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Pull off parking on side of the road, also in the cut through. Watch for traffic as you make your way to the cache.
This cache is located just off of Highway 19, between Lebanon and Abingdon, VA. It is at the Memorial site of the slaying of John Douglas. We have driven by this place many times and never noticed the memorial plaque before. As we were driving by a couple of weeks ago, we noticed it and decided to stop and investigate. Information from the unpublished manuscript, Indian Atrocities Along the Clinch, Powell, and Holston Rivers, by Emory L. Hamilton and contributor, Rhonda Robertson states: This incident has perhaps suffered more abuse as to correct date than any event on the frontier. L.P. Summers, in his History of Washington County, has John Douglas and William Benham chasing the Indians who had captured the wife and children of Capt. Isaac Newland, near Abingdon in 1789, thirteen years after Douglas had been killed. Just what age John Douglas was when slain is unknown, but he must have been fairly young, unmarried man, old enough to have served in the militia as a Sergeant under Capt. William Cocke, August 5, 1774. Capt. William Russell wrote to Colonel Preston on July 7, 1776, saying: Dear Colo. I wrote you yesterday in great haste intendent to send of the express immediately, but he, being disappointed, shall enclose that one in this. I omitted giving the account of two men (no names given), being killed at Blackmore’s Fort last week, and since I left Fort Chiswell, poor John Douglas got killed in Little Moccasin Gap, on his way to Clinch. Capt. Daniel Smith saw his bones yesterday (July 6) arriving over here. As evidenced by Capt. Russell’s letter, John Douglas was probably killed either on July 5 or 6. Tradition has it that Douglas was accompanied by his friend William Benham, and that they, as was customary of most people traveling from Abingdon to the Clinch settlements, had stopped in Little Moccasin Gap, and were seated on a large flat rock, eating their lunch when a rifle cracked and Douglas was killed. A bronze plaque has been placed on the rock by the Black’s Fort Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1928, near what is known as John Douglas Wayside. The plaque reads as follows – To the Memory of JOHN DOUGLASS, scout killed by the Indians near this spot in 1776 while on the way back from Black’s Fort to warn the settlement of Castle Woods of an impending Indian raid.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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