LORD DUNMORE�S  MENDACITY

     Lord Dunmore, the English  Colonial Governor of Virginia,  organized  an ostensible  campaign against Shawnee Indians who had been marauding and terrorizing the settlers  on the frontier.  One force was to be approximately 1,000 militiamen from Northern Virginia and  Redcoats  under the command of Lord Dunmore.

     Another force of approximately 1,100 militiamen , from western Virginia  was to meet Lord Dunmore�s force at Point Pleasant, now in West Virginia at the Ohio border.  It was under the command of  Colonial General Andrew Lewis.

     Lord Dunmore had been conniving with Chief Cornstalk and did not intend to arrive at Point Pleasant.  This was to lead the southern column into a trap and take the steam out of settler�s desires for western expansion by decimating the settlers.  He hoped to make an alliance with the Indians in order to aid in his wars with the French.

     On October 10, 1774, the southern column barely escaped complete surprise and in a day long battle managed to win.  This win made it impossible for Lord Dunmore to make an alliance with the Indians and in all probability  had an effect on the American Revolution.

     I had four ancestors in that battle. John Cooke, the first permanent settler in Wyoming County, now West Virginia, Captain Ralph Stewart, William Mitchell Clay and his son, Mitchell Clay.  The son , Mitchell was the first permanent settler in Mercer County, West Virginia. (See Ancestors section of �West Virginia Roadbuilders� for history of all four men.)

     William Mitchell Clay, after marching from Rock Bridge County, Virginia , a distance of over 300 miles, at the age of 62 or 64,  was killed a month before the battle while he and a man named Coward were ambushed while out hunting deer to feed the advancing column.  (He probably  was there because the dangers on the frontier called for an �all hands evolution� in modern terms.)   He thus became the first military casualty of the American Revolution.

     This battle had a far reaching effect on the Revolution.  After it, Patrick Henry told the militiamen to �Go home and arm yourself against the British.�  It was the inspiration of his famous,  � Give me Liberty or Give Me Death� speech. It also prevented Lord Dunmore from making an alliance with the Indians, which might have had an adverse effect on the Revolution.

     Alas, this is not the end, Mitchell Clay, son of William Mitchell Clay , was given a grant of 803 acres in the Clover Bottom in what is now Mercer County, West Virginia.  Mitchell Clay moved his family to this land in 1775, becoming the first settler in the county.  William Mitchell Clay�s and Mitchell Clay�s sacrifice did not save their grandchildren and children.

            The marker put up by the state of West Virginia reads as follows:

                                                        MITCHELL CLAY

�Here Mitchell Clay settled in 1775.  Eight years later Indians killed two of his children and captured his son, Ezekiel.  Pursuers killed several of the Indians but the boy was taken into Ohio and burned at the stake.�

                                           W. Va. Department of Archives and History

A tombstone reads:

     �In memory of Bartley and Tabitha Clay, massacred by Shawnee Indians, August 1783, children of Mitchell and Phoebe Clay, first settlers of Mercer County,�

                                                     RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

     A Commission is now in the process of  buying up the land and establishing a Clay family commemorative park on the land occupied by Mitchell Clay and family.

     On the monument authorized by the Senate in 1908, William Mitchell Clay was listed as -----------CLAY, killed. There are also plans to include a monument in the Clay Memorial Park which recognizes him as the first American military casualty of the American Revolution. After 226 years from his death, it is deserved.

Henry T. Cook, Lt. Col., USMC (Ret.)
Many greats grandson of all four men. 
15 June 2000