Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 2.djvu/401

 348

VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

The Clevelands have become illustrious. One of Den's granddaughters married Sen- ator Thomas J. Rusk, and another Gov. C. J. McDonald of Georgia, and a great-niece, Judge Underwood of Rome, Georgia. His sister's son was Gov. Franklin, of North Carolina. His brother's son, Jerry, was the patriarch of Greenville, and another, Jesse, of Spartanburg. North Carolina named a county after him, and a monument to the niemory of him and the other heroes stands on the historic King's Mountain, conse- crated by patriotic valor, while his family have erected one at Ben Cleveland, Oconee county. South Carolina. He died in Tugalo valley. Oconee. South Carolina, October, 1806.'

Martin, Joseph, born in Albemarle county, Virginia, in 1740, son of Joseph Martin. The father, born in Bristol, England, of a wealthy family, was sent out by his father, as super- cargo of the Brict% and, on coming to Vir- ginia, married Susannah Chiles, daughter of a respectable and well-to-do planter. This marriage offended the pride of the father, who disinherited the son, believing with many other Englishmen, that the colonists were "an inferior, degraded set;'' the son never returned to England, and in Virginia he reared five sons and six daughters, "all of unusually large stature, and in other re- spects above mediocrity," and from whom descended a large and widely dispersed line of Wallers, Carrs, Lewises, Marks, Over- tons. Minors. Chiles, and others. Joseph Martin, whose name begins this narrative, was the third son of this family, and became a man of fine ability and commanding pres- ence. Impetuous in his youth, he gave little attention to schooling, and his education

was limited. He was bound out to a carpen- ter, but his ardent temperament would not admit of his being confined to such a call- ing, and he left his master and joined the army at Fort Pitt, in his sixteenth year. While in the ranks, he met, as a fellow sol- dier, Thomas (afterward General Sumter, whom, after a separation of thirty years, he was destined to meet again, he being a mem- ber of the Virginia legislature, and Sumter a member of congress. After his return from the army, he went to the West, about 1768. with a party of fur trappers and traders, and on this journey he discovered the famous "Powell's \'alley." At a place which came to be known as **Martin's Station," in \'ir- gfinia. on the west thoroughfare to Ken- tucky, they cleared land and planted corn, but in the summer the Indians broke up the settlement, and the party returned home. Martin now became overseer for one Minor, and after a time removed to Pittsylvania county, where he bought a tract of land. In year of 1776 he recruited a company and took part in the war against the Cherokees, and he was connected with the peace treaty commission in the following year, and was designated by the government to reside on the "Island of Peace," now in Sullivan coun- ty, Tennessee, and he so remained until 1789. He was elected to the North Carolina legislature, was brigadier-general of militia, and frequently campaigned against the In- dians. In 1785 he was one of the commis- sioners to organize a new county in Georgia, and in 1788 he was a member of the North Carolina convention called to act upon the new United States constitution, which he favored, though the convention rejected it; he was also a member of the convention the next year, and which ratified that instru-

Digitized by

Google