Welcome to another Saturday Night Genealogy challenge (on Sunday) from one of my favorite genealogy bloggers- Genea-Musings. You can see the original post Here.
Last night's challenge was:
1. Choose an ancestor who experienced or did something unique or memorable (such as an event, family life, trip, etc.).
2. Share about your ancestor and his/her unique experience and how it may have affected their life in your own blog post or on your Facebook page. Be sure to leave a link to your report in a comment on this post.
Here's mine:
There are a few ancestors that come to mind with this challenge and two that I definitely want to write about....but I think I'm going to go with--
My 7th Great-Grandfather- Richard Mendenhall
Richard Mendenhall was born on 01 Nov 1737 in Fredrick County, Virginia to Mordecai Mendenhall (1713-1803) and Charity Grubb Beeson (1715-1809). He was the eldest of 10 children.
At the age of 20, Richard married Jane Thornbrugh (1737-1796) on 24 Jun 1758 in New Garden, North Carolina. Together, they had 8 children- John, Richard Jr., Jane, Benjamin, Charity, Margaret, Joseph, and Aaron.
The thing that makes Richard unique is that he would often go scouting for land with Daniel Boone and Daniel Boone's eldest son, James. On October 10, 1773, was the first recorded Indian massacre on the Powell River in Lee County, Virginia. This massacre took the lives of Captain William Russell, James Boone (only 16 years old), a servant boy and then a negro slave and Richard Mendenhall and his brother John. The men were buried where they lay slain.
Richard was only 35 years old.
The spot around where the men were killed, there is a memorial (10 miles east of Cumberland Gap)- this is what it looks like:
Transcription for easy reading:
Death of Boone's Son:
In this valley, on 10 Oct. 1773. Delaware, Shawnee, and Cherokee Indians killed Daniel Boone's eldest son, James, and five others in their group of eight settlers en route to Kentucky. Separated from Daniel Boone's main party, the men had set up camp near Wallen's Creek. At dawn the Indians attacked and killed James Boone, Henry Russell, John and Richard Mendenhall (brothers), a youth whose last name was Drake, and Charles (one of two slaves in the party). Isaac Crabtree and Adam, a slave, escaped. This event prompted Boone adn his party to abandon their first attempt to settle Kentucky.
Transcription for easy reading:
Pioneer Graves
This marks the burial place of a party of white settlers who were surprised in camp and slain by Indians at daybreak, October 10, 1773. Those killed were James Boone, son of Daniel Boone, Henry Russell, son of Capt William Russell, Robert and Richard Mendenhall, brothers, and another unnamed white man. Two escaped, Isaac Crabtree, a white man and Adam, a negro slave of Russell Boone, and Russell buried their sons and the others at the scene of the tragedy and gave up temporarily the first effort of white men to settle Kentucky.
Erected July 10, 1951, by M. Wheeler Kesterson, a native of Lee County, Virginia, age 59 years and a descendant of Mary Russell.
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