William Russell (1735 – January 14, 1793) was an American military officer, planter and politician who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly and for whom several sites are named in Virginia, although he is often confused with his son (William Russell III) who had a similar career in Virginia and Kentucky. Renowned in his day as an Indian fighter, this William Russell participated in military campaigns against the Shaawanwaki (Shawnee), Lenape (Delaware), Mingo, and Aniyvwiya (Cherokee) peoples on the Appalachian frontier, as well as operated commercial enterprises in southwestern Virginia that relied on enslaved labor. Russell County and Russellville, Kentucky are named in his honor.

Early life and education

Russell was born in 1735 in then-huge Orange County in the Virginia Colony (in an area that in 1748 became Culpeper County, as described below). Initially educated near home as befit his class, he traveled to the colony's capital, Williamsburg and finished his formal schooling at the College of William & Mary circa 1754.

His father, also William Russell (circa 1685-1757), had been educated at the Inns of Court in London, and bought a military officer's commission before emigrating to the Virginia Colony. By 1712, the elder Russell had begun speculating in western real estate, purchasing thousands of undeveloped acres from Lord Fairfax in the Northern Neck Proprietary in what became enormous Spotsylvania County a decade later. According to family tradition, the elder Russell in 1716 participated in Governor Alexander Spotswood's westward expedition to the Shenandoah Valley and Appalachian mountains and become a Knight of the Golden Horseshoe. In 1730 he purchased tracts of 10,000 acres and 6,000 acres in the part of Spotsylvania County that became Orange County in 1734, and later Culpeper County in 1748 (in this boy's youth as development proceeded westward). The elder Russell built a home on the old Wilderness Road on acreage extending to the Rapidan River, in the drainage of the streams known as Big Russell and Little Russell Runs. He became active in St. Mark's Parish, as well as a justice of the peace and captain in the Orange County militia (and later lieutenant colonel of the Culpeper militia). In 1735 the elder Russell patented (purchased subject to settlement) 4,950 and 3,650 acre tracts in then-vast Frederick County and additional tracts in then-vast Augusta County, those counties in the Shenandoah Valley and westward having also been formed from Orange county in 1739. In 1741, he purchased two fifths of the Beverly Manor tract of 118,491 acres and became the sales agent for the interests of powerful politician William Beverly in Augusta County, including along the Shenandoah River which the elder Russell had surveyed in 1728 and Beverly and Peter Jefferson surveyed in 1746. After the lopsided Treaty of Lancaster with the Iroquois in 1744 and reading law under Colonel James Taylor, the elder William Russell qualified as a Virginia attorney in 1745. One of his last cases, in 1754, involved a 5000 acre tract in the part of Augusta County that later became Rockingham County, Virginia, and that actually involved 6,600 due to a generous survey, and which this man (his son) sold using an agent in 1767.

In 1730, the elder Russell married Mary Henley, who bore two sons and a daughter, and would survive her husband for decades. In 1743, the elder Russell executed a last will and testament naming his wife as executor for their underage sons William and Henry and daughter Katherine. He added a codicil in 1757 allowing his widow to sell any of his lands to pay his debts "or to buy negroes to be divided among my said children." The documents were admitted to probate in Culpeper County in 1758, but Mary declined to become an executor as did Henry (educated in medicine in England, never married and practicing in the West Indies), so this man buried his father and served as his executor. Their sister Katherine married Mr. Roberts, had sons John and Henry, and was living in Shenandoah County (established 1772 and receiving its current name in 1778) in 1786 and 1793.

In the spring of 1755, this William Russell returned home and instead of continuing his legal education, established a plantation in the northwestern area of Culpeper County near the Hedgman River after marrying Tabitha Adams Moore, as discussed below. In 1763, resolving his father's estate, Russell sold several tracts and began moving his family southwestward into the Blue Ridge Mountains then along the Wood River (now the New River) across the Appalachian Divide. In the interim, as discussed below, Russell had also served as Captain of a company of Rangers under General Braddock in the French and Indian War, and British authorities in 1765 had sent him on a mission to the Native Americans near what became Chattanooga. By 1770 he built a cabin in the Castle's Woods area of the Clinch River in southwestern Virginia. The Russells planned to continue across the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky where Russell owned land possibly inherited from his brother Henry or granted him because of his son Henry's death as described below. However, by 1773 they remained near Castlewood because further travel to the Cumberland Gap was too dangerous because of attacks by Native Americans defending their territory. For protection, Russell fortified his home (which became known as "Russell's Fort").

Personal life

His first wife, the former Tabitha Adams Moore, daughter of a local trader, She maintained the family during his long military and political absences and bore a dozen children before dying in 1776, during one of those absenses, and preceded by their daughters Katherine and Arthelia (who died as children) and son Henry (who died during a quasi-military expedition discussed below). Until her father remarried, their eldest daughter, then 16-year old Mary Henley Russell (who would marry Capt. Bowen) cared for her siblings, including brothers William Russell III and Robert Spotswood Russell (both of whom later joined their father's troops and later continued their father's military and political careers and businesses), sister Tabitha (who soon married Capt. Campbell), and youngsters John, Samuel, Celeh, Henley and Chloe. Because Russell considered their Clinch River home unsafe after the Revolutionary War began, the family to a farm adjoining the Aspenville tract of Col. William Campbell on the Holston River near Seven Mile Ford.

His second wife, Elizabeth Henry Campbell, was the widow of General William Campbell. Campbell had been Russell's longtime friend and a hero of the Battle of King's Mountain but died in 1781 during the Yorktown Campaign. She was the sister of Patrick Henry, a frontier Virginia attorney who became its governor. Her son had died before this marriage, so she brought only her daughter Sally Buchanan Campbell (who later married Col. and future Congressman Francis Preston of Montgomery County) to the marriage, which produced four additional children — Henry Winston Russell (who died as an infant), Elizabeth Henry Russell, and twins Patrick Henry Russell and Jane Robertson Russell. Her husband, this William Russell, converted to Methodism in 1788 and Bishop Asbury visited their home and often corresponded with the family. Thus, Russell did not return to the Clinch River area, nor move to Kentucky as did his namesake son and later several other children, but continued to live at Aspenville near Seven Mile Ford in Washington County, about ten miles from the saltworks discussed below. His widow survived him by more than thirty years and became influential in the early history of the Methodist Church in America, remarrying Capt. Frank Smith in January 1804 but dying later that year. Her house near Sulfur Springs in Smythe County was sold to the Methodist Conference and became a Female School. Although many of Russell's children moved to Kentucky, some descendants remained in what became Russell and Scott Counties in Virginia. After the war and his marriage, the third-eldest son, Robert S. Russell (named for Governor Spotswood's son who had died in an Indian raid in 1755) traveled up the Shenandoah valley, where he and his father-in-law helped found Front Royal and he served in the House of Delegates before moving to Kentucky soon after his father's death and serving there as a representative and general of Kentucky's 3rd brigade in the War of 1812, then eventually selling his Poplar Hill plantation on the banks of the Elkhorn river and moving to Missouri in 1835. Meanwhile, this William Russell and his son in law Rev. Hubbard Saunders (who married Chloe Russell) visited Front Royal when traveling in the Shenandoah Valley, including during his final trip described below.

Military leader

Russell enlisted as an ensign during the French and Indian War, and rose to become captain of a group of Rangers. In 1765 British authorities sent him to visit the Cherokee near what became Chattanooga. He spent a year on that dangerous mission, leaving his wife home to deal with their small children and the plantation.

In September 1773, Russell, his eldest son (Henry, then 17 years old) and several slaves joined an 80-person expedition led by Daniel Boone across the Cumberland Gap. They left Fort Russell with 20 men under the command of Sergeant W. Peago, with Fort Blackamore staffed by 1 men under the command of Sergent Moore, Fort Moore with 20 men commanded by Lt. Daniel Boone, Fort Glade Hollow and Elk Garden commanded by Sgt. Kinkead. The expedition was part of a pattern of settler encroachment despite the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which had explicitly forbidden colonial settlement west of the Appalachians. Indigenous nations had been defending this territory against such incursions for years. They called the area Kain-tuck-ee — unceded hunting grounds of the Shaawanwaki (Shawnee), Lenape (Delaware), Mingo, and Aniyvwiya (Cherokee).

On October 10, 1773, Shaawanwaki, Lenape, and Mingo warriors attacked a scouting party to repel the invasion in Powell Valley. Henry Russell and one of his Negro men as well as James Boone (eldest son of Daniel Boone), were among the six killed, and whom Russell helped bury. The surviving settlers withdrew, Russell to his 2400 acre tract in the Clinch Valley. While colonial accounts framed the attack as an unprovoked ambush; the warriors were defending territory that was legally and historically theirs.

The deaths were used to justify Lord Dunmore's War (1774). In that year Russell first commanded an expedition against the Shawnee, then led a company in the Battle of Point Pleasant on October 10, 1774, and later commanded a garrison at Kanawha until July 1775. The war ended with the Treaty of Camp Charlotte, under which the Shaawanwaki were coerced into surrendering their hunting rights south of the Ohio River — a major dispossession that opened the region to accelerated settler colonization. Historians including Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz have identified Lord Dunmore's War as a deliberate precursor to the systematic forced removal of Native nations from the Ohio Valley.[citation needed]

During the American Revolutionary War, Russell initially received a commission as captain, and was promoted to colonel in 1776, and given responsibility for defending the border with Virginia and Tennessee, including along the Holston and Wautauga Rivers (his first wife dying during that absence). His sons William III and Robert would eventually enlist under General William Campbell. By 1777 his 13th Virginia regiment was part of Brigadier General Peter Muhlenberg's brigade and General Greene's division at the Battle of Germantown before transferring to the 5th Virginia Regiment in 1778. He probably fought at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778, but by December 1779 the Virginia line now commanded by General William Woodford was sent to defend Charleston. They arrived on April 10, 1780 and were surrendered about a month later. Russell corresponded directly with George Washington regarding the deployment of his troops, although none of his military letters during after 1779 survive, including none from his six months as a prisoner of war (due to fire years after his death). Russell rejoined the Continental Line and was present at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. On November 15, 1783, he was brevetted to the rank of Brigadier General upon the disbanding of the 5th Virginia Regiment, and retires on half pay for the rest of his life, as well as received large land bounties in the Green River section of Kentucky.

Politician

Russell was elected a justice of the peace for once-vast Fincastle County, Virginia, the justices in that era jointly also administering the county.[citation needed] In 1776, Fincastle County voters elected Russell and Arthur Campbell as their representatives to the Fifth (and final) Virginia Convention, which ultimately accepted the Declaration of Independence. They succeeded William Christian and Stephen Trigg, who represented the county at the previous Revolutionary Conventions (with Robert Doak who had been one of the new county's first representatives to the House of Burgesses alongside William Christian in 1773 also participating on this county's behalf in the First Revolutionary Convention). Russell and Campbell then became Fincastle County's first representatives in the new Virginia House of Delegates in 1776.

Several years after the creation of Washington County from part of Fincastle County, Russell won election and re-election to the Virginia House of Delegates from that county. In his last term in the House of Delegates, he proposed the bill dividing Washington County, with the area in which he lived becoming a county named after him. Russell won election to the Virginia Senate in 1788, to a district including both Russell and Washington Counties, as well as the counties which would spit off and become the State of Kentucky, and other counties which would long after his lifetime become the state of West Virginia. During his last two years of legislative service, his son Robert S. Russell represented Shenandoah County in the Virginia House of Delegates. Russell died before the 1793 session, and John Preston replaced him.

At the conclusion of the war, Russell became an original member of the Society of the Cincinnati, an hereditary organization of Revolutionary War officers who had received substantial land grants as compensation for military service.

Planter and businessman

After the war, Russell operated salt works at Saltville, Virginia. Salt production in western Virginia during this period relied extensively on enslaved labor, to cut wood and maintain fires to boil off the naturally saline water until crystals could be harvested. Slaves were hired out from eastern Virginia plantations to perform such work.[citation needed] The Virginia tax census of 1787 for Washington County showed General William Russell (distinguished from another non-slaveowning man of the same name) taxed as owner of six enslaved adults and one child, as well as nine horses and 21 cattle. Only Washington County resident James Thompson (10 adult and 12 enslaved children) and nonresident Thomas Madison (12 adult and 7 enslaved children) paid taxes for more enslaved people in that section of Washington County (part of Saltville being split upon the creation of Smyth County in 1832, long after this man's death). The names of enslaved people have not been formally documented in published histories, though records may exist in Library of Virginia collections and the Virginia Untold project.

Russell held 20,000 acres of land in and around the Shenandoah Valley, wealth accumulated through military land grants that displaced Indigenous peoples who had inhabited and stewarded the region for generations.[citation needed]

Death and legacy

Russell disliked travelling to Richmond in the winter to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates. During his last trip up the Shenandoah Valley, he caught a severe cold. Despite treatment by physicians at Front Royal, he died on January 14, 1793, also attended by his son Robert S. Russell and sister Mrs. Roberts. He was originally buried on in the family cemetery near Little Fork Church,, reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery on July 7, 1943.

The following place names honor Russell, reflecting his celebrated status among white settler contemporaries:

See also

  • William Russell: a Revolutionary patriot of the Clinch Valley by Mary Katherine Thorp, Master's Thesis, University of Virginia, 1936.
  • Library of Virginia, Virginia Untold project.