- "At the first light of false dawn, April 6th 1794, found Chief Bob Benge of the Chickamauga Cherokee and six warriors resting behind the brow of a little hill to the rear of the home of William Todd Livingston. Actually, William Todd had died in 1776, and the plantation was occupied by his widow, Sarah, and two of their sons, Peter and Henry, and their families. Peter and Henry (Harry) were lieutenants in the Holston [VA] Militia.
"A little before ten in the morning Peter and Henry left their house to go to a barn that was at some distance away. Sarah was working in her garden. Henry's new wife of only three weeks, Susannah, who was called 'Sukey', was in an out building with some of Peter and Elizabeth's children. Also, within the farm yard were Elizabeth's sister Sukey, a 'wench' with her child, a Negro man belonging to Edward Callihan, and a Negro boy aged eight. Elizabeth, along with her children aged ten and two and a suckling infant were in the house.
"Elizabeth was alarmed by a dog's barking and saw seven frightfully painted Indians come running through the farm yard, and she barred the door to the cabin shut. The Indians tried unsuccessfully to knock the door down, and failing that Benge demanded that she open it. When she did not do so, they fired twice at it, with one ball piercing the door, but doing no damage. Elizabeth then took her husband's double triggered rifle down, and for a time fumbled with the mechanism before she, too, fired blindly through the door. The Indians backed off a little, and then sat fire to an adjoining old house. After enduring the smoke as long as she and the children could, Elizabeth opened the door and came out. The Indians thought that a man had fired the shot from within the house and were afraid to enter it, and let it burn down instead. Elzabeth was glad to see her possessions go up in smoke rather than to see the Indians have them.
"Benge and his war party tomahawked Sarah in her garden. She took four days to die. Also tomahawked were one white child and two colored; one of whom was killed but the other recovered. The Indians rounded up the remainder, which were Elizabeth, the three children who had been with her in the house, Susannah, two Negro men, and one colored woman.
"Elizabeth handed her infant to her ten year old, and whispered for her to take it and her two year old to their nearest neighbors, John and Rachel Russell. Rachel was the sister of Vincent Hobbs, Jr. It seems that the Indians were content to allow the children to slip off.
"When Henry and Peter Livingston saw the smoke from their burning home, they hurried back and discovered the disaster. The plan to mousetrap Benge that had been organized by Vincent Hoobs, Jr. after Benge's raid of the year before was set in motion.
"Either late on the seventh or early on the eighth [of April 1794], Vincent Hobbs, Jr. and a party of militia consisting of men from both the Benham's Fort party and from the Lee County Militia left Yoakum's Station and started for the two passes in Cumberland Mountain that he had found the year before. The party consisted of Vincent Hobbs, Jr. and his brothers Job and Absolom, James Huff, John Benbever, Adam Ely, Samuel Livingston, George Yokum, _____ Dotson, and five others.
[On the morning of 9 April, 1794.] "The militia party soon saw the Indian party struggling up the spur of Little Stone Mountain, climbing up out of Hoot Owl Hollow toward Little Stone Gap, burdened by their plunder. Sure enough Benge was in front, preceded only by Susannah Livingston. The two parties came exactly opposite each other, when John Benbever raised his head to see if it was time for him to shoot. Benge spotted him, not forty yards away, and threw off his pack and turned to run back down the trail. Benbever fired at him and missed. Hobbs leveled his twenty pound bear rifle at a break in the trees where Benge must pass, and swinging his flintlock with his quarry and allowing for the two second delay in firing between the time he squeezed the trigger and the time it fired, he shot at the cross in Benge's suspenders as he flashed past the opening. At the moment of the shot, Benge stepped into a hole created by the roots of a tree that had fallen down, and Hobbs' one ounce lead ball passed through his head."
- Selections from BENGE!, Fleenor, Lawrence J. Jr., p 66-89.
"An account of the captivity of Mrs. Elizabeth Levingstone, of Washington County, Virginia, put down in writing in her presence, and nearly in her own words:
"We were all hurryed a short distance, where the Indians were very busy dividing & and putting up in packs for each to carry his part of the booty taken. I observed them careless about the children, & most of the Indians being some distance off in front, I called with a low voice to my eldest daughter, give her my youngest child, and told them all to run towards neighbor John Russell's. They with reluctance left me, sometimes halting, sometimes looking back. I beckoned them to go on, altho' I inwardly felt pangs not to be expressed on account of our doleful separation. They two Indians in the rear either did not notice this scene, or they were willing the children might run back.
"Certified this 15th day of April, 1794. A. CAMPBELL."
- Selections from the Calendar of Virginia State Papers, Vol. 7, p 111-112.
"Beginning in 1774, Chief Benge led a part of the Shawnee from the Ohio River on raids along the frontier. Benge, who was part white and part Cherokee, frequently captured slaves and then resold them; he also seized white women and children who were then adopted by various Indian groups. On 6 Apr. 1794, Benge attacked the Henry and Peter Livingston farm on the Holston River, took several residents prisoner, and marched them northeast. Three days later, when they entered the Powell Mountain gap just south, Lt. Vincent Hobbs and eleven Lee County militiamen ambushed them, killed Benge with the first volley, and freed the captives."
- Virginia Historical Highway Marker X-22, "Benge's Gap", location in current Wise County, 36°54'46" N, 082°42'07" W.
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Has 3 ancestors but no descendants in this family tree.
Abt 1725 - Aft 1808 (84 years)
[1, 4] 
