Martin Station

... the Historic Martin
Station!
Historic
Martin's Station is an outdoor living history museum at Wilderness Road State
Park featuring the most authentically re-constructed frontier fort in America.
Virginia's frontier comes alive with costumed interpreters providing
demonstrations depicting life in colonial America. And as you leave this small
frontier settlement, you may find yourself looking back one last time, and you
will soon realize that not only have you touched history, history has touched
you! (oh yeah)
History
The original
Martin's Station played a relatively short but significant part in the history
of southwestern Virginia and the early settlement of Kentucky. The station
takes its name from Joseph Martin, who was born cir. 1740 in Albemarle County,
Virginia. Following a somewhat restless early life which included service in
the French and Indian War, Joseph Martin became the overseer for a wealthy
relative who was closely connected with Dr. Thomas Walker. This connection with
Dr. Walker proved valuable for Joseph Martin, who would eventually be selected
by Dr. Walker to lead an expedition into the Powell's Valley.
To help assert the
legitimacy of his land claims to the Powell's Valley region, Dr. Walker
organized an expedition and promised Joseph Martin 21,000 acres if his group
were first to settle on the land. On March 26, 1769, after an arduous journey
through the wilderness and a literal race with a rival expedition, Joseph
Martin's group entered Powell's Valley - two weeks ahead of the others.
Joseph Martin and
the members of his expedition identified a tract of land near the present-day
village of Rose Hill, Virginia. They erected a stockaded fort, some crude
cabins, and planted a corn crop. These efforts at settlement proved to be
useless, as an Indian attack occurred in the fall of 1769 and the station was
abandoned before the corn ripened. Joseph Martin and his men returned to
Albemarle County, but retained title to their land.
Indians Attacking
Martin's StationJoseph Martin would not be long absent from the station, and in
January 1775 returned to Powell's Valley with a party of 16 or 18 men. They set
about to build a more permanent station, which included four or five cabins for
the men and a stockade, on the site of the old station.
The importance of
the station greatly increased when on 17 March 1775 the thirty-two million acre
Transylvania Purchase between Judge Richard Henderson and the Cherokee Indians
was finalized at the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River. Joseph Martin was
appointed by Henderson as an agent and entry taker, a duty that would keep him
constantly moving in and out of Martin's Station. As the last fortified station
along the Wilderness Road prior to reaching the new lands Henderson was opening
in Kentucky, Martin's Station was a well-known stop for the early settlers.
Do you dare to engage?
http://www.historicmartinsstation.com/
"And no man knew better how to make the best of a crisis, nor could
any carry the most awful terror in one hand and the olive branch in the other,
more successfully than he could. Few men better understood the secret spring of
the human heart."
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