The Ohio River is a 981-mile (1,579 km) long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illinois. It is the third largest river by discharge volume in the United States and the largest tributary by volume of the north-south flowing Mississippi River, which divides the eastern from western United States. It is also the 6th oldest river on the North American continent. The river flows through or along the border of six states, and its drainage basin includes parts of 14 states. Through its largest tributary, the Tennessee River, the basin includes several states of the southeastern U.S. It is the source of drinking water for five million people.
Thomas Walker was a physician, planter and explorer in colonial Virginia who served multiple terms in the Virginia General Assembly, and whose descendants also had political careers. Walker explored the Western Colony of Virginia in 1750, 19 years before the arrival of Daniel Boone.
Christopher Gist (1706–1759) was an explorer, surveyor, and frontiersman active in Colonial America. He was one of the first white explorers of the Ohio Country. Gist is credited with providing the first detailed description of the Ohio Country to colonists in the Thirteen Colonies. At the outbreak of the French and Indian War, Gist accompanied Colonel George Washington on missions into this wilderness and saved Washington's life on two occasions.
Stephen Trigg was an American pioneer and soldier from Virginia. He was killed ten months after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in one of the last battles of the American Revolution while leading the Lincoln County militia at the Battle of Blue Licks, Kentucky.
Mary Draper Ingles, also known in records as Mary Inglis or Mary English, was an American pioneer and early settler of western Virginia. In the summer of 1755, she and her two young sons were among several captives taken by Shawnee after the Draper's Meadow Massacre during the French and Indian War. They were taken to Lower Shawneetown at the Ohio and Scioto rivers. Ingles escaped with another woman after two and a half months and trekked 500 to 600 miles, crossing numerous rivers, creeks, and the Appalachian Mountains to return home.
Lower Shawneetown, also known as Shannoah or Sonnontio, was an 18th-century Shawnee village located within the Lower Shawneetown Archeological District, near South Portsmouth in Greenup County, Kentucky and Lewis County, Kentucky. The population eventually occupied areas on both sides of the Ohio River, and along both sides of the Scioto River in what is now Scioto County, Ohio. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 28 April 1983. It is near the Bentley site, a Madisonville Horizon settlement inhabited between 1400 CE and 1625 CE. Nearby, to the east, there are also four groups of Hopewell tradition mounds, built between 100 BCE and 500 CE, known as the Portsmouth Earthworks.
Colonel Joshua Fry (1699–1754) was an English-born American adventurer who became a professor, then real estate investor and local official in the colony of Virginia. Although he served several terms in the House of Burgesses, he may be best known as a surveyor and cartographer who collaborated with Peter Jefferson, the father of future U.S. president Thomas Jefferson. After Fry’s death on a military expedition, George Washington became commanding officer of the Virginia Regiment, a key unit in what became the French and Indian War.
The Draper's Meadow Massacre refers to an attack in July 1755, when the Draper's Meadow settlement in southwest Virginia, at the site of present day Blacksburg, was raided by a group of Shawnee warriors, who killed at least four people including an infant, and captured five more. The Indians brought their hostages to Lower Shawneetown, a Shawnee village in Kentucky. One of the captives, Mary Draper Ingles, later escaped and returned home on foot through the wilderness. Although many of the circumstances of the massacre are uncertain, including the date of the attack, the event remains a dramatic story in the history of Virginia.
Samuel Ross Mason, also spelled Meason, was a Virginia militia captain, on the American western frontier, during the American Revolutionary War. After the war, he became the leader of the Mason Gang, a criminal gang of river pirates and highwaymen on the lower Ohio River and the Mississippi River in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was associated with outlaws around Red Banks, Cave-in-Rock, Stack Island, and the Natchez Trace.
Israel Christian (c.1720—1784) was an 18th-century American pioneer, militia officer, politician and businessman. One of the earliest landowners in Kentucky, he founded the town of Fincastle, Virginia. He was also a representative of Augusta County in the House of Burgesses from 1759 to 1761.
McCulloch's Path was an early colonial route through Western Maryland, referenced by George Washington in his diary in September 1784.
John Mathews was an early American pioneer in Augusta County, Virginia, where he served as an officer in the county militia, a vestryman for Augusta Parish, and a justice of the peace. He was the progenitor of the Mathews political family from Virginia and the American South. His sons included George Mathews (1739–1812) and Sampson Mathews. Other descendants include Henry M. Mathews (1834–1884) and Mason Mathews Patrick (1863–1942).
Samuel Stalnaker was an explorer, trapper, guide and one of the first settlers on the Virginia frontier. He established a trading post, hotel and tavern in 1752 near what is now Chilhowie, Virginia. He was held captive by Shawnee Indians at Lower Shawneetown in Kentucky for almost a year, before escaping and traveling over 460 miles to Williamsburg, Virginia, to report on French preparations to attack English settlements in Virginia and Pennsylvania. He later served as a guide under George Washington during the French and Indian War.
The Sandy Creek Expedition, also known as the Sandy Expedition or the Big Sandy Expedition, was a 1756 campaign by Virginia Regiment soldiers and Cherokee warriors into modern-day West Virginia against the Shawnee, who were raiding the British colony of Virginia's frontier. The campaign set out in mid-February, 1756, and was immediately slowed by harsh weather and inadequate provisions. With morale failing, the expedition was forced to turn back in mid-March without encountering the enemy.
William Ingles, also spelled Inglis, Ingliss, Engels, or English, was a colonist and soldier in colonial Virginia. He participated in the Sandy Creek Expedition and was a signatory of the Fincastle Resolutions. He was eventually promoted to colonel in the Virginia Regiment. His wife, Mary Draper Ingles, was captured by Shawnee warriors and held captive for months before escaping and walking several hundred miles to her settlement. William's sons, Thomas and George, were also held captive, although William was able to ransom his son Thomas in 1768. William Ingles established Ingles Ferry in southwestern Virginia.
Thomas Ingles was a Virginia pioneer, frontiersman and soldier. He was the son of William Ingles and Mary Draper Ingles. He, his mother and his younger brother were captured by Shawnee Indians and although his mother escaped, Thomas remained with the Shawnee until age 17, when his father paid a ransom and brought him back to Virginia. He later served in the Virginia militia, reaching the rank of colonel by 1780.
James Lynn Patton, was a merchant, pioneer frontiersman, and soldier who settled parts of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Between his immigration to Virginia in 1740, and his death there in 1755, he was a prominent figure in the exploration, settlement, governance, and military leadership of the colony. Patton held such Augusta County offices as Justice of the Peace, Colonel of Militia and Chief Commander of the Augusta County Militia, County Lieutenant, President of the Augusta Court, commissioner of the Tinkling Spring congregation, county coroner, county escheator, collector of duties on furs and skins, and County Sheriff. He also was President of the Augusta Parish Vestry and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. He was present at three important treaty conferences with Iroquois and Cherokee leaders. Patton was killed by Shawnee warriors in July 1755.
The Battle of Galudoghson took place in December 1742, at a site near present-day Glasgow, Virginia, when the Augusta County militia engaged in combat with Onondaga and Oneida Indians. These warriors had traveled to Virginia from Pennsylvania under the command of an Iroquois chief named Jonnhaty, to participate in a campaign against the Catawba. The battle was the first armed conflict between settlers in Western Virginia and Native Americans. Several distinct accounts of the battle exist, with contradictory details. The Iroquois regarded the battle as an unprovoked act of aggression, while the Virginia colonists claimed that the Iroquois had raided Virginia settlements and killed livestock. The battle was one factor that led colonial authorities to negotiate with Native American leaders for the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster.
John Buchanan was a colonial Virginia landowner, magistrate, colonel in the Virginia Militia, deputy surveyor under Thomas Lewis, and Sheriff of Augusta County, Virginia. As a surveyor, Buchanan was able to locate and purchase some of the most desirable plots of land in western Virginia and quickly became wealthy and politically influential. As magistrate, sheriff and a colonel the Augusta County Militia, he was already well-connected when his father-in-law Colonel James Patton was killed in 1755. Buchanan had replaced Patton in several key roles by the time of his own death in 1769.
Dunkard's Bottom was a Schwarzenau Brethren religious community established on the New River in the mid-1740s by brothers Samuel, Gabriel and Israel Eckerlin and Alexander Mack Jr. It flourished for only a few years until most of the settlers decided to return to Pennsylvania because living conditions at Dunkard's Bottom were too harsh. The Eckerlins sold their property in 1753 and moved to what is now West Virginia. The property changed hands several times until the construction of the Claytor Dam in 1939, which submerged the area of Dunkard's Bottom under Claytor Lake.
Virginia militia, Augusta County militia
