues suggest the property may have been the location of Fort Vause.
By Tonia Moxley
381-1663
Editor's note: A line was omitted in the printed story that explained efforts to reconstruct a second fort after the first one was burned. It has been restored in this version.
SHAWSVILLE - Archaeologists found evidence Sunday that may prove a Shawsville couple's back yard was the site of a pre-Revolutionary War fort visited in 1756 by George Washington.
University of Kentucky archaeologists Steve and Kim McBride and geologist Greg Adamson, along with more than a dozen others, chopped, scraped and scooped through layers of drought-hardened ground this weekend to verify the location of Fort Vause. The crew found a handful of artifacts and a dark stain in the layers of soil. The stain especially looks like promising evidence that at least one British Colonial fort was built on the hill behind Jack and Laree Hinshelwood's house, Kim McBride said.
In early 1756 French, Shawnee, Miami and Ottowa troops attacked a fort, which was built by a settler named Ephraim Vause somewhere in present-day Shawsville.
The forces burned the installation and killed or kidnapped many of the settlers, indentured servants and slaves sheltering inside the palisades. The attack was part of a French-led campaign to destabilize British settlements in Virginia.
"The French and Indian War was really an international conflict" between two old-world superpowers that wished to control the valuable natural resources in the new world, said John Kern, director of the Roanoke office of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
The Indian tribes who joined the French in battle hoped to force British settlers, whom they considered invaders, out of the country. But other Indian people, including many Cherokee, sided with the British.
Official military letters and reports from the day document the existence of the first fort and spell out efforts to quickly reconstruct it after the attack. But locals have long disagreed about the locations of the two forts.
Some say both forts were built on the spot now owned by the Hinshelwoods. Others say only one of the forts stood there.
Pinning down the location is important because Washington, a young British Colonial officer at the time, likely visited only the second fort.
He came there to settle a dispute with soldiers who were demanding higher wages to finish the reconstruction, a fact that tickles Jack Hinshelwood.
"Washington was not very happy when he visited here," Hinshelwood said.
So geologist and weekend archaeologist Greg Adamson secured a $5,000 grant to try to settle the location question.
Archaeologist Steve McBride said the evidence so far suggests that only the second fort stood on the Hinshelwood site because the crew has so far found no evidence of a fire.
Submitted by Cheri Fox Smith, 2012
maksiccaradded this on 26 Nov 2012
gerryw4655originally submitted this to Cheri's Family Tree on 11 Jul 2012
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