This document discusses the lives and contributions of several pioneering women in Southwest Virginia between 1750-1780, including their roles as wives, mothers, and historians who helped preserve the region's history. It explores some of the hardships these women faced, such as Native American attacks, long separations from their soldier husbands, and difficulty establishing homes on the expanding frontier. While these women's stories were rarely recorded at the time, modern historians have worked to reconstruct their lives and honor them for their resilience and importance in founding early American communities.

1. Keeping the Home Fires Burning
Wives, Mothers and Daughters of
Southwest Virginia’s Heroes

2. Thanks to the work of historians…
especially these women
• Mary B. Kegley (Early Adventurers on the Western Waters)
• Lula Porterfield Givens (Christiansburg, Montgomery County, VA)
• Patricia Givens Johnson (biographies of William Preston, Andrew
Lewis, etc.)
• Roberta Ingles Steele (Escape From Indian Captivity)
• Claire White (William Fleming, Patriot)
• Nelly C. Preston (Paths of Glory)
• Elizabeth Lemmon Sayers (Pathfinders and Patriots)

3. Some of the questions that motivated me to prepare this talk …
• Was William Ingles really a Tory?
• Did Mary Ingles really have a baby?
• Why did Susanna Preston and Mary Ingles never get
remarried?
• How well was Mary Ingles treated after her return from
captivity? Were there ugly rumors circulating about her?
• What sort of difference did it make for a woman to have
an education in the mid to late eighteenth century?
• I know that Elizabeth Givens is my grandmother, too.
What can I find out about her?

4. Prominent Soldiers and Statesmen
Southwest Virginia (1750-1780s)
• General Andrew Lewis (1720-1781)
• Colonel William Preston (1729-1783)
• Colonel William Ingles (1729-1782)
• Colonel William Christian (1743-1786)
• General William Campbell (1745-1781); General William Russell
• William Fleming (1728-1795)
• Governor Patrick Henry (1735-1786)
• George Rogers Clark (1752-1818); William Clark (1770-1838)

5. Brides
• Elizabeth Givens (1728- 1781) m. Andrew Lewis 1740 (?)
• Susanna Smith (1740-1823) m. William Preston 1761
• Mary Draper (1732-1815) m. William Ingles 1750
• Anne Henry (1767- 1790) m. William Christian 1770 (?)
• Elizabeth Henry ( -1825) m. William Campbell 1776
m. William Russell 1782?
• Ann Christian ( - ) m. William Fleming
• Sarah Shelton ( -1775) m. Patrick Henry 1754
• & Dorothea Dandridge ( -1831) m. Patrick Henry 1776
• Ann Rogers ( 1730-1799) m. John Clark (?)

6. Portraits of Women – A Rarity!
• Susanna Smith Preston

7. Motherhood
• Elizabeth Lewis - seven children
• Susanna Preston - ten children
• Mary Ingles - six children (possibly seven)
• Anne Christian - six children
• Elizabeth Campbell - two children by Wm. Campbell;
then four more by William Russell
• Anne Fleming – thirteen
• Sarah Henry - six children - Patrick Henry’s first wife
• Dorothea Henry - eleven children – Henry’s 2nd wife
• Ann Clark - ten children, including George Rogers Clark
and William Clark

8. Mary Ingles
Trials and Sorrows:
Attack at Drapers Meadows; decision to leave infant behind; attack at
Burkes Garden (grandchildren); husband accused of being a Tory

9. Elizabeth Henry Campbell Russell
– after death of General William
Trials and Sorrows… Campbell, Elizabeth discovered
that her daughter did not want
her to remarry (William Russell);
Arthur Campbell, cousin of
William Campbell (deceased),
disapproved of William Russell,
too, and asserted his family
rights to control Sarah’s
education, etc. Mother and
daughter did not reconcile for
many years.

10. Elizabeth Givens Lewis
• We don’t know very much about her, but we do know that
Andrew was always off fighting, perhaps more than any other
military leader in the period between 1750-1780…
• However, Andrew’s Mother, Margaret Lynn Lewis, became well
known during the mid-nineteenth century… Interesting story
about her “commonplace book”

11. Trials and Sorrows, Continued
• Sarah Shelton Henry – developed severe mental problems (talk of
putting her in an asylum); Patrick Henry moved more often than any
other… (see map)
• Anne Henry Christian – husband’s determination to move west,
husband’s death in Kentucky, and Anne’s subsequent death from
TB
• Susanna Smith Preston – Smithfield was located in a neighborhood
where there were many Tories, thus requiring the posting of militia
for protection; after husband’s death, letter show she was rather
lonely at Smithfield, despite all the slaves…
• Ann Rogers Clark – during 1770s, all of her grown sons were off
fighting or languishing in prison somewhere… later William went all
the way to the west coast; the Clarks moved to Kentucky in 1780s.

12. Virginia’s Expanding Frontier
• 1750s through 1780s – Of the women in this study, I believe that
only Mary Ingles, Ann Christian, and Ann Rogers traveled as far as
Kentucky…

13. The Lure of Land in Kentucky – Every Family Was Tempted by the
Possibilities
• Andrew Lewis – Greenbrier & Ohio
• William Ingles – Clinch, New River (Ingles Ferry),
Burke’s Garden, etc.
• William Preston – Everywhere, including Kentucky
• William Christian – Dunkard’s Bottom, then Kentucky
• William Fleming – Kentucky
• Arthur Campbell – “State of Franklin” (Tennessee)
• John Clark – Kentucky
• Patrick Henry – acquired property in Kentucky (but I
don’t think he ever traveled there)

14. Although Patrick Henry (and his family) moved frequently, as indicated
in this interesting map, he never moved his family to Kentucky

15. Eighteenth Century Families on the Move
• Andrew Lewis Family – near Staunton, then Richfield, near Salem
• William Preston Family – Tinkling Springs, Greenfield & Smithfield
• Ingles Family – Pennsylvania, North Fork, Drapers Meadows,
Bedford, and Ingles Ferry
• Christian Family – Borden’s Tract, Mahanaim (Dunkards Bottom),
Kentucky (Anne did not want to move to Kentucky)
• William Campbell - Aspenvale
• Fleming Family – Belmont
• Patrick Henry – Studley Plantation, Scotch Town, Red Hill (Hanover,
etc.)
• Clark Family – King and Queen County, Carolina County, Albemarle
County, Kentucky

16. Ann Christian Fleming’s Sampler
• Women preserved and passed along the history and culture, through story-
telling and education, and by passing along skills, hand-crafts, recipes, and
so on…

17. Importance of Letters and Journals:
Letter From Ann’s Husband, William Fleming, to “Cousin Sally” (1794),
a niece in Scotland
• “I live in a pleasant situation one hundred and eighty miles from Richmond
near a big Lick in Botetourt County. I have retired from all publick business
for several years. I am now old, my constitution broke, maimed by several
wounds, and often attacked with violent pains in my limbs, brought on by
colds and many years of severe duty in a military line. I am just able to walk
a little after two months confinement to my bed and room.”
• “Your aunt is in pretty good health but tender. My eldest son Leonard is
married, has several children and lives in the State of Kentucky; my eldest
daughter Elizabeth was married last December to a clergyman by the name
of Allen; my daughters Dorothea, Anna, Priscilla and sons William and John
are with me. We have buried six or seven children.”

18. Patrick Henry’s Sphere of Influence: Most of the individuals in this
study probably met Patrick Henry in person or were well acquainted
with one of his siblings
Red Hill

19. One of Henry’s Homes: Scotchtown
• Notice the resemblance to Smithfield…

20. Postscript:
Frontier women may have had it hard, but Tidewater gentry had their own
misfortunes, as illustrated by this entry I found in a copy of the Virginia Cavalcade
about Mary Willing Byrd (1740-1814), who married into the prominent and wealthy
Byrd family.
• “She sold the famous 3,500 volume library of her father-in-law,
William Byrd, II (1674-1744), to help pay the debts of her husband,
William Byrd III (1728-1777) who had committed suicide.”

21. Some concluding thoughts…
• Only Mary Ingles and Elizabeth Campbell Russell achieved a degree of
fame in their own lifetimes…. Mary, of course, because of her remarkable
and almost legendary ordeal, and Mme. Russell because of her marriage to
two generals as well as the leading role she played in launching the
Methodist Church in Southwest Virginia.
• Accept for court documents listing weddings and wills, the lives of the other
women in this study were not recorded in public records, but some of their
stories have been reconstructed through the patient and painstaking efforts
of their descendants, genealogists, and historians.

22. Women’s History Month: A Chance to Pay Tribute to the Women…
• Who packed up all their possessions and moved to the backcountry, braving
unknown dangers
• Who bore so many children, often in a lonesome, isolated cabin, far from
sisters, mothers, or other family
• Who managed to provide for their children during long periods of separation
from their spouses, with complete responsibility for child-rearing, food
preparation, education, animal husbandry, gardening, doctoring, and often
even “Homeland Security” (defending the cabin against Indian attack, or
from raids by Tories)
• Who found ways to be resourceful and independent in a world that afforded
them fewer opportunities and less power than women can today enjoy.
• Who contributed their fair share of passion and enthusiasm in the process of
forming the “new republic”