Josiah WYNNE

  General Notes:

NOTES: Was a Landowner and a member of the Methodist Church

This happened during Josiah's time.
Copied from Gateway to the West --

Scott Massacre

The second settlement in Lee County seems to have been Scott's Fort near Kanes Gap on the north side of Powells Mountain east of Stickleyville. Archibald Scott married Miss Fanny Dickinson of Russell County. They removed to the head of Wallens Creek in 1782. There they took up more than 1,000 acres of fine land. The Scotts built their cabin and fort there, and cleared much of the land.
In June, 1785, the Scotts were attacked by the notorious Benge the Half-Breed and his band of 20 Shawnees. They entered the cabin after the occupants had retired for the night. They killed Scott in bed, and also killed the five small children. They took Mrs. Scott prisoner, and plundered and burned the house.
Taking the woman with them, and the scalps of her husband and children, they traveled 200 miles, across the Cumberlands and across Kentucky. Near the Ohio River, they paused for a few days to hunt. They planned to give Mrs. Scott to one of the Indians for a wife. He was left to guard her. He fell into a sound sleep. She picked up his tomahawk to kill him, but feared that she might fail, due to her weakened condition. She laid the weapon down and slipped away. She went to the spring near by, and waded down the stream to a canebreak.
For weeks she wandered, trying to get to the Cumberlands. Coming to a river (the Kentucky), she found a trail which she followed up the stream. She sometimes heard Indian hunting parties. She would hide and wait until they passed, and then go on her way.
At length she came to a fork in the path. She started on the left fork, when a tiny bird fluttered past her and lighted in the other path. There was nothing unusual about that. But when it did this twice, she took it as a warning and changed to the other path. This led through the Pound Gap. At length she reached Castlewood, where she found relatives. She safely reached her people in Russell County, where her story is well known, having been preserved all through the years. Her youngest daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Johnson, lived in Russell County for many years. The story substantially the same was known by Dr. James W. Sage of Stickleyville.
Mrs. Fanny Dickinson Scott was later married to Thomas Johnson, for whom Johnson County, Tennessee was named. She lived to be very old. She was buried at Hyters Gap in Russell County.
This story is substantiated by Draper Mss 3 XX 4, a letter of William Martin, son of Joseph Martin, to Lyman C. Draper, July 7, 1842. Joseph Martin had visited the home of the Scotts just four days before the massacre.

Chief Benge's Last Raid

Near Mendota, a few miles from Abingdon, lived Peter and Henry Livingston. On the morning of April 6, 1794, Chief Benge and his band of eight warriors, attacked the home of the Livingston brothers. The men were away from the house. Old Mrs. Livingston was in the garden. Mrs. Elizabeth Livingston was in the house with her baby and two other children of two and ten years of age. When the dogs gave the alarm, Mrs. Livingston saw seven horribly painted Indians coming toward the house. She barred the door, and the Indians demanded that she open it. They fired two shots, one coming through the door. Mrs. Livingston returned the fire through the door with her husband's rifle. The Indians seemed to retire from the door, but soon the house was on fire. Mrs. Livingston had to take her baby and dash out with the other two children, expecting to be scalped. She then saw that they had captured Susanna, the young wife of Henry Livingston, and the rest of the children, who had been in an outbuilding.
The Indians left with Mrs. Elizabeth Livingston and Mrs. Susanna Livingston, and two Negroes, a man and a woman. They crossed Clinch Mountain into the Copper Creek section, and camped for the night. The next morning they crossed Clinch River on McLean's Fish Dam and went northward to the head of Stony Creek, where they camped the second night. They traveled leisurely into the High Knob, and did not keep out any watchers. The next morning they did not leave camp until an hour after sunup. They traveled five or six miles slowly, and then went into camp again at the foot of Powells Mountain.
Benge became talkative and lively. He told the prisoners he was going to take them to the Chickamauga towns, and that his brother, Bob Benge, and two other Indians were hunting to bring in provisions by the time they got there. He said he had several white prisoners at his camp, with horses to carry them to the Indian towns. He asked about several people in the Holston settlements. He wanted to know about General Shelby. He said he would be back during the summer and take all of Shelby's Negroes. He indicated a plan to take a circuitous route through High Knob, and then westward toward Chickamauga and Running Water, his home town. But he could have turned northward through some mountain pass, perhaps Big Stone Gap, to go toward the Shawnee country on the Ohio.
On April 9th they moved northward over the High Knob, sending two scouts ahead. That day the Lee County court was in session when word of the capture of the Livingston women came. The messenger came up the Wild Cat Valley and crossed the Lovelady Road to Yokum Fort on Powells River south of Dryden. The messenger, John Henderson, reached the fort before dawn. Then word was relayed to Jonesville. Court was in session when the messenger arrived, and court was adjourned at once. Lieutenant Vincent Hobbs, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, was sent with the Lee Co. Militia to aid in apprehending the Indians. Some men were recruited at Jonesville, and others were taken from Yokum Station.
Lieutenant Vincent Hobbs was familiar with the territory and hastened to the Gap of the Mountain north of the present site of Big Stone Gap. With him were George Yokum, Abraham and Job Hobbs, Steven Jones, John and Peter VanBibber, Adam Ely, Samuel Livingston, James Huff, and a man named Dotson whose first name we have not learned.
Lieutenant Hobbs thought the Indians had already passed, but he and Peter VanBibber soon found the two scouts building a fire, and killed them. They judged that the rest of the Indians was behind with the prisoners. They found loot in possession of the two scouts that showed they were of the party. So Lieutenant Hobbs hastened back on the trail and lined up his men in ambush, he and VanBibber taking the rear position. He secreted his men on either side of the trail, instructing them to let the Indians pass, so that when he and VanBibber should fire on the lead ones, the posse would have them hemmed.
Soon the Indians came along. Chief Benge with Mrs. Livingston was in front. Lieutenant Hobbs fired, killing Chief Benge, and VanBibber got the next Indian in line. Then the rest of the party rushed into action from the over-hanging Rhododendrons and Laurel. The one in charge of Mrs. Peter Livingston tried to kill her with a tomahawk, but she warded off the blow with her arms, and was only stunned. She fell over a log and lay unconscious for a while, but recovered. Four Indians in all were killed, the rest escaping, carrying the Negro man with them. There had been nine Indians there in all. The five that escaped divided into two groups. The group taking the colored man camped the next night in a cave, and the Negro escaped.
Soon after the battle, Peter and Henry Livingston came on the scene with some men from Washington Co. There was a happy reunion of the Livingstons. Henry and Susanna had been married only three weeks.
Lieutenant Hobbs sent the scalp of Chief Benge to Colonel Arthur Campbell, who forwarded it on to Governor Randolph, who recommended to the Virginia Legislature that they reward Hobbs. On his recommendation they voted to give Hobbs a beautiful silver mounted rifle as a reward. There was no trouble to recognize the red-headed scalp of Chief Benge The last survivor of Lieutenant Hobbs's brave band was Dr. James Huff of Kentucky, who verified the story substantially as recorded in state records. His testimony came forty-six years after the event took place. There have been many stories about Chief Benge with the uncertainty that goes with tradition. Many of these we cannot credit, for lack of substantiating evidence and consistency. This account as given here is verified by Draper Ms, 10 DD 61, a letter by Governor David Campbell, Abingdon, VA, and by newspaper clippings from the "Jacksonian", Abingdon, VA, 1846. These are recorded with Lyman C. Draper, MSS, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI.
This story was also related by Mrs. Solomon Osborne, daughter of Elizabeth and Peter Livingston. It was also related in substantially the same way by Dr. James Huff, who was in the battle with Chief Benge.
Thus ended the bloody career of the notorious Chief Benge the Half-Breed. He was intelligent, swift, strong and enduring, and greatly dreaded by the pioneers of Southwest Virginia and the Holston, the Cumberland and the Kentucky settlements. He was the powerful agent of Chief Dragging Canoe, a relentless foe of the whites.
It has been claimed that Benge was the son of an Indian warrior and a white woman. This seems to have no foundation in proof. The weight of authority is on the assertion that his father was the white trader John Benge. Otherwise he would hardly have been called Benge by the Indians. Errors creep into traditional stories by getting events mixed. There was a story rife in early pioneer days of a boy who had been stolen by the Cherokees, and later rescued by his father, who preferred Indian life, and returned to them in rebellion against his parents. But this was not Benge the son of Captain John Benge or Bench as it is sometimes recorded and a Cherokee woman.
Benge had spent much time among the Shawnees up north, and this gave rise to the belief that he was a Shawnee. He had a brother who remained among his mother's people and was recognized as a Cherokee. They called him "The Tail," though his English name was Bob Benge.
On September 25, 1794, Chief Tilotiskee and Chief Doublehead massacred several whites at Covet's Station, 7 miles southwest of Knoxville. They had promised the people protection if they would surrender. Bob Benge, who spoke good English, pleaded for the people, but 13 of them were slain. This was more than five months after Chief Benge had been killed by Lieutenant Vincent Hobbs near Big Stone Gap.
Moses Cockrell, who had an ambition to dispense with Benge, died at the Holston settlement on the North Fork, in 1798. An old comrade paced the puncheon floor of the cabin and said: "Poor Cockrell, he is gone! He was a noble fellow after the Ingins and varmints, and I hope he has gone to where there is as much game and as desperate good range as he had on Holston."
The Indian power in Southwest Virginia was finally broken by John Sevier in the last battle with them in Hickory Flats, Lee Co., in 1795.
John Sevier was born near Fredericksburg, VA, in 17945. He early became an Indian fighter. He was in the Battle of Kings Mountain, October 7, 1780.
Sevier was a leader in the move to create the State of Franklin in east Tennessee territory. He was elected its governor. After this failed, he was elected to the North Carolina State Senate. When Tennessee was made a state he became its first Governor in 1796. He was later elected to United States Congress.

Famous Trail

In colonial times, as the Revolutionary period came on, the scattered settlements here were in a specially precarious position. The British outflanked the colonies on the west, and used this advantage, not so much for direct attack as to insight the Indians to cruel treachery and attack against the struggling and helpless pioneers. But for their own tenacious courage and daring efforts the exposed peninsula of settlements of North Carolina and Virginia in the Holston and in Southwest Virginia and Kentucky would have been destroyed. The British especially disliked the movement of pioneers int he settlement of Kentucky as a threat to them there. This led to every effort being made to stir up the Indians against the settlers who were ready to start an ever increasing stream westward over the Wilderness road in 1775. The right to Kentucky had been given Virginia by treaty with the Six Nations at Stanwix (Roan) New York in 1768. This included all the lands between the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers.
Most of the travel to the west during 20 years, 1775 and 1795, was over the Wilderness Road through Lee County. The small balance of travel was over the mountain roads to Pittsburgh and down the Ohio. Travel eastward was almost all by the Wilderness Road, add going east against the flow of the river was not easy then. We even note that a military order for a trip from Cincinnati to Washington in 1792, the year Lee County was organized and Kentucky was made a state, specified the Wilderness Road by Cumberland Gap and Powells Valley. In fact this condition prevailed for two decades afterward. More than 100,000 pioneers traveled this famous Trail before it became even a wagon road. All classes of settlers, home seekers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, preachers, came over this Road for the founding of a great society and state. Kentucky was settled over this as a bridal path 200 miles long, from Holston through Lee County to central Kentucky. Much travel passed this way to the Cumberland River settlements at Nashville and middle Tennessee. This should make the Road famous for all time.

  Research Notes:

Gary Wynn Family Tree (http://www.genealogy.com/ftm/w/y/n/Gary-Wynn-IN/index.html)