John Duncan Killed at Moore's Fort by Chief Logan

By Emory L. Hamilton

From the unpublished manuscript, Indian Atrocities Along the Clinch, Powell and Holston Rivers, page 16.

On September 29, 1774, five days after the murder of the Roberts family, Logan was still on the war path. Secretly lying in wait for anyone who might venture out of Moore's Fort, at Castlewood, in Russell County, which was under the command of Daniel Boone. Between sunset and dark, three men, who went out to visit a pigeon trap about three hundred yards distant from the fort, were fired upon by Logan's warriors. John Duncan was shot dead, but the other two, whose names are not given, reached the fort unhurt.

It was too dark for Boone and the defenders of Moore's Fort to follow that night, and the next day they were unable to find them. (1)

John Duncan, with his brother Raleigh Duncan, had settled in 1773 near the ford of Clinch River, then called Hunter's Ford, but now the village of Dungannon, in Scott County, where he was living at the time he was slain. (2) He, of course, along with his neighbors were refugeeing at Moore's Fort as all the frontier settlers had to spend the time between early spring and late fall in the forts from 1774 until after the last raid on the Virginia frontier when the half breed Chief Benge was slain in 1794. Besides his widow, John Duncan left three known children, one named Martin Duncan who chose William Cowan as his Guardian at a court held for Washington Co., VA, on June 20, 1780, and William and John Duncan, who on August 15, 1780, chose as their guardian, Melcher Oyler. Some might wonder why six years had elapsed before guardians were chosen for infant children, but in early days on the frontier, the distance and dangers from remote settlements to the Court house delayed many legal actions.

(1) Col. Campbell's letter to Col. Preston, dated October 1, 1774, Draper Mss 3 QQ 108; Dunmore's War, pages 214-222.
(2) Augusta County Court Causes Ended, Simon Cockrell vs Duncan.



This file contributed by: Rhonda Robertson


visitor since May 14, 1998


Back to Russell VAGenWeb