Capture of Hugh Logan and (One) Gibson

By Emory L. Hamilton

From the unpublished manuscript, Indian Atrocities Along the Clinch, Powell and Holston Rivers, page 135.

In the same letter in which Col. Joseph Martin writes to the Governor concerning the killing of Mrs. John Wallen and the attack on the Cox home, he continues:

On the 12th ultimo one Hugh Logan and one Gibson, came into the neighborhood of Long Island, who informed that on the 12th of February last, (1785) they were taken prisoner by the Creek Indians, and were carried by them as far as the head of Mobile. That they were blackened and was to be burnt; that they made their escape one night; that they traveled seven days without sustenance, at last fell in with some of the Chicamauga Indians who took care of them and sent them to the Old Towns. They say that one of the Indians who took them talks good English, who informed them that they had taken 4 scalps from Cumberland and a Negro boy. That they had been trying to provoke the Virginians to fight them ever since he was a little boy, but that the Virginians would not be angry with them. That they, this year, intended to watch the Kentucky Road, also to attack (the) Cumberland settlements (Tennessee) and roast the said prisoner’s jackets, and see if that would not provoke the Virginians.

Where Logan and Gibson had been captured is not clear from Martin’s letter. The capture could have occurred in either Virginia or Tennessee. I find record of one Hugh Logan in the court of Botetourt Co., but whether this is the same I cannot tell. I find this Hugh Logan serving as Juror in Botetourt on November 15, 1770 and again on February 9, 1774. On October 11, 1791 he was appointed Guardian for David Woods, son of John Woods, deceased, and on August 10, 1780, Hugh Logan and Sarah, his wife, sell land on the south side of James River to Dubertis Shepherd. Since Gibson’s christian name is not given, it is impossible to trace him in any records.



This file contributed by: Rhonda Robertson


visitor since May 17, 1998


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