Page 212 - People & Places In Time

Addendum
A ~ Soloman Mitchell’s last will and testament
I Solomon Mitchell of the state of Tennessee and Hawkins County being of sound and disposing memory do make and ordain this my last will and testament revoking all other wills here-to-for by me made. In the first place, I give and bequeath unto my wife Nancy Mitchell all my estate if she should sur- vive me, that is all my personal and real property or estate of every kind, whatever of every debt due or owing that I may die seized and possessed of to have and to enjoy her lifetime. Secondly, I desire that at both our deaths I desire that my two slaves, Betty and James may receive their freedom. And I do hereby at death and my wife Nancy Mitchells death give them their freedom, that is I desire that my executors may get a special act of assembly passed if it can be done for them to receive their freedom according to the tenor of this my last will and testament. If they do not receive their freedom as above stated, I give and bequeath the above-named slaves to John Mitchell, my son, forever that is in the following manner. I give the service of said two slaves to him one day in each week forever and the other five days of each week during their lifetime I give to said two slaves. During their services to him I desire that he shall not depart with said two slaves or trade his right of them away. Thirdly, at my death and wife’s death I give and bequeath unto my eleven children that is to say Rebekah, Lewis, Jesse, Greenberry, Nancy, Robert, Morris, Elizabeth, Polly, Susannah and Richard fifty cents each. Fourthly I give and bequeath unto my son John Mitchell all my property which I have not before disposed of, of every kind whatever that I may die seized and possessed forever, I constitute and appoint John Mitchell my executor.
In testimony where I have here-unto set my hand and seal this 31st day of January 1837.
B ~ Scots-Irish Migration
The Presbyterian Scots-Irish came to Philadelphia, intending to settle in Pennsylvania with its guarantee of religious freedom. But Pennsylvania
was already very settled and the only land that was for sale was more expensive than they could afford. So, they headed south in Conestoga wagons. They settled in the western areas of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina (General Pickens, a descendent of Scots-Irish in Pennsylvania established the Hopewell Plantation near Abbyville on the Seneca River, at which several treaties with Native Americans were held, each called the Treaty of Hopewell. Just across the river was the Cherokee town of Isunigu “Seneca”).
Over time they continued to move westward until they were settled in the Appalachian Mountains and even west of them. The Cherokees who already lived in this land objected. The Cherokees were the civilized tribe, who had adopted English ways and been promised they could stay on their land in the mountains. So, they attacked these Scots-Irish settlers frequently. In 1754 this, in part, led to the French and Indian War, where the French armed the Indians and incited them to attack the white settlers. The settlers soon got good at fighting “Indian style”: a fierce and bloody form of battle with no rules which, today, we call guerrilla style. In 1763 the French and British signed the Treaty of Paris. The French gave up their lands in Canada and the Indians gave up their land east of the Appalachian Mountains. The British agreed that white settlers would not move into the territory west of the Continental divide of the Appalachian Mountains. The Indians expected the settlers over this line to be removed. This, however, did not happen. The Scots-Irish who settled west of the Continental Divide were not willing to give up their homes because of a treaty. They bought or leased their land from the Cherokee
and tried to hold an uneasy peace. The British did not aid them in this peace or help them when the Cherokee attacked settlements. The settlers west of
the Continental Divide defended their own land and lived pretty much independent of any form of government. They wanted, primarily, to be left alone. These backwoods frontiersmen would come to be called the Overmountain Men, because they lived over the mountains, on the west side of the Continental Divide.
C ~ Scott Massacre
Elizabeth (Duff) Stickley, eldest of Joseph Duff, wealthy land owner in Wallens Creek and prior to 1855, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates
from Lee county, was born December 7, 1823 on the old Duff farm on which her great aunt, Fanny Dickenson had witnessed the massacre of her husband, Archibald Scott, and their five children and from which she was carried a prisoner to the Indian settlements on the Ohio, and from whom she miraculously escaped as is detailed in Coale’s “History of Wilburn Waters”.
THE MASSACRE OF ARCHIBALD SCOTT AND HIS CHILDREN, AND THE CAPTIVITY OF HIS WIFE.
The writer has somewhere read a very brief and imperfect account of the murder of Archibald Scott and his children, the captivity of his wife, her sufferings among the Indians and subsequent escape; but the following narrative is written from data furnished by Dr. James W. Sage, of Lee county, and Mrs. Elizabeth Johnson, the youngest daughter of Mrs. Scott, now about ninety years of age, and living in the adjoining county of Russell. The statements, therefore, may be relied on as accurate.
b