Hamlin Family

 The Wives of Henry Hamlin Slain
                      By Emory L. Hamilton
                                
     From the unpublished manuscript,
Indian Atrocities Along the Clinch, Powell and
Holston Rivers, pages 202-204.

     The most puzzling enigma in this study of
the Virginia frontier has been in trying to unravel
the slaying of Henry Hamlin's wives. Hamlin was
twice married, both wives were named Mary, both
killed by Indians, and I have been unable to find
any official record or document that gives the exact
date of the slaying of either.
     L. P. Summers, History of Southwest
Virginia, page 365, states:
     In 1781 the Indians visited the home of
Henry Hamlin on Clinch River near Castlewood,
and Mrs. Hamlin defended her home with a
musket that wouldn't shoot, and again in the
spring of 1782, they again visited the home,
killing Mrs. Hamlin and all her children, except
one little boy who was carried away into captivity.
     In the above paragraph Summers is
speaking of the first Mrs. Hamlin, who family
tradition says was, before marriage, Mary
Dickenson. I doubt that she was killed in the spring
of 1782, and all her family was not destroyed.
Certainly Champ and John Hamlin, her sons, were
not. John Hamlin was born June 30, 1782. (1) I am
rather inclined to believe that this Mary Hamlin
was  killed in 1783, during the attack on the fort at
Hamlin's Mill in Castlewood. (2) Henry Hamlin
lived in upper Castlewood until sometime after the
slaying of his first wife.
     Henry Hamlin married as his second wife,
Mary, the daughter of Joseph Blackmore. This
Mary had been married to Jessee Adams, who
along, with ten of their children was killed by the
Indians on Stock Creek in 1782. Certainly it was
after this date that Henry Hamlin married her, and
therefore Champ and John Hamlin could not have
been her children. After leaving Castlewood Henry
Hamlin lived for a while in Powell Valley and in
1788, (3) was living in Rye Cove in what is now
Scott Co., VA.
     In his pension claim for Revolutionary
service filed in Floyd Co., KY, James Fraley states:
     About the same time (that Thomas
Osborne was killed in 1790), or a few weeks after,
they (Indians) killed Mary Hamlin, wife of Henry
Hamlin. In this statement James Fraley is
certainly referring to the second Mary Hamlin.
     R. M. Addington, History of Scott County,
page 92, reads:
     The records and traditions preserved by
the descendants of Henry Hamlin state that he
was born March 25, 1740; that on coming to
Southwest Virginia, he married a Miss Dickenson;
that four sons, Francis, Charles, Champ and
John, were born to this marriage; that Mrs. Henry
Hamlin was killed by the Indians at Fort
Blackmore, August 17, 1790; that at the same
time, Champ, then a boy of ten years of age, was
captured and carried west, but eventually was
transported into Canada, where he was ransomed
by a French trader and taken to Quebec, from
which place he was sent by boat to Norfolk, and
that from Norfolk he made his way back to his
home near Ft. Blackmore; that two of the boys
Charles and John, were saved from the Indians by
a Negro slave, a giant in stature and weighing
three hundred and fifty pounds; that for this act
the slave was given his freedom and a small farm
some six miles south of Jonesville; that Henry
Hamlin died at Fort Blackmore in August, 1815.
(J. S. Hamlin's letter, May 19, 1918.)
     The above paragraph is referring to the
children of the first Mary Hamlin, but the date of
her death is that of the second Mary.
     It is doubtful if the second Mary had
children from her marriage to Henry Hamlin. She
was the widow of Jessee Adams, as previously
stated, an had twelve children by him, ten of which
were slain along with Adams in 1782. She also had
a daughter, Cynthia Chadwell, which must have
been by a marriage previous to her marriage with
Jessee Adams. To have been the mother of thirteen
children prior to 1782, she certainly must have
been well up in years when she married Henry
Hamlin.
     Henry Hamlin first settled on the north side
of Clinch River in upper Castlewood in 1769. He
lived here until after his first wife was killed in the
early 1780s. He witnessed the probation of the will
of James Coyle, who lived just east of the village of
Blackford in Upper Russell County, on the 15th of
August 1780, as did his brother, Daniel Hamlin.
He most likely moved from this area sometime
between 1783 and 1786.

(1) Lee Co., VA Death Register, page 5, line 16.
(2) See Letter of Capt. Daniel Smith, page 121,
this MSS.
(3) Virginia State Papers, Vol. IV, page 442

Contact: Rhonda Robertson at: rsr@mounet.com

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