Slowly came the land, born of ancient seas, uplifted through time and forged in stone.
Then the people- “Up men, and to your posts! And let no man forget today that you are from Old Virginia,” – Major General George Pickett, First Corps, Army of Northern Virginia.
There are many “beginnings” used when discussing the formation of land, atmosphere and life on Earth. With regard to the Blue Ridge in Virginia, I start with the Lapetus Ocean and then the following inlet sea. This exceeding long period laid down the “floor.”
Around 550 million years ago, Earth was warm with high‑CO₂ and low oxygen. Even the polar regions were ice free, and shallow inland seas dominated. Plants first appeared around 470 million years ago, but true soils and forests didn’t exist until another 200 million years. During this ancient time, the surface of Earth hosted giant arthropods, early amphibious tetrapod, fish and sharks, and the beginning of forests. This was the time when the world was transitioning from mostly water to some fertile land.
Beginning 550 million years back, the Lapetus Ocean covered all of present-day Virginia and extended past the Blue Ridge and into what is now West Virginia and Kentucky. The entirety of the Appalachian region was a continental shelf and marine basin. infamous frontier settlement. This ocean existed for a hundred million years.
When this sea began closing, Virginia was covered with a fifty-million-year period of shallow tropical seas (Devonian Inland Sea). This ocean covered the piedmont, Blue Ridge, Shenandoah Valley and most of West Virginia to where the shoreline was in present day Ohio. This created the limestones of the Shenandoah Valley from shallow‑marine deposits and further west, it laid down calcium carbonate (from marine shells, muds, and reefs) which was altered by seawater rich in magnesium. This compressed calcium carbonate would be quarried millions of years later and be the iconic veneer for gothic architecture buildings sitting on an infamous frontier settlement.
After this ocean period orogeny events dominated. To explain, an orogeny is a geological event that is a long process, tens of millions of years, when the crust of the earth is folded, changed by heat and pressure, and uplifted. This is a collision and compression of tectonic plates. Collision is gross oversimplification as the continental plate movements averaged less than 10 cm/yr. A simplification is this was an extremely slow train wreck.
Between the ocean stage and the continental compression, there was a 130-million-year period where rivers were created as the Lapetus Ocean retreated. The rivers carved through weak zones into the crust. These would eventually be gaps in the Blue Ridge.
Now soils and forests existed and the atmosphere was rich with oxygen. Inland seas were common.
From 330 to 300 million years ago, the slow centimeter plate movement had Africa hitting North America. Over an incredibly long time, compression folds the existing valley and ridges into giant anticlines and synclines. The crust breaks along older faults, joints, river valleys or soft rock layers. This weakens areas where ions of erosion will create gaps.
The uplifting continued for another 40 million years until the Appalachians reach heights equivalent to the Himalayans. The valleys and ridges were corrugated limestone and shale. Fractures in the surface lead to future water gaps and wind gaps.
During the next age, from 260 to 200 million years ago, the mountains began to sink under their own weight and the existing rivers cut into the uplifted terrain until they hit soft rock. Here water gaps are created. Some rivers change course and leave behind an old notch in terrain which will become a wind gap.
The next period between 200 and 100 million years ago, the water gaps deepen into narrow notches and wind gaps become broad. The aftermath has the Blue Ridge reduced to its current size and the gaps became stable. Water gaps formed as an existing river, before the uplifting, continued to carve a gorge. This would lead to Thornton Gap (the South Fork of the Shenandoah, the Swift Run Gap (the South River) and Harpers Ferry (the Potomac). The wind gaps were originally cut by a river but abandoned for a new route. These wind gaps are Rockfish, Jarman and Buford Gaps, the remaining gaps were structural ones where the crust had fractured and just eroded.
Before the Appalachians started rising, a great river was already flowing, and it is now called the New River. It was part of the ancient Teays River system and flowed northwest over a relatively flat landscape. The river is thought to be from 225 to 300 million years old and one of the oldest in the country and world. Also, the New is one of the few rivers to flow north. You can visibly see the proof of the river’s age by looking at the wide valley it has created along its route.
The Teays River system (in this case, the New River), began in the northwestern corner of present-day North Carolina near Blowing Rock and it flowed northward across Virginia and West Virginia. Its course is preserved today in the valleys of the New River and Kanawha River, which are the largest surviving remnants of the Teays. From West Virginia it continued across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. This river system started over 2 million years ago.
During the last ice age, glaciers advanced southward to modern day Nebraska and the massive ice sheets blocked the Teays River. This blockage created a humongous lake called Lake Tight. During the period of its maximum capacity, it covered over 10,000 square miles with an average depth of 140 feet. Sources do not agree exactly on its size, but it is thought to have been as big as Lake Erie.
The New River
During the last glacier movement, approximately 20,000 years ago, Virginia was a cold-climate forest of Spruce, Fir, Larch, alder, and willow. The higher elevations were populated by Spruce and fir trees.
As the ice retreated, the countryside began warming so that the spruce and fir retreated with the cold and oak and hickory began to advance northward. As warming continued to 8,000 years ago, oak and hickory dominated Virginia’s Piedmont and Valley. The Native Americans who moved into the region used low-intensity burning to maintain these oak and pine woodlands and to allow open meadows for game and travel. Bison, elk and deer began to thrive in these areas where meadows occurred. These same Native Americans moved throughout the region for seasonal camps, and game hunting. Over time these movements laid down a beaten path or trail system that was initially the Great Warrior Path and eventually the Great Valley Road, or portions of the Great Wagon Road.
The valleys were not the homeland of a single tribe but worked as a corridor linking the Iroquois, Delaware and Shawnee from the north and the Cherokee, Catawba, Creek, Chickasaw and Choctaw from the south or southwest.
Before 1650, the interior of Virginia, from the James and Appomattox Rivers in the east, and from the Potomac in the north, was controlled by the indigenous peoples. There were the Powhatan Federation near the Chesapeake, the Monacan/Manahoac (Piedmont and Blue Ridge), the Iroquoian groups (Nottoway/Meherrin, Tuscarora) and the Piscataway in the north. These Native Americans had trade networks, military capabilities and control of rivers, hunting grounds and travel paths. The European settlers knew they could not move inland without permission because of the potential for a fatal outcome.
The Appomattox Falls frontier (Fort Henry at Petersburg) was the westernmost sanctioned point for English presence after a 1646 treaty. Crossing beyond it required approval, a military escort and native guides. My own Ledbetter ancestor, Henry Ledbetter purchased a tract of land adjacent to Fort Henry consisting of 224 acres on April 29,1668 This was as far westward that settlers could go in that year. In 1650, a group was approved to explore inland from Fort Henry. This group consisted of Edward Bland, a merchant, Captain Abraham Wood, leader of the expedition and commander of Fort Henry, Sackford Brewster, a trader, Elias Pennant, an explorer, and Pyancha, an Appamattuck guide/interpreter. Edward Bland, Abraham Wood, and companions traveled from Fort Henry to the Roanoke and Meherrin region to the south and southwest. A few years late, 1720, the governor granted tracts in the Meherrin and Brunswick County for settlement. Prior to 1720, it is thought that my ancestors, and sons of the above-mentioned Henry Ledbetter, had squatted on the Meherrin/Rattlesnake Rivers and legally filed after 1720.
During the same period in Northern Virginia, the region was controlled by Algonquian groups. There was not yet settlements in Pennsylvania while the Maryland frontier was still clustered around the Chesapeake. The valley was stable and unsettled by Europeans prior to 1720 but there were Indigenous peoples that served as intermediaries between the northern tribes and those of the southern. A group largely unrecognized was the Occaneechi who traded at the junction of the Roanoke and Meherrin rivers near modern Emporia. The Saponi’s had been displaced from the Meherrin area and moved into the Valley and began serving as trader intermediaries. The Rickohockens traded with agents of Colonia Virginia since as early as 1650.
Long before the Indigenous Peoples removed themselves from the valleys, archaeological evidence pinpoints permanent villages in the Shenandoah Valley and New River Valley during the Woodland period which was from 1000 through 1600 CE. Primarily the Monacan Indian Nation called the Shenandoah their ancestral home. Algonquians and Iroquoians had semi-permanent homes along the rivers. In the NRV, agricultural villages thrived along the bottomlands of the New River and were trade routes to the Ohio Valley, the Cherokee and the Shenandoah. These inhabitants were mostly Tutelo and Saponi.
These peoples were good keepers of the land. By the time the Europeans arrived in numbers, diseases and Iroquois conflicts saw the Siouan groups leave the valleys.
For the most part the names of the tribal leaders did not carry forward although the names of some were spoken through the years. In the realm of a Monacan town near modern day Charlottesville, was the name Monasukapenough who was said to be keeper of the town which extended into the Shenandoah.
From the Roanoke River to the New River Valley, the name Alematzu was mentioned by early trappers. He was likely associated with the Saponi or Tutelo of the Siouan speaking group. Also of the same group was Hanathaskie, thought to be the name of a leader or a town that occupied the Roanoke and NRV watersheds.
My 6th g-grandfather who was born west of Petersburg, the son of Henry Ledbetter who owned land adjacent to Fort Henry, was said to have married a Sapony woman. After the Iroquois began pushing south and west, the Saponi left their Rivanna homeland and moved into the Piedmont and sought alliances with English traders at Fort Henry.
By the mid 1600s, Saponi families were regularly camped, trading, or seeking refuge near Fort Henry. The marriage between my grandfather and a Saponi woman seems credible. In 1659, Henry Ledbetter pays a debt of 816 pounds of tobacco and in 1673, Mary Ledbetter wins a judgment of 1000 pounds of tobacco. This shows the family was deeply embedded in the tobacco economy and that likely revolved around Fort Henry.
Oddly enough, around the same time frame, a Pamunkey Indian woman named Mary Ann Little Basket married Thomas Caldwell in the Jamestown area. She was my 7th g-grandmother who was the g-granddaughter of Chief Opechancanough.
While we know almost nothing about Opechancanough’s youth other than the timeframe of his birth which we estimate was between 1540 and 1550. His parentage is unknown. Powhatan memory over the ages has said he may have come from the southwest and speculation ties him as Don Luis. While many through the years have dark resentment and hate for him, he is embodiment of the beginning of Virginia peoples as we know it. He acted for his people and to protect their homeland. For this I tab him to be the first Virginian that embodies the great land.
The original Pamunkey homeland was along the Pamunkey River in Tidewater Virginia around what became Werowocomoco and the river’s middle course. Their original seat was on the banks of the Pamunkey River about 22 miles north of the James River. The Pamunkey were one of the largest and most powerful tribes of the Powhatan chiefdom and lived in the coastal Tidewater. These people were organized and also were the largest and most influential. Their homeland which they had occupied continuously for 10,000-12,000 years.
The culture was a matrilineal aristocracy; women were the leaders. The society had been shaped over thousands of years, and training and development of skills were entrained. An individual’s identity was defined from matrilineal kinship. From early years, warfare and diplomacy were emphasized. Everyone understood the overlap between spiritual authority and political authority. Certainly, use of weapons and warfare tactics were important but negotiation, obtaining loyalties and speech was required for a young man of the aristocracy.
This was also a spiritual society that had quiocosuks who interpreted dreams/omens, believed in cosmology of upper/middle/lower worlds and the respect of ancestors. These peoples lived in palisaded towns complete with longhouses where extended families shared and where women-controlled agriculture. The land they occupied was raided by Iroquoian groups from father north and from Monacans and Manahoac Siouan peoples.
When the English arrived at Jamestown in 1607, Powhatan (Wahunsenacawh) and his brother Opechancanough initially saw them as potential allies or trade partners. The Powhatans fed and supplied the starving colonists during the first winters. Over the years, they traded corn, venison, and furs for metal tools, beads, and copper.
After Powhatan’s death in 1618, Opechancanough became paramount chief. He watched the English expand rapidly, seize land, and disregard Powhatan sovereignty. He grew concerned about the continuing growth up both sides of the James River.
This is what he saw by 1622. The settlements continued westward and south along the James River. The colonists were swallowing too much territory and he wanted to slow it down.
His original intent was to poison colonists, but the Virginia governor was prewarned. Instead, months later, on March 22, 1622, Opechancanough directed a fierce and brutal attack on settlements. The attacks were widespread, most like some places sixty miles apart. A partial listing of settlements attacked were Berkley’s Plantation, Sheffield Plantation, Henrico, Colledge, Appamattucke River, Charles City, Farrar’s House, Berkley Hundred, Westover, West Plantation, Capt Nathanial West home, Lt. Davidson home, Macock’s Divident, George Yeardley Plantation, near Flowerdieu Hundred, Bennett Plantation, Swinhowe’s house, Bikar’s house, Weynoach, Powel-brooke, Southhampton Hundred, Brandon house, Capt Spillman house, Ensign Spence’s house, Martin’s Hundred and the Margaret and John.
His goal was not annihilation but to drive the English back to the coast and restore Powhatan control inland but the e English retaliated brutally, burning towns and poisoning food supplies and continued to expand. By the early 1640s, Opechancanough was elderly and nearly blind, but still revered as a leader
Opechancanough launched one last assault in April ,1644 when his was around 90 years of age. Another 400 colonists were slain and Governor Berkeley resisted strongly with superior fire power. In 1646 Opechancanough was captured near the Pamunkey River, taken to Jamestown, and shot in the back by a guard while in custody.
Warfare, famine, and measles and smallpox killed at least 75% of Powhatan people in the 17th century. Most villages along the James, York, and Appomattox were abandoned or destroyed. Only a few Pamunkey and Mattaponi were left surviving on reserved homelands.
Along the James River the Appamattuck, Arrohateck, Weyanock, and Quiyoughcohannock lost most of their land. The York River tribes, Kiskiack, Chiskiack, and Weyanock were forced off the peninsula.
The Pamunkey were granted land in 1646/1649 and have continuously occupied their reservation till now. The Mattaponi had reservation protection and is one of the oldest in the county.
Continental estimates show tens of millions of Indigenous deaths from disease and colonization. North American Indigenous population fell from 1.2–18 million to ~270,000 by 1920 or up to 95%,
The loss of Indigenous peoples is a loss for all Americans. They were good shepherds of the land, respectful of wildlife and believers of the spiritual world.
The Pamunkey Reservation is located in King William County, Virginia on a peninsula along the Pamunkey River and encompasses over 1,600 acres, with wetlands, marshlands, and river shoreline. It now is home to over 30 families.
During the same period, four brothers made a mark on early Virginia, the Wood brothers. Documentation is absent. The fact that they complimented and worked together ties them as a family group. I call them brothers, but they could be cousins or other kin.
The Wood brothers emerged in 17th‑century Virginia as one of the most influential frontier families of their generation, each playing a distinct role in the transformation of the Powhatan borderlands.
Abraham Wood arrived as a fourteen-year-old on the Margaret & John which battled Spanish Man-of-war on the voyage to Virginia under Captain Chester. Abraham was indentured to Capt. Samuel Mathews. The voyage itself was a courageous way to begin life in the colony. See my blog: “The Sea Voyage of the Margaret & John, Ano 1631” for the total story.
Abraham served his indentureship and rose from servant to commander of Fort Henry and became the architect of the colony’s western expansion, opening the trading paths that would shape the next century. His brothers Thomas, John, and Peter supported expansion through the coming years. Thomas served as an interpreter and diplomatic go‑between in the early settlement period; John worked as a scout and boundary man; and Peter anchored the family’s landholdings Appomattox corridor. The Wood brothers enabled the frontier military and commercial infrastructure.
Abraham Wood is the only brother whose arrival is documented. The other Woods — Thomas, John, and Peter — appear in Virginia records a generation later with no passenger entries at all. The shaping of the Virginia frontier was not the work of a single explorer or a single expedition, but it was kick started by the work of the Wood family.
Fort Henry commanded by Abraham Wood evolved into the Appomattox militia district. This district supplied settlers and surveyors for the future Valley grants but initially for the movement to the new land grants that opened along the Meherrin River in the old Brunswick County.
After 1720, those settlers who wanted to move from the current western edge of the colony could now move southwest from Ft. Henry area and also from Surry County, south of the James River, to Meherrin using the Blackwater River as guidance. My Ledbetter family that I mentioned earlier, living near Ft. Henry. made this move just before 1720. Another one of my family lines, the Burnetts, moved from Surry County to Meherrin at the same time. Families that had settled in the James and Appomattox River areas on grants now seized the opportunity to go westward to new grants.
We do not have documentation that indicates John Wall’s country of birth or parentage. He is a prime example of movement and promotion in Colonial Virginia between 1670 and 1740. There isn’t much information on him but his involvement and success is emblematic of the opportunity of the time. Originally Surry County stretched southwestward from the James River. Land grants were given out to encourage immigration from England and Scotland to Virginia. John Wall began his successful life from working a grant here and later moving westward to the new frontier in 1720, Brunswick County. Here the Clack, Robinson, Burnett, Wall families and others did the same.
Here these families learn to clean land in the lower Blackwater region to place down tobacco fields. Everyday leaning includes river ferrying, reading boundaries, working on road crews and otherwise surviving in a frontier.
John Wall works his own land, served in the militia and when a new frontier opened, he made the bold move. After the governor opened tracts in 1720, he moves to the Meherrin River country where open forests and abundant water provide opportunity for a new beginning among other tobacco farmers and merchants. He settles near Great Creek, just off the Meherrin River. This is a raw edge of Virginia where families still hunt and traders travel through.
John Wall becomes a road overseer, a juror, a militia corporal, land patents witness and a man who can settle disputes. In 1742, John is elected to the House of Burgesses. He brings knowledge of the Meherrin and Nottoway boundaries, the condition of area roads, the needs of the militia, fellow planter needs and land use.
After 1748 he returns to Great Creek and helps Brunswick grow from a raw frontier to a substantial county. His life and contributions sum up the possibilities of growth in the first century of Virginia.
To the great Valley, Abraham Wood’s trading paths became the Great Wagon Road through the new land grants, the Beverley Manor and Borden Grant.
A century after Abraham Wood opened the western paths from Fort Henry, those same routes carried settlers into the Shenandoah Valley. The Beverley and Borden tracts were not isolated land grants, but they were the culmination of a frontier system born under Wood’s command. The forts, trading paths, and alliances he built became the skeleton of Virginia’s westward expansion. When Beverley and Borden drew their boundaries, they were tracing the outer edge of the Wood brother exploration lands.
The Wood brothers did not die in battle or scandal, but their lives ended in a world changing rapidly. The western boundary had moved and new adventures were awaiting.
In the north edge of Shenandoah, a name was tied to the valley, Hassinninga, although that could have been a title instead of a name. This was custom as societies used oral titles and not fixed personal names and outsiders did not record their names. Little is known of this culture and the colonists moved in around him.
The Europeans were not going to be held out of beautiful land for long. Governor Spotwood authorized an official English exploration of the Shenandoah in 1716. Jokingly, he called this exploration group the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe. It was a small group of about 50 mounted men who accompanied Governor Alexander Spotswood on a 1716 expedition across the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley that crossed at Swift Run Gap. Spotswood claimed that land for King George I.
In the years after, a scattering of families illegally settled into the valley as squatters. These families were largely Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch who were unauthorized and who migrated down from Lancaster and York Counties, Pennsylvania.
Twenty years after Spotswood’s exploration into the Valley, the Governor Gooch, wanted settlers loyal to him in the valley to buffer against the French who were also expanding in the regions to the north, and to establish a manpower barrier between French territory and the colonists. Therefore, he granted a 118,491 acres land grant in 1736 to William Beverley. These tracts lay between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies in now Augusta County. These settlers consisted primarily of Presbyterian immigrants from Northern Ireland, Palatines, English from the Tidewater and Piedmont, and enslaved or free African Americans.
The next year Benjamin Borden Sr. received a grant of 100,000 acres west of Beverley Manor in what would become Rockbridge County. Borden was to recruit 100 families with the grants of 1000 acres per family and not interfere with the Beverley grant. Borden walked south into the Valley to locate the tract and on the way, he stopped at the camp of Ephraim McDowell and his family on Linville Creek. McDowell was a surveyor and knew the Valley well. McDowell established a packhorse trail, recruited settlers and built cabins and as a result obtained over 3000 acres. His kin were the first to settle in the tract. The descendants of these McDowells would become Revolutionary War officers and leaders. McDowell County, North Carolina was named for one of these descendants.
In my opinion, a very consequential family thrived in this area, and they were the Walkers who had immigrated from Wigton, Scotland. This was the family of John Alexander Walker II, his nephew and sons with families. You may be familiar with the names “Gunmaker” Walker and “Gunstock” Walker. John Alexander Walker II’s sons were, John III (1704), James (1707), Samuel (1714) and Joseph (1722).
Captain Samuel Walker, the third son of John Alexander Walker II, married Jane Patterson in December of 1740 in Virginia. In 1742 Samuel and his brothers John and Joseph were listed as members of the Augusta County Militia under Captain John Buchanan. Brother James was listed as a patriot of the Revolutionary War while his younger brothers, above, were keeping families safe during the period of Indian raids. Samuel Walker was listed as a Captain, a rank he had earned during the turbulent wars with the Indians and French. He received land grants in Bedford County, Augusta County, and Botetourt County from years 1768 until 1773 for years of service in colonial fights against the Indians and French.
Augusta County was frontier country at that time and attacks by mainly Shawnee were frequent. Stockades were built in strategic locations for defense. In addition to massacre of families, many colonists were taken in captivity. Indian attacks and massacres in and around Augusta County from 1754 until 1763 were: Fort Vause, 1756, Ft. Upper Tract 1758 Ft. Seybert 1758, Ft. Warden 1758 and Hawksbill Settlement 1758.
Before Augusta County was broken into more counties, the land mass was huge and extended to the Monongalia, Holston, New and South Branch Rivers.
A militia to guard and defend this country was critical. During the years after 1753, a count of 307 colonists were killed, wounded or captured all along the Monongalia, Holston, New and South Branch Rivers as well as settlements at Greenbriar, Reed Creek, Jackson River, Craigs Creek, Brock’s Gap, Roanoke, and branches of the James River.
Captain Samuel and Jane Walker had five children including Joseph Walker who was born on October 21,1758 in Augusta County, Virginia. At some point the entire family moved to Roane County, Tennessee, most likely around 1799. Roane County is where Captain Samuel Walker was buried in August of 1810. He was fifty-two years old. Major Joseph Walker had quite an impressive military career considering his young age (from eighteen until twenty-three years old). He is credited with 15th Virginia, Revolutionary War, Continental infantry the entirety of 1776 1st Lieutenant of Webb’s Continental Regiment of January 1777 and Captain on August 22, 1777. (Captain Nathan Hale was in this unit) Major and Aide-de-Camp to General Parsons from December 15, 1780, until July 22, 1782 (surrender of British at Yorktown, Virginia).
As Major, Joseph Walker helped to suppress mutinies of soldiers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey as well as clearing out Tory militia and containing the British. A few years after the war, his commander, General Parsons had drowned in a winter canoeing accident.
After the Revolutionary War, Major Joseph Walker met and married Susannah (Susan) Willis on July 22, 1789 at Goochland County, Virginia. She was eleven years younger than her husband, having been born in 1770. They settled in Roane County, Tennessee after several years in Goochland County. It has been written that the total time to move from Virginia to Roane County had taken up to ten years. A complexity of obtaining title to the land lay with the obstacles with the native Americans, the Cherokee.
Major Joseph and Susan Walker had six children, four of which are difference makers in the establishment of the United States going forward. These sons were:
Joseph Reddington (Joe) Walker (13 Dec. 1798-27 Oct. 1876) One of the most famous and significant mountain men of the West
Joel Pickens Walker (20 Nov. 1797-25 July 1879) He and wife were the first American born Caucasians to cross the country in a wagon to California
Jacob Walker (1799-1836) Died at siege of the Alamo, possibly the last defender to die
Samuel S. Walker (1800-1852) Died crossing the Humbolt Sink, Utah on a wagon train to California
Since just before 1730 the Great Wagon Road extended from Pennsylvania, down through the Shenandoah Valley, past Natural Bridge, thru Big Lick and to the New River Valley. Augusta County became somewhat organized around 1745 when population increased and surveyors began mapping westward. The Scots, Irish and German families continued to move into the area until the New River Valley promised new lands and a further push of the frontier westward.
By now the Great Wagon Road had several waypoints moving south through the Valley: Winchester was the entry point after crossing the Potomac, Harrisonburg was at mid valley, Staunton was the supply center for Augusta County, Lexington was a junction toward either the James River or west to Big Lick, Big Lick was the pivot to the New River or toward North Carolina. This was the most heavily traveled road in America after 1763.
The Blue Ridge is a long, steep wall. Only a few natural breaks or gaps described at the beginning of this blog existed. These gaps allowed wagons, livestock, and later armies to cross. These gaps determined where settlers could descend from the Valley into the Piedmont, where traders and drovers moved goods and where militia and later Continental forces maneuvered.
In today’s word there is the Thornton Gap (U.S. 211), Swift Run Gap (U.S. 33), Rockfish Gap (I‑64 / U.S. 250), Front Royal / Manassas Gap (U.S. 55), Ashby Gap (near modern U.S. 50), Snickers Gap and Rocky Gap.
Dr. Thomas Walker and his associates explored the upper James and Roanoke Rivers in 1742 and extended the work to the New River and Holston region after 1748. These expeditions would document lands where soon Draper’s Meadow would form. At the end of the Shenandoah Valley and before the elevation rise up to the New River Valley stood a major crossroad. the Roanoke Valley and a place known as Big Lick. This was a natural pause point on the frontier. Hunters, traders, and migrating families followed the Great Wagon Road south and then west through the licks, where buffalo trails and Native paths converged. Big Lick was not yet a town, but it was a crossroads, and the last familiar ground before settlers pushed into the New River wilderness where Draper’s Meadow would rise.
But in around 1740 to 1750, it was also a major pivot point for southbound migration into the Yadkin River German settlements (where my Ries ancestors settled), the Moravian Wachovia tract, the Catawba Valley and the upper piedmont of North Carolina.
Big Lick was one of the few places where two migration streams intersected for Indigenous trading paths, hunter routes, survey lines and immigration.
Before 1748 there were some settlements west of Big Lick in the New River Valley such as the Cloyd and Harman families and the Snidow and Lybrook Cabins. The scattered families were deeply isolated on the westernmost frontier and thereby highly vulnerable.
the New River Valley was the outermost edge of Augusta County, extending from the Alleghany crest all the way to the Mississippi in the legal imagination of the time. Settlers east of the mountains had only vague ideas about this region, which was still dominated by Indigenous groups such as the Canawhay (Kanawha) people.
This wilderness had minimal colonial oversight and was in the trading and hunting lands of Indigenous peoples from the north and southwest. James Patton who had served as a Colonel of Militia and Chief Commander of the Augusta County Militia after1742 had acquired 100,000 acres grant in 1745 because he had the ability to recruit settlers, provide transport and develop a frontier community. At that time, he also obtains several thousand acres on the New River including a tract to be called Draper’s Meadow.
By 1755, roughly twenty families lived in the settlement and included George and Eleanor Draper with their children John and Mary, the Thomas Ingles family with son William Ingles and others. The settlement was permanent as evident by the fields of agriculture. This was seen by the Shawnee as a threat to hunting grounds.
Just before this settlement began, the European nation of France began constructing forts, like Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio, to secure its claim to the region. Virginia believed the land fell under its charter. Britain wanted western lands for settlement and France wanted to maintain its St. Lawrence–Great Lakes–Mississippi corridor and alliances with Native nations. The Ohio Valley was the area where France and Virginia clashed.
In May 1754, a twenty-two-year-old Virginian was tabbed to lead the Virginia militia. Governor Dinwiddie ordered Lieutenant Colonel George Washington to prevent the French from completing their new forts. Washington had been dupped by Tanacharison, Indigenous half-king, that the French intended to ambush him. Tanacharison wanted a war between Britian and France to give his Ohio tribes leverage.
When Washington’s volunteers encountered the French detachment under Jumonville he attacked at a place called Jumonville Glen on May 28, 1754. My 6th great-grandfather, 25-year-old John Walker, was with the Virginians. The Virginians killed Jumonville, triggered French retaliation and put Britian and France into a global Seven Year’s War. Later that summer, the French defeated Lt. Col Washington at Fort Necessity. This prompted the French in the area to agitate the Indigenous warriors into waging raids on colonial settlements in Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers.
The newest tracts on the Virginia western frontier were on a 7,500-acre spread from Tom’s Creek in the north and Stroubles Creek to the south in the New River Valley. In simple words, the settlement was within the modern Virginia Tech campus, west of the drill field and north to the Duck Pond. In the area that became the heart of the modern campus.
On July 8, 1755, a Shawnee party attacked Draper’s Meadow, killing several settlers including Colonel James Patton and capturing others, one of which was Mary Draper Ingles, whose future escape and return became one of the most famous captivity narratives in American history.
Mary Ingles was 23 years old when the Shawnee attacked Draper’s Meadow on July 30, 1755. She was the daughter of George Draper and Eleanor Hardin Draper who were English settlers in Augusta County near Staunton. She had a husband William Ingles who was working away at a Mill during the attack. The Shawnee took Mary, her two young sons and a newborn daughter.
Mary and the other captives were driven across the New River, down the New River Gorge, along the Kanawha River and to a salt lick near Big Bone Lick at the Oyo. Her infant daughter died during the brutal march. At the salt camp she and an older Dutch woman slipped away with no food or weapons. For forty days, they followed the rivers eastward, starving and freezing. The Dutch woman turned violent so Mary fled alone. She crossed the New River Gorge, crawled through snow, and finally staggered into the valley she had left months before. William and Mary Ingles went on to build Ingles Ferry for crossings over the New River. Thomas Ingles was about four years old at the time. He was kept by the Shawnee and raised among them for several years. When he was finally recovered after 1768, he had mostly forgotten English. He later settled near his parents’ ferry on the New River. George Ingles was two years old when captured. He was adopted into another Native group and never returned; his ultimate fate is unknown.
John Walker III (Gunmaker) relocated to southwest Virginia about 1771 at the “Sinks” between Castles Woods, and Dungannon, in modern Scott County, Virginia. This is at the west point end of Virginia that borders Tennessee and Kentucky. Close by are the Pennington and Cumberland Gaps. The Wigton Walkers were discussed earlier in this post as early settlers in the Borden Grant. This was extremely isolated. It is now considered in Appalachia and at the time it was considered the Clinch frontier.
In 1771, the Clinch frontier offered land, a meadow tract (Broad Meadows) that was unusually fertile, abundant game and timber, and a place where rangers were needed and valued. Broad Meadows was the best grazing land in the region. Nearby, while desolate, the Sinks were a natural defensive moat, and the uplands offered timber, game and fuel.
John Walker was on the Broad Meadows tract, and it was adjacent to Houston’s Fort and Cowan’s Creek. Samuel Cowan and his wife, Ann Walker Cowan were part of the extensive Walker family of the area. Samuel Cowan was killed by Cherokee in 1776 while trying to warn Houston’s Fort.
The Houston Family operated the Houston’s Fort on Big Moccasin Creek. The Hays family had moved with the Walkers. James Moore married Jane Walker (sister of John III) and they were part of the Clinch grouping. The Andrew and Henry Duncan families were nearby.
John Walker III and his sons Samuel and John IV were rangers. Rangers had to live near the forts, gaps and creeks used by raiding parties. Other rangers were Capt. Daniel Smith, Capt. John Montgomery and Charles Bickley, stationed at Rye Cove Fort. Samuel Walker, John II’s brother was killed by Indians on the Clinch. James Walker, John II’s brother fought at Point Pleasant.
“Gunmaker” was a long-timed experience fabricator of a long rifle, probably leaning his craft in Newry, Ireland before immigrating with his father, brothers and cousins. He most likely imported English or German flintlock mechanisms through merchants in Williamsburg or Philadelphia. They arrived as “lock sets” which were complete assemblies of frizzen, cock, pan, and springs. John Walker III made barrels and fitted all the parts into homemade stocks. Fortunately his cousin, John “Gunstock” Walker was close by.
The barrel was the one-part Walker did forge. He would start with a flat strip of iron, then heat and hammer around a manvel to form a tube. Then forge‑weld the seam along its length, ream and bore the interior smooth, file the exterior octagonal, drill the touch‑hole for the flintlock ignition and fit the breech plug and sight mounts.
He would have to rifle the bore using a hand‑powered rifling bench. Then small trigger guards, Butt plates and pipes would be fitted.
In 1778, John Walker III, Gunmaker, was killed by a Chickamauga Indian raiding party near the Sinks of the Clinch River while on his ranger duty. The families stayed in the Clinch for a while but after 1793 until 1803, they completed a move to Blount County, Tennessee. This was about a five-day trip over rough country. Militia retaliation raids were launched in 1779–1780 under Capt. Joseph Martin and Col. Arthur Campbell, targeting Chickamauga towns on the Tennessee River.
“”Gunstock” John Walker was killed in an ambush near Stock Creek around 1780, possibly by another Chickamauga raiding parties that struck after John Walker III’s death. His body was reportedly buried near the fort palisade, though no marked grave survives.
Much if not all of the Walker family and their extended family moved to Blount County, Tennessee before 1803. Samuel’s sons James and Thomas Walker appear in Blount County tax lists by 1795. The Houstons who had married into the Walker line-built Houston’s Station near Maryville. The Robert and David Cowan families were relocated around 1796. William and John Moore migrated with the Cowens. The Moore descendants married Walker daughters. James and Samuel Duncan settled near Little River and the Robert Hays family moved as well and were linked to the Houston family later on.
.
“Shenandoah” is an American folk song born in the early 1800s fur‑trade world of the Missouri River and was later adopted by sailors as a sea shanty, and only much later associated with the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The song has become a musical emblem of the state of Virginia as it sounds like the Blue Ridge looks and because of the great valley’s draw when absent from it. The Confederate and the Union troops embraced the stanza because of their longing to be home and because of the Valley they fought in.
Shenandoah” has no single composer and no definitive versions because it evolved through oral tradition and changed as it moved from river culture to maritime culture to wartime in the valley and to modern reminiscing. “Shenandoah” appears to have begun with American and French‑Canadian voyageurs traveling the up the Missouri River in the fur trade. Initially a trader courting the daughter of Shenandoah, an Oneida chief, was said to have roughly sang the first stanza.
The earliest known publication is in April 1876, in The New Dominion Monthly in an article titled “Sailor Songs” by Captain Robert Chamblet Adams.
Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you, Away, you rolling river; Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you, Away, I’m bound away, across the wide Missouri.
’Tis seven long years since last I saw you, Away, you rolling river; ’Tis seven long years since last I saw you, Away, I’m bound away, across the wide Missouri.
When the song is played in Virginia, thoughts go to the great valley.
The first shot of the Revolution was fired on the British tax schooner, Gaspee, from Rhode Island well before Lexington and Concord. Then Rhode Island passed the Act of Renunciation on May 4, 1776, becoming the first colony to declare independence from Great Britain, two full months before the Declaration of Independence was signed July 4, 1776.
Then conflict started in Boston between the British and colonists. King George III issued the Proclamation of Rebellion on August 23, 1775, declaring the colonies to be “in open and avowed rebellion.” Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced the Lee Resolution on June 7, 1776, which stated: “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” Congress voted on July 2, 1776, formally committing the colonies to independence.
Virginia made it’s moves:
After George Washington was picked to be the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, Virginia appointed Patrick Henry to be Colonel of the 1st Virginia Regiment, William Woodford to be Colonel of the 2nd Virginia Regiment, Richard Bland Colonel of the Virginia Militia, Hugh Mercer to be a Brigadier General of the Continental Army, George Baylor Colonel of the 3rd Dragoons, Abraham Buford Colonel of the Virginia Line, Richard Campbell Lt. Colonel of the Virginia Line, Samuel Cabell Lt. Colonel of the 6th Virginia, Joseph Crockett Captain of the 7th Virginia, Peter Muhlenberg Colonel of the 8th Virginia, Charles Scott Colonel of the 5th Virginia, Thomas Nelson Jr. Brigadier General of the Virginia Militia, Edward Stevens Brigadier General of the Virginia Militia, and George Rogers Clark Lt. Colonel of the Illinois Regiment.
Mercer and Campbell were killed in action.
Virginia Military Districts, August 1775
| District | Counties Included (1775 boundaries) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1st District – Williamsburg Region | James City, York, Warwick, Elizabeth City | Coastal defense; closest to colonial government |
| 2nd District – Norfolk / Portsmouth | Norfolk, Princess Anne | Naval and port security |
| 3rd District – Eastern Shore | Accomack, Northampton | Isolated but strategically important |
| 4th District – Rappahannock / Northern Neck | Lancaster, Northumberland, Richmond, Westmoreland | Plantation belt; strong militia tradition |
| 5th District – Fredericksburg Region | Spotsylvania, Caroline, King George | Key north–south corridor |
| 6th District – Northern Frontier | Loudoun, Fairfax, Prince William | Defensive line against northern incursions |
| 7th District – Central Piedmont | Albemarle, Amherst, Buckingham | Supplied many Continental officers |
| 8th District – Southside Virginia | Brunswick, Mecklenburg, Lunenburg | Heavy militia recruitment |
| 9th District – Upper James River | Augusta, Botetourt, Fincastle | Frontier defense; Walker territory |
| 10th District – Southwest Frontier | Washington County (then enormous) | Rangers, scouts, and fort defense |
These were the conflicts on Virginia soil:
Great Bridge (Dec 1775), Gwynn’s Island (July 1776), Carter’s Grove Skirmish (1779), Portsmouth Raids (1779–1780), Arnold’s Raid on Richmond (Jan 1781), Battle of Blandford (Apr 1781), Battle of Green Spring (July 1781) and the Yorktown Campaign (Aug–Oct 1781). Approximately 500 Patriot casualties from battle were suffered within the
Commonwealth but Virginia also had deaths from raids, disease in camp and frontier fighting where numbers were not tallied.
Norfolk was nearly obliterated, Richmond was burned, Petersburg had damages, Yorktown/Gloucester had siege artillery damages, James River plantations were raided, and Tidewater shipyards were distroyed.
The battles were the stage; the people were the lives that gave it weight. I want to highlight two very different Virginians to honor the line officers and the privates from the countryside.
First is Captain John Chilton. His immigrant ancestor was John Chilton I of England, who settled in Westmoreland County, VA before 1665 and his parents were Major Thomas Chilton (1700–1777) and Jemima Cooke (1707). The family expanded into Prince William and then Fauquier County by 1750.
John Chilton (1739-1777) was a 37-year-old Fauquier County planter when the Revolution began. He was a husband, father, and landholder. He accepted a commission as Captain in the 3rd Virginia Regiment and served under Colonel Thomas Marshall. John has gathered a voluntary company of his past militia contacts.
The 3rd Virginia was very active early on beginning in the New York campaign with action at Long Island, Kip’s Bay, Harlem Heights, Pell’s Point, White Plains and Fort Washington. As winter ensued, the engagements shifted a little south to the Battle of Trenton and the Battle of Princeton. Here the regiment skirmished during early 1777, all around New Jersey.
British General William Howe sailed from New York and landed at Head of Elk, Maryland on July 23, 1777. He marched north toward Philadelphia while shedding off American light forces with the intent to take the city which was, at the time, the Colonial capital.
Washington positioned his army behind Brandywine Creek, believing he blocked all fords. The British Hessian commander, Knyphausen, kept Washington at bay at Chadds Ford while Generals Howe and Cornwallis flanked marched in fog and crossed the Brandywine upstream. Now they were on the right flank of General Washington.
Washington rushed divisions to block the flanking column at Birmingham Friends Meetinghouse, but the right flank collapsed and as it did, Knyphausen attacked across Chadds Ford and punished the American left flank. Washington retreated toward Chester, saving the remainder of his troops. Nathanael Green held rear-guard with Casimir Pulaski protecting withdrawal. Lafayette assisted in the retreat despite his wound. The Patriots suffered huge losses, 250 killed, 600 wounded and 400 captured or missing. Two months later, Howe occupied Philadelphia.
On the battlefield on that day, September 11, 1777, the 3rd Virginia was thrust into the fiercest fighting. Captain Chilton led his company forward toward heavy fire and was shot through the body and died on the field.
A small pocket diary was found on his body and the last entry was: “Set out for Philadelphia.”
His wife Letitia Blackwell who he had married in 1765 passed away in 1775 while John was in the war, The five children, George, Lucy, Joseph, Jack and Tommy were taken in by relatives. It is likely that George and Tommy (Thomas) were one and the same.
Captain John Chilton emboldens the spirit, character and courage of Virginians who sacrificed to obtain independence.
Captain John Chilton is formally recognized as a Patriot Ancestor by both major American lineage societies which are DAR Patriot Ancestor: ID A021605 and SAR Patriot Ancestor: NSSAR ID P‑132544. In 1810, Captain Chilton’s son and heir, Thomas Chilton, filed for and received certification that John Chilton had died in service and was entitled to federal bounty‑land for his wartime service. Kentucky was part of Virginia during the Revolutionary War. Because Chilton served in the Virginia Continental Line, his heirs were entitled to land in the Virginia Military District, which later became part of Kentucky. His children were documented as living in Kentucky.
My second patriot is Private Joseph “Joe” Holt. He was one of the hundreds of Bedford County and other county militia privates who never returned home. He left no letters, no diary, and no battlefield grave. His death survives only in faint traces of county records His loss was as painful to his family as the death of any officer whose name appears in the histories. Holt stands for the thousands of Virginia militia privates whose stories were never written.
We know that The Holt surname appears in Bedford County during the Revolutionary War period in the southern Bedford frontier such as Goose Creek and Otter River. We know that his name disappears from county rolls mid‑war, his heirs appear in compensation contexts but there are no probate records.
Typically, Bedford County militia were used for Reinforcement drafts to the Continental Line during emergencies, frontier defenses against Cherokee and Shawnee, escorting supply wagons and guarding prisoners.
We cannot name a unit, a battle, or place of death. This recognizes the many volunteers that perished without future recognition and gratitude. Joe Holt stands for the thousands of Virginia militia privates whose stories were never written down but their sacrifice means everything.
By the 1860s, Virginia stood at the center of national tension. The expansion of slavery, the rise of sectional politics, and the shock of John Brown’s 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry pushed the Northern and Southern states toward a breaking point. When the secession erupted in 1861, Virginia hesitated and then chose the Confederacy. Western counties refused to follow, setting the stage for the creation of West Virginia two years later. Virginia was the largest slaveholding state by 1830 where enslaved people made up roughly one‑third of its population. The state touched the national capital; it borders on the Northern states and was standing between the North’s troops and the Southern troops excluding Tennessee. The period from April 12, 1861, to May 26, 1865, with the deaths and destruction with its aftermath, is something I will not write about in detail as it is too dark and painful to absorb. I continue to write only of the people.
Towns were wrecked, manufacturing centers destroyed, and farms ruined, looting and foraging unending, loss of food, fences, livestock, families displaced, railways/mills/bridges blown up, plowing fields ruined by battles and livestock seized.
Richmond, Petersburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Manassas, Winchester, Hampton, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Williamsburg, Lexington, Staunton, Charlottesville, Culpeper, New Market, Woodstock and Front Royal had varying degrees of damage, mostly on the severe level.
Approximately 300,000 to 450,000 Virginians were permanently displaced and countless numbers temporarily fleeing their properties. A guess is that half of that displaced count was enslaved peoples fleeing north or west.
I chose a special woman to spotlight for the Civil War period in Virginia, Captain Sally Louisa Tompkins.
Sally was born on November 9, 1833, in Mathews County, Virginia to parents Colonel Christopher Tompkins and Elizabeth Anderson Patterson, both prominent in the Chesapeake region. Christopher Tompkins was a War of 1812 veteran, a wealthy planter and military officer and owned the estate Popular Grove. He died when Sally was five and left her a substantial inheritance. Elizabeth Patterson Tompkins shaped Sally’s life.
She had four surviving siblings during her childhood. Her brother George Tompkins died during the Civil War and her brother Richard Tompkins continue his life in the Tidewater. She was deeply religious and a lifelong Episcopalian who attended St. James Church in Richmond.
When the war started, Sally converted a Richmond home into a hospital for Confederate soldiers. It proved to be exceptionally clean and effective as the survival rates were very good to the point that it had the lowest mortality rate of any Confederate hospital. Because Confederate law required hospitals to be under military command, she was commissioned as a captain although she didn’t draw pay or wear a uniform. Her hospital treated over 1,300 soldiers yet suffered only 73 deaths. The Robertson Hospital was funded entirely by her and she refused reinbursement from the Confederate government.
She spent nearly all her wealth caring for veterans and widows. By the 1890s she was living in a Richmond boarding house supported quietly by friends. She moved into the Louisa Home for Ladies which was a charitable institution she had helped fund decades earlier.
When she died on July 26, 1916, Confederate veterans served as pallbearers, and she was buried with full military honors with her gravestone reading “Captain Sally L. Tompkins C.S.A.”.
Back to Draper’s Meadow we construct the overlay of the Ingles and Draper tracts with new beginnings. It began with the immigration of James Patton and his sister Elizabeth who had married John Preston in Ireland. We know the fate of Col. James Patton with the Shawnee raid in 1755. The fate of Elizabeth and John Preston’s descendants was on a similar path with better results. Their son William Preston (1729-1783) became a major landholder in western Virginia and William’s son, James Patton Preston (1774-1843) became Governor of Virginia and built the Smithfield Plantation in Blacksburg.
James Patton Preston and William Ballard Preston, a Secretary of the Navy, shaped the New River region and made Smithfield Plantation a center of regional influence. Out of this founding of the Preston and Olin Institute om 1851 with the Olin name coming from Stephen Olin who was a Methodist educator and president of Randolph-Macon College.
Fifty-three years earlier in 1798, William Black layed out grids on 38 acres over the old Draper/Ingles grants. William Black was one of the two sons of Samuel Black, who purchased 600 acres in the Draper’s Meadow area in 1772. When Samuel died in 1792, the land was divided between his sons John Black and William Black, each receiving roughly 300 acres. William inherited the portion that would become the core of downtown Blacksburg. on January 13, 1798: The Virginia General Assembly approved his petition to establish the town.
Two decades later in 1872 the Virginia General Assembly purchases the Preston & Olin Institute and established the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College which soon enough was renamed Virginia Agriculture and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute. This was a handful to speak and was generally called VPI. Much of the campus sits on Draper Meadows the fateful homesites of Mary Ingles and her Draper relatives.
In 1937 a young man attending Greenbrier Military School arrived at VPI on a football scholarship after his performance as a halfback at Greenbrier. Herbert J. Thomas Jr. had been born in Columbus, Ohio on February 18,1918 and moved with his parents to Charleston, West Virginia when he was seven. At VPI, he moved from the freshman team to the varsity in 1938. Before his senior year he led all Virginia college players in pass receptions and scoring, earned Virginia All-State College Football Eleven honors and received All-American mention.
He was in the Old Corps, Charlie Company, while the total cadet total was between 750 and 850. Herbert Thomas Jr. departed VPI in July 1941, just five months before Pearl Harbor, to enlist in the Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet. He soon transferred to the Marine Corps with friends.
Herbert J. Thomas Jr. served in the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, 3rd Marine Division. The divisions first major combat operation was the Bougainville campaign, beginning with the landing at Cape Torokina on November 1, 1943. Before this battle, the 3rd Marine Division deployed to the Pacific in mid‑1943, staging and training in the Solomon Islands region.
The 3rd Marines assaulted the Cape Torokina beach under heavy Japanese fire on November 1, 1943. After landing the 3rd pushed inland through thick jungle abounded with snipers and machine gun nests through November 6. Near the Koromokina River west of Cape Torokina, they came under heavy machine gun fire. As a sergeant, Herbert Thomas was in lead of a strong platoon,
By November 7, the situation hardened into a close‑range fight in thick vegetation where visibility was only a few yards. Japanese forces were pushing back fiercely, forcing repeated small‑unit clashes. Thomas’s platoon was moving through this dense terrain when they were pinned by enemy fire. They had already eliminated two machine gun fortifications, but another stopped them. He had his platoon down in a semicircle when he threw a grenade toward the machine gun nest. The grenade struck a close by vine and bounced back. Without hesitation, Sgt. Herbert J. Thomas Jr. threw his body over the grenade, was killed but saved the lives of his platoon. Hours later the Japanese were pushed back.
His remains were returned to the United States after the war and interred at Sunset Memorial Park in South Charleston, West Virginia.
Herbert J. Thomas Jr. was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on May 10, 1944.
In 1952, Virginia Tech (then VPI) dedicated the new Upper Quad dormitory, which was part of the post‑WWII expansion of the Corps of Cadets’ housing, as Thomas Hall.
I was a Rat in the Old Corp in 1963-64 and I was housed in Thomas Hall. Every day I saw and read the brass plaque depicting his medal of honor that was installed at the south entrance. Every day I received inspiration.
Thomas Hall stood over the Ingles tract of the Draper Meadows massacre of 1755.
This is what Draper Meadows looks like today. Note the dolomite quarried stone facing the Gothic Architecture. It was from the sediment layered down by shallow-marine deposits from shells, muds and reefs of the Devonian Inland Sea. This quarry is owned by Virginia Tech, and all buildings are uniquely faced with it.
published by Tee, May 6, 2026