Martha of the Clinch Valley, Virginia 1756 - 1821

By Bonnie L. Schermer

Martha knows better than to move her family from the rugged mountains of Southwest Virginia to the rolling fields of east-central Kentucky in 1779. The American Revolution is far from over, the Indians are wreaking havoc up and down the frontier, and Kentucky is known as "that dark and bloody ground." Nevertheless, Martha's husband, Solomon Litton and her brother, John Dunkin, insist on being among the first to settle near Ruddles and Martins Stations (later Paris, Bourbon County, Kentucky). As a result, Martha and her entire family are captured by the British and Indians in June of 1780, becoming prisoners of war. Along with four hundred other pioneers, they are forced to canoe and walk across Ohio to Detroit. Carrying her two-month-old infant, leading several other children, and separated from her husband, Martha found a way to survive.

Those interested in the history of the Clinch River Valley, history of Russell County, Virginia, and history of Bourbon County, Kentucky, or prisoners of war during the American Revolution will find this an absorbing account. This story is built around the genealogy of the Litton family and the Dunkin/Duncan family. Care has been taken to use available historical facts as the basis for this fiction story; long-dead historic characters from the 18th century American frontier have returned to interact within its pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462011995

Bonnie L. Schermer

Bonnie Schermer has studied her ancestral families for over 55 years, and her books are the result. The genre that Bonnie uses is hysterical-fiction. In her view, history requires interpretation through the experiences of people who lived it. When facts run out, Bonnie supplies fictional details of each story in the hope that this explains what happened. Although mostly written for Bonnie’s close relatives, it is Bonnie’s hope that other people might find the stories interesting.

Book preview

Martha of the Clinch Valley, Virginia

1821

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Martha held her breath as she eased her emaciated body backward onto thick down pillows. Twice she tried to lift her tiny feet into the high feather bed. Then Marta reached the room.

Let me help.

Swiftly, the Indian woman tucked in Martha’s feet, pulled the down comfort around her shoulders, kissed her old friend’s cheek.

Exhaling carefully around The Pain in her chest, Martha peered across the room at a tall, imposing figure in the doorway. Her heart seemed to stop, as it always had since the first time he had gazed at her, over fifty-five years before. Solomon Litton’s black eyes twinkled lovingly in his lined face as his long legs carried him effortlessly to her side. As soon as Marta had gone, he produced a jug from beneath his coat and a shot glass from his pocket. Expertly uncorking the jug, he filled the glass and handed it to Martha.

This may help a bit.

Now, Sol, you’re always tryin’ to make me tipsy! she smiled.

Martha sipped, feeling the liquid fire burn, her mind beginning a slide toward rest. Sol filled the glass again, watched her drink, then patted her worn hands.

He blew out the bedside candle, kissed Martha tenderly, and whispered,

Dream about the good times; we had our share!

Oh, yes, we shared the best!

She closed her eyes. As Sol left the room, her mind ranged over the past, to conjure scenes from her life. She would hold the images before her until sleep descended.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania remained in Martha’s memory a lovely, time dimmed vision. Its beautiful rocky hills, green fertile valleys, and cold rapid streams had attracted thousands of Scots-Irish. These people immigrated from Ulster, Northern Ireland, in waves. They quickly populated southeastern Pennsylvania, forming instant communities. In 1740, pushed by a great famine in Ulster, they included Martha’s parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Duncan.

Martha struggled to recall the features of her father’s face as he sorted and counted seeds for spring planting. But Da’s face remained a blur; he had died when Martha was only four. A yeoman, or freeholder who farmed his own land, Thomas had bequeathed to his children a heritage of fierce independence. He remained too proud to accept help from anyone up to the end, insisting that his last illness was only temporary, refusing to make a will.

Following the death of her father, Martha’s brother John, thirteen years older, had been appointed her guardian. He and their mother ensured that Martha was reared as a proper Scots-Irish Presbyterian. Martha learned her catechism, sat through long sermons on Sundays, and strictly adhered to church teachings.

If it weren’t for Da’s death, and brother John taking charge of us all, we might have stayed in Pennsylvania, instead of moving here, to Virginia. Think of that! I would have missed meeting Sol, and Dan’l, and Marta…

She clearly saw Da’s weak, whitened hands spread on the quilt as he whispered goodbye to his bonnie lass.

"My hands are like his, now, she thought. Not like Ma’s hands, or John’s."

Their hands had always seemed capable, in control up to the last. Elizabeth Alexander Duncan had died only seven years before, the Elk Garden’s oldest citizen at nearly one hundred four. She had lived a few miles from Martha, with John and his wife Eleanor. John’s wife had died two years after Ma. Then, two years after that, in 1817, John had finally put down the burden of being head of the family, a job he took too seriously.

Partly because of his family’s tradition that he descended from Good King Duncan, and partly because of his large, strong body and commanding personality, John had become the head of a group of intermarried, extended families that functioned much like a traditional Scottish clan. Martha pictured the faces of her family on the ceiling above.

My sisters are all gone, too, she told the wall.

Ann, the eldest, who never adjusted to the insecurity of frontier life, eventually demanded that her husband, John Robinson, take her back to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Elizabeth, with husband Samuel Porter, had returned long ago to homestead the site of the Duncan clan’s greatest trial, near Martin’s Station, Kentucky. The baby, Mary Jane, had married James Laughlin and lived two days away, across the Clinch River Valley at Spring Creek. Now they were all dead.

Of course, there were multitudes of Martha’s nieces and nephews. But who could keep track of them all? Most of them had exemplified the saying, A Scotsman is never at home until he has moved his family at least twice.

All of the Duncan women were beauties, Martha remembered. They certainly embodied the Lord’s vengeance in 1781 at Montreal, among all those stupid, lonely British soldiers!

In memory, Martha drifted back to her childhood.

1765

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Martha recalled viewing the reflection of her eight year old self in the glass. At that age, she was beginning to exhibit the delicate beauty that remained hers for over fifty years. Red gold hair, green eyes, and ivory skin combined on her petite frame to create a lovely picture wherever she went.

She remembered the day when John announced that the Duncans must sell everything and move south, from Pennsylvania to Virginia. The French and Indians had been defeated by the colonial soldiers and by the British. The western frontier was opening to settlers, offering land from New York to the Carolinas. Fortunes lay within that land, just waiting to be claimed! The Sharpes (John’s wife’s family), the Porters, the Laughlins, and the Berrys (all cousins) decided to follow John.

Martha had become nearly hysterical. Leave her house, her own room where she felt so safe? Leave Da’s grave with no one to tend it? Go to the mountains, where terrible red men hid behind trees? She had fought being uprooted with all her strength, but it did no good. Her mother, the family matriarch, agreed with John. The Duncan’s one hundred twenty-seven acre farm and their gracious home were sold. Most of their belongings were sold, except for items that Ma decided should go into the wagon along with herself and her four daughters. Wagons for the families of their relatives accompanied them. John took two wagons: One for his wife and three young children, and another loaded with goods for the new store he would establish in Fincastle, Virginia. Martha imagined their destination as a town surrounded by a high wall made of fish.

They had meant to leave in April, Martha recalled, as soon as the weather turned warm. But news reached them that the Great Valley Road had become a nearly impassable quagmire of red mud, due to heavy spring rains. So they delayed the trip until mid-June, when conditions were much dryer.

First they headed west across the Susquehanna River to York, Pennsylvania, then southwest to Black Gap and over a mountain. Then they drove forty more miles to Wadkins Ferry on the Potomac. They passed through the infant towns of Martinsburg, Winchester, and Staunton.

It was on this trip that Martha developed her lifelong fear of water. She dropped her doll into the Potomac, and tearfully watched it drown, lost forever.

The farther southwest they traveled, the more intense was the feeling of being cradled between the beautiful Blue Ridge to the east and the rugged Alleghenies to the west. Each town they passed through seemed more isolated and primitive than the one before. Twelve miles past the North Fork of the James River, they reached the fast growing log village of Fincastle. The entire trip totaled two hundred sixty miles, and took more than a month.

By late August, the Duncan clan was busy building and settling into new homes. John was presiding in his new general store, Martha helping him. She felt very important, and it was exciting meeting all the new people!

One day two men, John Richard Litton and Samuel Scott, brought several wagon loads of goods to her brother from far off Baltimore. Three strikingly attractive Litton sons were helping to unload, and Martha was fascinated by them. All were tall, muscular, with hair tied at their napes and cascading down their backs. They were dressed in lightweight homespun for summer.

James, the eldest at fourteen years, was very much in charge, calling out unnecessary orders to the other two. Quiet, dark haired Solomon paid him no heed, but continued working single mindedly at the heavy task.

Red haired Burton, the youngest at twelve, soon tired of lifting and carrying. Martha captured his interest by showing him a box of new kittens in her brother’s barn. Burt seized a beautifully marked black and white feline, and ran to his next older brother, Solomon. Martha, following behind, watched the thirteen year old lad pause in his labor to stroke the kitten softly and gently replace it in the box. A shadow of a smile lightened his dark eyes and face; then for the first time Martha felt his admiring gaze pass over her. As Sol returned to work, she wondered at the way he affected her. She was overcome with shyness and her heart seemed to stop in her chest. Trying to shake the sensation, she ran and played with Burt. Soon she stopped, however, to listen to Mr. Litton, who was talking to her brother about his family:

Sam here will soon be my son-in-law. These three are just getting old enough to work like men. I’ve three older daughters and three little boys at home, and a baby on the way.

Turning toward Martha, he added in a friendly tone, We have a new litter of puppies in our barn. You must come over and pick one out!

Martha nodded, and looked him in the eyes, as she had been taught.

Thank you, Mr. Litton.