Column: Past Times

When people think of Martinsville, the county seat of Henry County, the Martinsville Speedway, or perhaps, its past industry leadership in furniture, tobacco products and textiles come to mind.

Yet the founder of the city, a man of huge character and personality whose personal courage and daring played an important role in the opening of the Southwest Virginia and Tennessee frontiers, has been largely ignored by historians. He lived a life of folklore proportion, a man who was larger-than-life and from an early age, was truly the captain of his fate(s).

The son of planter Joseph Martin and Susannah Chiles, Joseph Martin Jr. was born in 1740 and raised in Albemarle County. Joseph Martin Sr. was the son of a wealthy British merchant in Bristol, England, who sent his son to Virginia as "supercargo" (a working passenger) on a ship called the Brice (for which a number of Martin children were named). When Martin Sr. advised his English father that he planned to marry the daughter of a common Virginia Colonist, the enraged father wrote back and informed his son of his disinheritiance.

Martin Jr. was not interested in following the farming footsteps of his father. In 1756, as a rebellious 16-year-old, he ran away from a carpenter's apprenticeship to join the army to fight in the French and Indian War at Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh), where he served alongside another young Virginian, the Revolutionary War hero, Thomas Sumter.

After his service, Martin headed for the Virginia frontier, where he gained important experience as a real estate speculator, trapper, fur trader and American Indian fighter, all of which eventually gave him a reputation as an accomplished explorer.

Martin was of large stature for his time, more than 6 feet tall and about 200 pounds with a commanding appearance and a braided beard that he tucked into his waistband.

His son, William, described him:

"No man could approach him with indifference, though easy of access, manners bland and courteous, an intellect of the highest order and a spirit which knew not fear. And in him was combined what rarely happens in any one individual; physical and mental powers of superior order [yet he could not read or write], and a spirit of the most energetic, romantic, intrepid, daring enterprise, which fitted him well for the theatre on which circumstances called him to act -- the western frontier of the English settlements, then bounded by a cordon of powerful tribes of hostile ferocious Indians."

An entertaining episode arose on Sumter and Martin's return from their tour of duty at Fort Pitt. The two got separated and when Joseph arrived at Staunton, he was surprised to find his friend jailed for debt.

Martin was granted the favor of remaining in jail overnight with his friend. He had 10 guineas and a tomahawk. As the story goes, the tomahawk may have come from anywhere, but the money was probably the fruit of Martin's ruling vice -- gambling.

He left both the guineas and the tomahawk with Sumter, who used the gold to gain his release. It was 30 years before the two men met again and Sumter repaid the money.

In 1762, Joseph Martin married Sarah Lucas, who, according to their son William, was "a woman of the first order, but poor."

Faced with new obligations, Martin settled down to a livelihood that ill suited him -- farming. But then Martin benefitted from a stroke of luck, one of several in his lifetime. Martin's English relatives, feeling remorse at the elder Joseph having been denied his inheritance because he had married "beneath his station" in America, offered to share his grandfather's estate if a representative was sent to England.

Since Martin Sr. was dead, the family chose Martin Jr. to represent him.

Passage was booked on a ship, but Martin was delayed and the ship sailed without him. It was lost at sea with all aboard.

Denied his fortune, another opportunity presented itself. The "long hunts" (fur trading, also called peltry), which began about this time, were more in tune with Martin's character. He made four of these annual, immensely profitable hunts.

He was an expert gambler, willing to take bold risks, a good fighter, yet even-tempered. He was an excellent woodsman and a veteran of three years of frontier militia fighting. All these qualities combined to make his hunts successful enough to start him on a road to wealth. The last of these annual wilderness trips ended in 1768.

Martin then became overseer for a wealthy relative whose name is given simply as Minor in existing records. Minor was also closely connected by both blood and business with Dr. Thomas Walker, a famous frontiersman from Virginia who gained fame in Kentucky explorations before Daniel Boone (it was Walker who named the Cumberland Gap).

Minor suggested that Walker secure Martin's services for a proposed trip of exploration and settlement in Southwest Virginia. Walker may have known of Martins' reputation for many years since both were from Albemarle County. His selection of Martin to head the expedition to Powell's Valley in what is now east Tennessee laid the groundwork for the first of two turning points in Martin's life.

Twenty years earlier, in 1749, a group of Virginians, including Dr. Walker, formed the great Ohio Company, which was given a grant of 800,000 acres of land. The terms of this grant did not limit the company to any one area within the Colony of Virginia for location of this land, and it did not require that tracts of land be any specified size -- merely that the total acreage taken up by the company could not exceed 800,000 acres, and that there be no prior valid claim.

Walker had made a trip of exploration in the 1750s, which had led to his discovery of what is now Kentucky. His path led through Powell's Valley, which had been named for one of his party. It was to solidify his claim to the fertile lands of Powell's Valley, adjacent to the strategic Cumberland Gap, that Walker organized a later expedition and promised Martin 21,000 acres of land plus pay for services.

The only condition was that the Martin expedition must be the first to settle on the land. If this condition were not fulfilled, other comers would get 1,000 acres each and Martin's group nothing.

If the conditions were successfully met by Martin's forces, they were to have a document from Walker assuring them of the validity of their claim. It was a gamble, and nothing appealed to Joseph Martin Jr. as much as gambling.

After a long, weary and treacherous journey, where the group became lost on several occasions, they finally found Powell's Valley. Martin's party staked off a 21,000-acre tract near what is now the village of Rose Hill, 100 miles beyond any previous settlement. Here, they built a large stockaded fort. However, their fortune was short-lived when American Indians ran Martin's men off before their crops ripened. They returned to Albemarle County, but retained title to their land.

During this trip to Powell's Valley, Martin established his credentials as an accomplished explorer. Daniel Boone and his party of explorers were stunned upon their subsequent arrival in Powell's Valley. They discovered that Martin and his 20-man party had beaten them there. It was beyond the farthest reaches that Boone and his long hunters had explored. Martin's reputation as an explorer of the frontier was assured.

On Aug. 25, 1774, Martin was commissioned a captain of the Pittsylvania County militia by Lord Dunmore, Virginia's last Colonial governor. Although Martin returned to his farm in Henry County, his commission as captain was routinely renewed when Dunmore's rule was superseded by the Committee of Public Safety when Virginia became a commonwealth.

A few months before the renewal of Martin's commission by the public safety committee, another event took place which had great impact on Martin's fortunes. It was the largest American real estate transaction to date, the "sale" of 32 million acres of land for $50,000 in merchandise -- the Transylvania purchase.

Judge Richard Henderson made this transaction at the site of Elizabethton, Tenn., on March 17, 1775. Although Martin was not present at the sale, he was appointed agent and entry-taker (receiver of fees for land purchases and surveys) for Powell's Valley by Henderson.

During the Revolutionary War, it was the efforts of Martin (then a major) that helped prevent the Cherokee Nation from launching widespread attacks on American colonists, which British Loyalist agents had attempted to incite. Following the British capture of Savannah and Augusta, Ga., in 17781779, English goods made their way to the Cherokee Nation on the Savannah River, prompting some tribesmen to rejoin the English cause.

By the end of the Revolution, Martin's place as chief Colonial Indian agent was secure. In the fall of 1783, the State of Virginia built a new fort at the Cumberland Gap, replacing an older fort which was judged to lie within the boundaries of North Carolina. The new Virginia fort was designed as the primary residence for Martin while he was in the region on official business.

Gen. Martin and Gov. Patrick Henry kept a long running correspondence through the years, some of which concerned real estate speculation. Other letters recounted Martin's dealings with the American Indian tribes, as well as settlement efforts in Tennessee. As late as 1790, Patrick Henry wrote Joseph Martin concerning a real estate investment, holding out the hope, Henry noted, that Martin might finally capitalize on his long service to Virginia.

"After all the Hazards you have run," Henry wrote, "you have not acquired so much property as many others would have done in your situation, I was desirous to throw something in your way by which some fine lands would have been offered to you in our purchase."

Martin received his highest commission in November 1777 when Henry appointed him superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Commonwealth of Virginia. The appointment specified that Martin was to take up his residence in the American Indian nation, yet he preferred to remain close to his holdings in Powell's Valley.

He used an ingenious method to solve his dilemma, establishing residence on the Long Island of the Holston, presumably on the lower, more fertile end of the 1,000-acre island. He added to the residence, for his comfort, a half-Cherokee "wife" having at the same time his lawfully wedded wife, Sarah Lucas Martin, at home in Henry County.

Some suggest that some of Martin's neglect by his contemporaries and by posterity is because of this "irregular" act. Yet, with the exception of his son, William, none of the family in Henry County was reported to have been the least bit upset by this act. There is strong evidence that this connection not only saved Martin's life, but that of the settlements in the area, for his half-Cherokee "wife" was Betsy Ward, the daughter of Nancy Ward, one of the most famous Indian women at the close of the 18th century. Nancy Ward was the niece of the "Little Carpenter," or Attakullakulla, the "emperor" of the Cherokees.

The succeeding years were full of overlapping posts, honors and duties all of which Martin seems to have successfully managed without consideration of his own comfort or personal feelings. His wife (with whom he had seven children) died in 1782 and Martin married Susanna Graves in 1784 (with whom he had 11 children), all the while retaining his American Indian wife -- a fact he did not withhold from Graves.

In 1789, when American Indian affairs became a federal matter, Martin's long tenure as agent ended. He sold his huge holdings in Powell's Valley and his land near Long Island and returned to Henry County. His Indian wife went to South Carolina to live with her aging mother, Nancy Ward. It is interesting that Betsy Ward visited Martin's family in Henry County and it was reported that she was graciously received by the second Mrs. Joseph Martin Jr.

Martin, on his return to Southside Virginia, began yet another career in the Virginia House of Delegates. In 1793, he was appointed brigadier general for his militia district by the governor of Virginia. Several years later, he was on the commission to settle the line between Virginia and Kentucky.

Ten years later, in the summer of 1808, he made a long journey at the request of the government through the American Indian territories, armed with a safe-conduct signed by the secretary of war.

He returned in the autumn of 1808, feeble and worn out. Soon after Thanksgiving, he suffered a stroke. He died on Dec. 18, 1808, at 68, after a life, as noted by Gordon Aronheim, "remarkable as it is in rich detail, is not half so astounding as the fact that it has been completely ignored by historians."

Sources: "The WPA Virginia Guide to the Old Dominion, 1940 Google Books"; "Biography of Joseph Martin Tennessee Society of the Sons of the Revolution"; Biographical Sketch of General Joseph Martin, William Martin, Virginia Historical Society, 1903