County’s Revolutionary history topic of discussion

By CAITLIN SULLIVAN/Staff

We’re living on bloody soil here in Washington County. Plantations were burned along Holston Lake. The Cherokee massacred residents. And then Cherokee scouts were hanged from palisades at Black’s Fort.
It was where the Abingdon Public Works Department sits now, according to Lawrence Fleenor.
As part of the Arts Array “When Courage Was Common: Colonial History Lecture Series” at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center last week, Fleenor walked the 65 people in the audience through some 18th century history of Washington County and parts of Southwest Virginia.
Fleenor’s lecture focused on Black’s Fort.
Joseph Black built the fort atop salt licks and a mineral spring in 1774. The salt brought in the deer, which Black killed and sold the skins to make leather.
The three acres that comprised Black’s Fort was heavily fortified. There was no space between the logs on the homes. The chimneys were inside the cabins. And the upper story hung over the lower level. All served to protect the fort’s inhabitants from their enemies - the Cherokee and the British loyalists.
So who were the early settlers?
“What we’ve chosen to forget is a third of the settlers were Tories, the other third were Whigs and the other third wished the others would go away,” Fleenor said.
Tories were loyalists, settlers allied with the British who believed in monarchism and who teamed with the local Cherokees. The Whigs were patriot settlers. They supported the war for independence.
Fleenor said in the battles of 1776 between the British, Tories, Whigs and Cherokees, 400 patriot settlers ended up piling into Black’s Fort for cover.
“The Public Works Department here in Abingdon expanded and dug up some palisades and these palisades had numerous arrow heads embedded in them,” Fleenor said. “The British and the Cherokee came close to wiping out the settlements here.”
According to Fleenor, the militia forts in the area were built to prevent invasions from the north and protected the emigrants moving along the Wilderness Road into Kentucky.
On his Web site, Fleenor wrote, “In 1776, the Great Cherokee War broke out, with the Cherokee making a frontal assault against the Holston settlements from the south, and with a second drive coming from the west up Powell Valley. The settlements were largely abandoned in Lee County and western Scott County, and in the main Valley of the Holston from Kingsport to Abingdon. During the Great Cherokee War of 1776, great numbers of refugees were created when the Cherokee drove the settlers out of Lee County.  Many initially went to Carter’s Fort in Rye Cove, and when that fort was laid siege to, they were then sent on to Fort Blackmore.  The Holston Militia planned a counterattack on the Cherokee settlements in the Smokey Mountains, and decided that they could not do so and maintain a garrison at Fort Blackmore.  The refugees there were sent on into the interior to Houston’s Fort on Big Moccasin Creek east of present Gate City, Virginia.”
Although there was never any sustained battle at Black’s Fort, its survival depended on the success of surrounding battles like Rye Cove.
“I think all of this is tragically forgotten,” he said. “I think we can be proud of the Holston militia; it saved this area a number of times.”
He said there were raids by the Cherokee in this area until 1794. In the end, he said, the Cherokee were defeated as a cohesive threat.
“There would have been no Yorktown if Black’s Fort had been defeated,”
Fleenor said.
According to British documents, 1,919 Native Americans were involved in the war of 1776.
“Conveniently there are no records of Tory’s,” he said. “We love to brag how we beat the British, but when we got there Ferguson was the only British. All the rest were good ‘ol Tory boys from around here.” And another part of history often forgotten around here, said Fleenor, is that Daniel Boone swore twice, publicly, allegiance to King George. He was a Tory, too.
“I’m sure a lot of people in this room were Tories,” Fleenor said. “The Revolutionary War was the first civil war in the United States and we might as well accept that.”
The Arts Array Colonial History Lecture Series will end Oct. 29 with the film “Melungeon Voices” at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.
To contact Caitlin Sullivan e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call (276) 628-7101.