Thomas Ingles | |
---|---|
Born | 1751 Draper's Meadow, Colony of Virginia |
Died | 1809 57–58) Natchez, Mississippi, U.S. | (aged
Education | Castle Hill (Virginia) |
Known for | Captivity by Native Americans 1755-1768 |
Spouse | Eleanore Grills |
Parent(s) | William Ingles and Mary Draper Ingles |
Relatives | George (brother), Rhoda (sister), Susannah (sister), John (brother), Mary (sister) |
Military career | |
Allegiance | Colony of Virginia |
Years of service | 1774, 1777-1782 |
Rank | Colonel |
Unit | ![]() |
Battles/wars | Battle of Point Pleasant in Lord Dunmore's War, American Revolutionary War |
Thomas Ingles (1751 - 1809, sometimes spelled Thomas Inglis or Thomas English) 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.
Ingles was born in 1751 on the Ingles family farm at Draper's Meadow, a pioneer settlement on the banks of Stroubles Creek near modern-day Blacksburg, Virginia. [1] : 116–118 His younger brother George was born there in 1753. [2]
On 30 July (or 8 July, according to John P. Hale [1] and Letitia Preston Floyd [3] : 79–109 [Note 1] ), 1755, during the French and Indian War, a band of Shawnee warriors (then allies of the French) raided Draper's Meadow and killed six settlers, including Mary's mother and her infant niece. [6] [2] They took five captives, including Mary and her sons George and Thomas, her sister-in-law Bettie Robertson Draper, and her neighbor Henry Lenard (or Leonard). [7] [8] [9] Thomas's father William was nearly killed but fled into the forest. [10]
Mary and her sons were taken to Lower Shawneetown at the confluence of the Ohio River and the Scioto River, on what is now the Ohio-Kentucky border. Mary was separated from her two sons, and Thomas was taken to Detroit. George was taken to an unknown location and probably died soon afterward. [1] In October, Mary and another woman escaped and walked for 42 days to return to Draper's Meadow. [10]
Between 1756 and 1768, Thomas' father William Ingles made several trips to Ohio to negotiate for the release of his son Thomas. [11] William met a man named Baker who had been held captive by the Shawnee at Lower Shawneetown, and had known Thomas and his adoptive father. [1] : 115 [12] : 86–88 William hired Baker to find Thomas (now living at Pickaway Plains on the upper Scioto River) and bring him back to Ingles Ferry. Baker traveled to the village, located Thomas, and was able to pay a ransom of $150 to bring him back, but during the journey, Thomas ran away and returned to his Shawnee family. [13] In 1768, William Ingles and Baker traveled together to Lower Shawneetown and persuaded Thomas, now 17, to return with them to Virginia. [1] : 116
After thirteen years among the Shawnee, Thomas had become fully acculturated and spoke only Shawnee, so William sent him for several years of "rehabilitation" and education under Dr. Thomas Walker at Castle Hill, Virginia. [14] : 176 [12] [13] Thomas' son Thomas Jr. later wrote that, while at Castle Hill, Thomas Sr. studied violin together with Thomas Jefferson. [15]
On 7 May, 1774, Thomas Ingles was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Fincastle County Militia [16] : 1 and served under Colonel William Christian in Lord Dunmore's War against the Shawnee. [17] : 281 [18] : 51–52 On 10 October 1774, Ingles and his father William participated in the Battle of Point Pleasant, [19] [20] : 69 [21] : 22 although Thomas' son Thomas Jr. later wrote that his father's regiment did not reach the battlefield until after the battle had ended. [15] [22] : 722–26 Following the battle, Thomas was stationed in the fort at Point Pleasant (Fort Blair), and took the opportunity to return to his former Shawnee home on the Scioto to visit his adoptive family. [20] : 69 According to his nephew, he "stayed some time with them." [13]
He served as a company captain in the Montgomery County, Virginia militia during the American Revolutionary War, [23] : 35 and, according to his son, received a commission as Colonel of Militia from Thomas Jefferson. [15]
He married Eleanore Grills in 1775 and in 1778 he settled in Wright's Valley, near what is now Bluefield, West Virginia. [24] : 69 In 1780, the family relocated to Burke's Garden, Virginia. In 1782, while Thomas was absent, his wife and three children were kidnapped by Indians, led by Black Wolf. [25] : 14–15 [12] : 86–88 [26] : 96 Thomas and a group of volunteers pursued the Indians who had taken them, and after five days they were able to launch an attack. [24] : 70–71 In the ensuing altercation, the Indians killed the two older children, and Eleanore was tomahawked. [27] Thomas rescued her and their youngest daughter, as well as two of his Black slaves the Indians had also captured. Eleanor survived after several pieces of her fractured skull were removed by a surgeon. [26] : 90–92 [15] [12] : 446 She bore five more children after this, including four sons and a daughter, according to her son Thomas Jr. [15]
Following his father William's death in 1782, Thomas Ingles took over the operation of Ingles Ferry. [28] : 75 [29] : 51 William's will of 6 September 1782, dictates: "Son Thomas a tract of land 1000 [acres] on the Blue Stone, known by the name of Absolem's Valley, and a slave." [30] The 1782 Montgomery County, Virginia Personal Property Tax List shows that he was assessed for taxes on two slaves, 12 horses and 15 cattle. [31]
On 3 August 1786, Thomas served as a commissioner for the State of Franklin, [32] : 346 together with William Cocke, Alexander Outlaw, and Samuel Wear, for the Treaty of Coyatee, in which the State of Franklin forced Corntassel, Hanging Maw, John Watts, and the other Overhill Cherokee leaders to cede to the State of Franklin the remaining land between the boundary set by the Treaty of Dumplin Creek and the Little Tennessee River. [33] : 98
After 1786 he moved to Tennessee with his wife and children and lived on the Watauga River, at Mossy Creek. [1] : 129 His son Thomas Jr. was born in Grainger County, Tennessee in 1791. [15] He had a home in Nashville, Tennessee in 1798, where he was visited by James Weir, who described him as "a gentleman of distinguished civility." [34] : 57 In February 1800, he relocated to Port Gibson, Mississippi. [15] He died at Natchez, Mississippi in 1809. [1] : 142
Lord Dunmore's War, also known as Dunmore's War, was a brief conflict in fall 1774 between the British Colony of Virginia and the Shawnee and Mingo in the trans-Appalachian region of the colony south of the Ohio River. Broadly, the war included events between May and October 1774. The governor of Virginia during the conflict was John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, who in May 1774, asked the House of Burgesses to declare a state of war with the Indians and call out the Virginia militia.
Cornstalk was a Shawnee leader in the Ohio Country in the 1760s and 1770s. His name in the Shawnee language was Hokoleskwa. Little is known about his early life. He may have been born in the Province of Pennsylvania. In 1763, he reportedly led a raid against British American colonists in Pontiac's War. He first appears in historical documents in 1764, when he was one of the hostages surrendered to the British as part of the peace negotiations ending Pontiac's War.
Pickaway Plains is a wide area of rolling hills beginning about 3 miles south of Circleville, Ohio, and extending several miles to the north and south. This geological area was formed by sand and gravel deposited by melting water from the last glacier to retreat from the region during the Ice Age. During the time of inhabitation by the Shawnee, the Pickaway Plains were covered by prairie vegetation, mainly grasses.
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.
Abram Trigg was an American planter, lawyer and politician who represented Montgomery County, Virginia in the Virginia Ratifying Convention and U.S. House of Representatives (1797-1809) after fighting with the Virginia militia in the Revolutionary War.
The Draper's Meadow Massacre was 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.
Col. Johannes "John" Bowman was an 18th-century American pioneer, colonial militia officer and sheriff, the first appointed in Lincoln County, Kentucky. In 1781 he also presided as a justice of the peace over the first county court held in Kentucky. The first county-lieutenant and military governor of Kentucky County during the American Revolutionary War, Col. Bowman also, served in the American Revolution, many times, second in command to General George Rogers Clark, during the Illinois Campaign, which, at the time, doubled the size of the United States.
Toliver Craig Sr. was an 18th-century American frontiersman and militia officer. An early settler and landowner near present-day Lexington, Kentucky, he was one of the defenders of the early fort of Bryan Station during the American Revolutionary War. It was attacked by the British and Shawnee on August 15, 1782.
The Captives is a 2004 American film starring Elliot Miller, produced and directed by Jude Miller for Jude True Blue Productions. It is based on the true story of Mary Draper Ingles and her struggles during the French-Indian War. The film tells the story of Mary Draper Ingles and others in her settlement being taken captive to the Ohio Country by Shawnee Indian Warriors, and her journey home as she escaped from the tribe.
Ingles Ferry is the site of a historic ferry crossing on the New River in western Virginia, near the city of Radford in Pulaski County, Virginia, United States. A tavern was opened there in 1772 and the ferry served soldiers and civilians until 1948. A bridge was built at the site in 1842 but was burned during the civil war. The tavern and replicas of the 18th-century home of the Ingles family can be seen nearby.
Colonel William Preston was an Irish-born American military officer, planter and politician. He played a crucial role in surveying and developing the Southern Colonies, exerted great influence in the colonial affairs of his time, owned numerous slaves on his plantation, and founded a dynasty whose progeny would supply leaders of the South for nearly a century. He served in the House of Burgesses and was a colonel in the Virginia militia during the American Revolutionary War. He was one of the fifteen signatories of the Fincastle Resolutions. Preston was also a founding trustee of Liberty Hall when it was transformed into a college in 1776.
Hugh McGary was an Irish-born American military officer and landowner who was the founder of McGary Station in present-day Oregon, Kentucky.
Fort Vause was built in 1753 in Montgomery County, Virginia, by Ephraim Vause. The historic site is near the town of Shawsville, Virginia. It was attacked by French troops and Native American warriors in 1756, and most of the inhabitants were killed or taken prisoner. The fort was rebuilt in 1757 but abandoned by 1759.
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.
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.
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.