Lewis Family

Jacob Lewis and Family Killed On Stock Creek
                      By Emory L. Hamilton
                                
     From the unpublished manuscript,
Indian Atrocities Along the Clinch, Powell and
Holston River, page 32.

     John Redd who came to Martin's Station
in Powell Valley in 1775, from Henry County with
Captain Joseph Martin, tells the following story in
his narrative: (1)
     In the spring of 1775, a man by the name
of Jacob Lewis came out to Martin's Station in
Powell Valley, with a wife and seven children.
Some of the men knew him to be a man of bad
character and he was ordered not to settle near
the Station. Lewis took his family and came in the
direction of the settlement, about thirty-five miles,
and built him a small cabin near the head of Stock
Creek, and there lived entirely on the game he
killed.
     In June, 1776, when on my way to the
settlement, (on Clinch) I passed by his house and
advised him to move to the settlement that the
Indians had declared war. He said he was in no
danger; that the Indians would never find him. In
July, following, as I returned to the Holston, I
learned that Lewis and wife, and seven children
were killed and scalped by the Indians.
     Other than Redd's story I have been
unable to find any confirming evidence of the
massacre of the Lewis family. The records of
Washington County, VA, show that Jacob Lewis
did have a grant for 400 acres of land in Powell
Valley on Wallens Creek, surveyed for him on
August 14, 1781, (posthumously if he was killed in
1776), and shows a settlement date of 1776.

(1) John Redd's Narrative, Vol. 6 & 7, Virginia
Magazine of History and Biography.

Contact: Rhonda Robertson at: rsr@mounet.com

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