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"Biographies"
Samuel Cowan &
Ann Walker Cowan
Submitted by Donald Rivara

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Samuel Cowan & Ann Walker Cowan
     Samuel Cowan and Ann Walker were the parents of John Cowan (1768-1832). This is known from the History of the Maxwell Family. Samuel Cowan was probably born about 1740 in either Chester County, Pennsylvania, or the Valley of Virginia. He was the son of John Cowan and Elizabeth (Unknown) Cowan. His father was a Scotch-Irish immigrant who arrived from North Ireland, in Pennsylvania, between 1715-1730. His parents moved to the Valley of Virginia in the 1730-1740's, in what is now Augusta County. They purchased a tract of land in Beverly Manor, not far from where the Walker family obtained a farm in Borden's Tract.
      Ann Walker, a daughter of John Walker III (1705-1778) and Anne Houston, was born in the Valley of Virginia about 1745. She would have married Samuel Cowan about 1766. John Cowan (1768-1832), was their eldest surviving child. They may have had other older children who died in infancy.
      During the French and Indian War, Samuel served for Augusta County at Fort Lytleton, under Captain Henry Woodward. He was listed on the muster roll of 23 August 1757. (Virginia's Colonial Soldiers, page 103) He appears to have remained in the militia until he left Virginia about 1767.
     In 1763, King George III issued a proclamation that none of the colonials could settle west of the Blue Ridge, after a costly war against Chief Pontiac and a coalition of Indian Tribes. This meant that the next generation of young families had to go south to seek land upon which to settle. This meant that the Carolinas and Georgia, were the destination of those Virginians seeking new land upon which to settle. About a thousand persons a year heading south, driving their cattle, hogs, and horses overland.
     The wars were hardly over when, in 1765, the Stamp Act incited the colonists to protest against the British taxation. The next ten years would be punctuated with one controversy after another, as the umbilical cord between Great Britain and her colonies, became tenuous.
     In 1767, it appears as if Samuel Cowan had moved to North Carolina, where his brother Andrew had gone. In History of Augusta County, Virginia, Samuel's name appears on a list of persons who were delinquent in taxes. From page 338 of Virginia's Colonial Soldiers, by Lloyd DeWitt Bockstruck, Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, 1988, it states "At a court martial held 15 April 1768, Capt. William Crow's delinquents: Capt. Peter Hogg and Samuel Cowan to appear at next court martial to show why they did not muster at the general master of 15 April 1767." Samuel's brother James also appeared AWOL, no doubt because he had moved to Carolina. Somehow the family, at least Ann Walker Cowan, was back in Virginia in December of 1768, because their son John Cowan was born there on 14 December 1768, in what is now Rockbridge County, Virginia (then part of Augusta County).
     The Cowans were probably back in North Carolina when another son, James Benjamin Cowan was born in about 1770. This was the year of the inflammatory "Boston Massacre." The Scottish-Irish certainly would have been condemning Britain among their own people, but we have nothing that survives to show that they took any active part in the protests that were going on, although they probably did.
     In 1772 Samuel and his brothers Andrew and William, all of whom were married to daughters of John Walker III and Ann Houston Walker, left North Carolina to settle near their brother David Cowan in what was called "Castle's Woods," a long stretch of land in the Clinch River Valley, in what are now Russell and Scott counties in Virginia. At the time, Castle's Woods was the western-most settlement on the Virginia frontier. Technically the settlers were defying the British Proclamation of 1763, which forbade white settlement west of the Blue Ridge. Castle's Woods lay on the Wilderness Road, which was to become the pioneer trail from Virginia and the Carolinas, into Tennessee and Kentucky. Also settling there in 1771 were John Snoddy (husband of Margaret Walker) and Patrick Porter (husband of Susanna Walker). Many of the settlers in the area were kin of the Cowan-Walker-Houston family.
     In 1772, Samuel, Ann and the Cowan-Walker families, settled in the Clinch River Valley in a stretch of it called Castle's Woods in present-day Scott County, Virginia (then Washington County). Among those who settled on the Clinch were Samuel's brothers: William, Andrew, and David Cowan, and their families; Ann's parents John Walker III and Ann Houston Walker, and some of their children; and at least one kinsman of Ann Houston Walker, William Houston. On April 03, 1774, Samuel would register the surveyed 284 acres lying on both sides of McKinney's Run, that he had settled upon at Castle's Woods two years earlier. It was registered in Fincastle County, the parent county of the present-day Scott County. The Cowan land lay in what was called "Upper Castle's Woods," meaning it was further down the Clinch toward Cumberland Gap, than was "Lower Castle's Woods".)
     1773 was the year of the Boston Tea party, and the harsh British crackdown on the Massachuesetts Bay colony. The Committees of Correspondence which had been organized, made sure that the goings-on in Boston, would be spread throughout the colonies. Although the news may have been delayed in places as remote as Castle's Woods, it eventually would have trickled in, and had the British-hating Scotch-Irish grumbling about the actions that they viewed as tyrannical.
     Castle's Woods lay on the Wilderness Road near the Cumberland Gap, a natural passageway through the Appalachian Mountains. What little traffic to Kentucky and Tennessee there, was in 1773 traved from Virginia and the Carolinas along this route. (Before long this road would lead thousands through the Gap.) In the fall of that year, Daniel Boone arrived at Cowan's Fort leading an ill-fated emigrant party from the Yadkin River Valley bound for Kentucky. Capt. William Russell, in charge of the small militia group stationed at Cowan's Fort, and others of Castle's Woods settlers were of the Cowan-Walker family, it is probable that some of Capt. Russell's group included some of our family. Boon and Russell's group now contained about forty members.
     Because it would take the Castle's Woods emigres awhile to prepare for their journey, Boone's North Carolina contingent headed out alone, probably having agreed to meet the latecomers at the Gap if they hadn't caught up with the vanguard. Perhaps having agreed that the latecomers should carry most of the commissary goods and tools, the Boone group ran low on flour and salt and found the need for additional tools. He sent his teenaged oldest son, James Boone, back to locate the Russell group to collect these items. James reached the Russells, and there a young Henry Russell, son of the captain who had become a chum of James Boone, asked to accompany his friend to the forward group. Russell sent two white workmen and two slaves with the boys to assist with the supplies. The group headed out in the late afternoon and made their way toward Cumberland Gap. They were within three miles of the Boone party when darkness determined that they should camp for the night.
     Daniel Boone expected his son momentarily with the supplies, but it wasn't James who came rushing into the Boone camp-- it was one of William Russell's slaves that had accompanied the boys. It had to have been with great emotion that the negro told Boone that his son James and Henry Russell and the others in the party were dead. They ahd been attacked by Indians just before dawn. After shooting both boys, the Indians had tortured them and the others, while the escaping slave hid under a log and heard the screaming.
     The massacre ended the emigration. Some of Boone's folowers returned to North Carolina. Those from Castle's Woods decided to stay there. The grieving Boones wintered along the Clinch in a cabin provided by David Gass. The Boones and the Russells, no doubt found each other's support comforting.
     That spring of 1774, "Dunmore's War" began. Governor Dunmore of Virginia had declared war against the frontier Indians due to the many atrocities being committed upon white frontier settlers, but the war had been started when the family of Chief John Logan had been massacred by some drunken white ruffians. Being a captain in the Virginia militia, William Russell was given orders to assist in the campaign against the Shawnee Indian Chief Cornstalk. Worried about leaving his family unprotected in the Clinch Valley, Russell was relieved when his North Carolina friend Boone, agreed to take charge of the forts and militia in Castle's Woods until his return. Samuel Cowen and his brothers David Cowan and William Cowen were in Capt. Russell's company that defeated Cornstalk in the Battle of Point Pleasant. Their brothers-in-law Patrick Porter and John Snoddy were there too. For sixty-one days Boone had been in charge of the Clinch Valley forts, including Fort Russell on David Cowan's land. Then Boon was on his way again. The man who later became a legend, had been an acquaintance of the Cowans and Walkers of Castle's Woods. William Russell was to be a part of the Cowans' lives for years to come. At the outbreak of the Revolution, Russell was brevetted a general. It is for him that Russell County was named. The grief of Boone and Russell was an ominous portent of the fate that lay in store for the Cowans and Walkers at their location near Cumberland Cap, the gateway to Kentucky and Tennessee. If it was gateway for the pioneers out of Virginia and the Carolinas, it was also a gate into those colonies for the Indians.
     The news of Lexington and Concord reached the Cowans in Castle's Woods in 1775, and there was no question on which side the Scotch-Irish would committ themselves. The British had persecuted them because they were Presbyterian Scots long before they had left Scotland.
     For a while, all was quiet as both sides recoiled at the state to which the relations between Britain and the colonies had deteriorated. It was a time to think and to prepare for the upheaval that lay ahead. The British parleyed with the Shawnee Indians, encouraging them to side with the mother country. They remained the Indians that King George had attempted to prevent the colonists from settling west of the Blue Ridge with his Proclamation of 1763. Should the colonists win the war, as the British pointed out, the settlers would be streaming westward over the mountains into Indian lands.
     The logic of the British made sense to the Shawnees and most of the northern tribes allied themselves with the Crown in early 1776. The British urged them to contact the Southern Indians to sway them to the British side. In April of 1776, a delegation of northern Indians, mostly Shawnee, went to the Cherokee town of Chota to accomplish this end. Most of the Cherokee tribes refused to war against the colonists, but Chief Dragging Canoe was passionately against the decision of his fellow Cherokees. He withdrew his tribe of Chickamauga Cherokees from the Cherokee Nation and made an alliance with the British and the Northern Indians. The year before, in 1775, at the Transylvania Treaty conference, Dragging Canoe had spoken against the sale of Cherokee land:

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Whole Indian nations have melted away like snowballs in the sun before the white man's advance. They leave scaresly a name of our people except those wrongly recorded by their destroyers. Where are the Delawares? They have been reduced to a mere shadow of their former greatness. We had hoped that the white man would not be willing to travel beyond the mountains. Now that hope is gone. They have passed the mountains, and have settled upon Cherokee land. They wish to have that action sanctioned by treaty. When that is gained, the same encroaching spirit will lead them upon other land of the Cherokees. New cessions will be asked. Finally the whole country, which the Cherokees and their fathers have so long occupied, will be demanded, and the remnant of Aniyunwiya, THE REAL PEOPLE, once so great and formidable, will be compelled to seek refuge on some distant wilderness. There they will be permitted to stay only a short while, until they again behod the advancing banners of the same greedy host. Not being able to point out any further retreat for the miserable Cherokees, the extinction of the whole rase will be proclaimed. Should we not therefore run all risks and incur all consequences, rather than submit to further loss of our country? Such treaties may be alright for men who are too old to hunt or fight. As for me, I have my young warriors about me. We will have our lands! A-WANINSKE, I have spoken.

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     In late June of 1776, a small army of Indians from both southern and norther tribes, including Dragging Canoe and his chickamaugas, headed toward Cumberland Gap and the Clinch River Valley. When someone spotted the Indians along Big Moccasin Creek, a tributary of the Clinch, riders were sent to warn the other settlers of the valley that the Indians were upon them. Virginia Militia Capt. Daniel Smith and Capt. John Montgomery and their compainies marched in pursuit of the Indians. Samuel Cowan took it on himself to warn those at Houston's Fort, lying on Big Moccasin Creek, because the fort was the home of William Houston, a kinsman of Ann Walker Cowan's deceased mother Ann Houston Walker. It was the first week of July 1776, the time when the delegats at Philadelphia were preparing a declaration of independence.
     Cowan arrived at Houston's Fort and gave the warning. The following morning the soldiers under Captains Smith and Montgomery arrived and reported that there were Indians in the area of Houston's Fort and there were also some stalking the settlers holed up in Fort Russell across Copper Ridge. Samuel panicked about the safety of his family and prepared to leave. He was strongly urged not to leave the fort due to the Indian menace. Not to be stopped in his mission to protect his family, Samuel replied "I don't care if there is an Indian behind every tree, I'm going to protect my family."
     These may have been his last words because he immediately left the fort. Within a minute or two, shots were heard. The men went outside the fort to investigate. They found Samuel Cowan shot and scalped, but still alive. He was brought into the fort and died there that night.
     Back at Fort Russell, the riderless horse that Samuel had been riding, arrived sweating and covered in Samuel's blood. The gate of the fort was opened to allow the horse to enter. Samuel's wife, Ann Walker Cowan, seeing the lifeblood of her husband spilled over the horse, fainted away.
     There are a few recorded accounts of persons who were at Houston's Fort at the time of Samuel's death. An eyewitness to the scene was Charles Bickley, who lived at Castle Wood's and was in Blackmore's Fort as a militia soldier in 1776. In his pension statement from Russell County on 08 September 1835, he stated:

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Information reached the fort through Captain Daniel Smith, that Indians were up the waters of Mocassin Creek, whereupon Captain (John) Montgomery with his company, joined Captain Smith and his company, and marched in pursuit of the Indians and pursued their trail within a short distance of Houston's Fort upon Moccasin Creek....Upon arrival at the fort, they found no assault had as yet, been made upon it by the Indians and found there a man of Cassell's Woods of the name of Samuel Cowan, riding as this declarant now remembers a stud horse belonging to one Deskin Tibbs.
Cowan proposed to leave the fort and return to his family, but was admonished of the danger of an attempt to do so, as the Indians were in the immediate neighborhood, but he persisted in his determination and set out, but proceeded a short distance when the firing of guns was heard in the fort and the forces sallied out to attack. When soon they came upon the body of Cowan, shot from his horse and scalped, and although still alive, was taken to the fort and died the same evening. Relief came in from the Holston (River Valley) and then they left.

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Yet another account was told by Captain John Carr of Livingston Tennessee, whose son wrote to an historian named Draper in 1854, seventy-eight years after the event quoting his father. Carr was about 4 years old and living on Carr's Creek in Russell County at the time. (These accounts available from the Southwest Virginian, Box 1128, Wise VA 24293.)

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We forted in Houston's Fort in Washington Co, VA, on a creek called Big Moccasin Cree, about 10 to 15 miles north of the Clinch River. The Indians (Cherokee) made an attack on the fort. They killed a man by the name of Cowan. After firing on the fort for nearly half a day they were driven off. He recollects that his father sit him so as to enable him to see through the port holes the Indians as they were firing on the fort.

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This account, an extract from "Narrative of Captain John Carr in Indian Battles, etc." was published in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1853 and has more details:

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I was born in South Carolina in September 05, 1773. My father left there before my recollection to go to Kentucky, having heard of Boone's having been there. The first thing I remember was being in Houston's fort, about twenty miles below Abingdon, Virginia, on a creek called Big Moccasin. It was at the time of an attack upon it by Indians. They killed a man by the name of Cowan at the time. He lived about ten miles north of Clinch River, and came over express to give us worked of a projected attack on the for by the Northern Indians. The next morning, a little after sunrise, Captain Smith, afterward General Smith, who died in this (Summer) county, came in with a party of men and old us the Cherokees were all around the fort, and a terrible screaming ensued among the women, who at the time were out milking. This Mr. Cowan mounted his horse in the fort, but men begged him to stay until they could eat a few mouthfuls, when they would guard him home. But he declared he would go "if there was Indian behind every tree." He started, and had scaresly left when we heard the reports of guns and he was brought in, mortally wounded, and died that night. The Indians kept firing all day, and finally left after stealing several horses.

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(From: Thwaite's and Kellogg's Dunmore's War, Madison, 1905, page 80, Rev. John Dabney Shane's interview with Mrs. Samuel Scott, Jessamine County, Kentucky, about 1850. Mrs Scott was a daughter of John McCorkle.

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Mr. Campbell was the preacher in North Carolina, where I am from, after I left. I think on Haw River
   We moved on to Clinch, at Moore's Fort. Was wintering at one place, eight miles off from the fort and about a mile from the river. One Phillips family was killed between us and the river, near to the river. Mamma was gone up with a neighbor, Mrs. Kilgore, to Castle's Woods, near the fort, to buy some sheep at a sale. Mr. Kilgore was away in Carolina at the time. One (Phillip) boy escaped, I think by crawling under the bed. All of the rest of the family were killed. About two years after this we moved over on to Holston (The Holston River Valley) to get rid of the Indians. We lived on Clinch eight years. Went on to Holston to spend one year and get ready to come to Kentucky.
(Here a portion of Mrs. Scott's narrative was removed for use further on in this work.)
      Matthew (Samuel) Cowan brought the express (news) from Moore's Fort to Houston's Fort that 300 Indians were coming to attack Houston's Station. The next morning he would start and go back and thought he could go through, but was shot. His horse got in safe (to Cowan's Fort in Castle's Woods). His wife fainted when she saw the horse-a stud horse, all in a power of sweat. He was brought in wounded and died. There my father, John McCorkle, was at the time. There were 300 Indians to 21 families (in the fort). I think the men did not exceed thirty. The Indians stayed there about eight days killing the cattle. They were Cherokees. None of the people in the fort were killed. Relief came in from Holston, and then they left.
     My father bought a tract (of land) on one Mr. Zeams (?) from Botetourt (County) or Augusta (County) where these Moores and Cowans all first came from---All Pennsylvania people.

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In the Draper Manuscripts of the Wisconsin Historical Society (#4QQ53) is a letter written by Colonel William Russell on July 07, 1776, to Colonel William Preston, County Lieutenant of Fincastle County. The following is not part of the actual letter, but is a summary of its contents.

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Two men killed at Blackmore's Fort: John Douglas killed at LIttle Moccasin Gap; the militia from New River anxious to get back to their crops; visit to his family; enlistment of men in the different forts; Madison's appointment by the convention; spies sent to people of the Kentucky River to give notice of the war; Thomas Price's deposition sent to the governor; copy enclosed. Al L.S. 1 page; Endorsed: W. Russell. May 1776 (sic).

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This was the beginning salvo of twenty years of Indian atrocities on the frontier, for the Indians did not sign the treaty ending the Revollution and were still fighting to prevent intrusion of settlers west of the Appalachians until 1795. But that was later; the Revolution was still being waged in 1778 when Samuel Cowan's widow, Ann Waker Cowan, was walking away from Fort Russell with her brother Samuel Walker, crossing a field of rye. Indians attacked, killing Walker, and capturing Ann.
No one knew if Ann Cowan was dead or alive after her disappearance. The worst had to be presumed. While she had been at Castle's Woods, there had been no reason to probate her husband's estate, but now this was undertaken so that Samuel and Ann's estate could be divided among the heirs. Samuel's brother William Cowan was appointed administrator of the estate on August 19, 1778, with John Waker (Ann's father) and Andrew Colvill as securities. An inventory of the estate was filed in Washington County, now available from the Virginia State Library Archives:

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One Bay Mare, L.35; One Bay Hors, L.48; One Do.(Ditto) Two Years old, L40; one Yearling Filly, L.20; One Black Mare, L.35; Red Cow, L.12; One Brinald Cow, L.11; One Cow and Calf, L.13; Black Cow, L.8; Brinald Cow, L.9; One Heifer, L.5; Heffer Pyed, L.5; Do., L.12; Cow and Calf, L.12; One steer, L.5; Ten Sheep, L.25; Pair of Plow Irons, L.6.10; Saddle 10/; Pair of Trizens (?) 10/; Ap, L.5; Bridle Bits, 6/; One Iron Wag, 7/6; a Quantity of Puter, 6.10; Two Razors 12/; Two Bells, L.3.12; One Candle Stick, 4/; One Pair of Pinchers, 6/; A Pot, 18/; To Cash, L.50.

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For six years Ann Walker Cowan was being held captive by the Indians, serving as a slave. The following was part of the above-cited recollections of Mrs. Samuel Scott of Jessamine County, Kentucky.

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.....One year while we lived on the Clinch, we had no need to fort, and did not fort. Cowan's fort was about two miles from Moore's. We went to it one year, but it was too weak, but seven or eight families did. The Indians attacked it. Miss Walker, then the Widow Ann Cowan, was taken (captive by the Indians), going from Cowan's to Moore's. Her and her sister's son, William Walker, were taken. (It was the son of her brother John Walker IV.) As soon as the dead were buried, we all left, and went to Moore's fort. Her brother Matthew (Samuel, not Matthew) Walker, that went with her was killed, and the other man that went with her was shot at, but escaped and got into the fort. This Mrs. Cowan had just gotten back from her captivity, as I passed the Crab Orchard coming out to Kentucky. Captain John Snoddy, William and Joe Moore's wives were sisters to her. They was forted there (in Crab Orchard). (By this Mrs. Scott means that as she was moving west in Kentucky and was passing the Crab Orchard settlement in Lincoln County, Kentucky, she heard the news of Ann Walker Cowan's escap from the Shawnees, no doubt from one of Ann's sisters there.)....

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The above quote makes it clear that Ann Cowan's escape route from the Shawnee village in Ohio took her down one of the rivers in Ohio in the Shawnee nation that feed into the Ohio River. From its mouth at the Ohio River she would have turned west, going down the Ohio to the mouth of the Kentucky River. Mrs. Scott did not say the Ann Walker Cowan was physically there at Crab Orchard when her family passed through there. Ann wanted no more of the frontier after her return to her family. She moved back to Rockbridge County Virginia, where some of her family still lived. Although her sons remained on the frontier, we know that they returned to visit their mother there. John Cowan married his wife Margaret Weir there in 1796. Ann was alive as late as 1810. One of her grandchildren recalled seeing her as an old woman in his childhood.

(THREE) CHILDREN OF SAMUEL COWAN AND ANN WALKER COWAN

(1) John Cowan (1768-1832)

(2) James Benjamin Cowan was born about 1770, probably in North Carolina. He was a son of Samuel Cowan and Ann Walker Cowan. "Jim" was about eight when he was captured by the Cherokees in the 1778 attack on the Cowan family and fifteen when he escaped to return to white civilization. There he grew into manhood. He married Mary "Polly" Montgomery (1773-after 1849) in Blount County, TN, on 23 April 1800 when he was about thirty years old. James was a captain in the regular army and commanded the frontier from the Tennessee line in lower middle Tennessee to Ross's Landing, now Chattanooga, and a point north of where Huntsville Alabama now lies. The land was under the control of the United States government but was still populated by Indian tribes. During the War of 1812, James was elected captain of his company and participated in the Battle of New Orleans (as did Daniel Matheny) and also a battle at Pensacola, Florida. Shortly after returning home to Franklin County in 1815, James died, perhaps of a war injury.
About 1806, James moved his family from Blount County to Franklin County, Tennessee. He was a hardened frontiersman. These are the children of James B Cowan and Mary "Polly" Montgomery, daughter of James and Elizabeth (Weir) Montgomery: Samuel Montgomery Cowan, a noted Presbyterian minister, born in Blount TN on 10 Mar 1801, married Nancy Clemens, performed marriage of his niece Mary Ann Montgomery to Nathan Bedford Forrest; Ann Cowan, born 1802-1810, married Alfred Cowan, no issue; Julia Cowan, born c. 1804, married John Davis; Martha Cowan, born 1812, married first John Griffith, married second C.W. McCord; Elizabeth "Bessie" Cowan, born c. 1805, married William H. Montgomery, widowed 1829, died after 1845; John Cowan, born c 1806 married Ann Brown; Rachel Cowan, born c 1814, died De Soto County, MS. For more descendants of James B. Cowan, see Maxwell History and Genealogy, pages 290-1.
James B Cowan's daughter Bessie was only ten when her father died. Exactly thirty years later, in 1845, the widowed Bessie Cowan Montgomery, and her daughter Mary Ann Montgomery, were being driven by a slave down a muddy road near Hernando Mississippi when their carriage became stuck. Try as he might, the slave could not get the carriage unstuck and the ladies sat marooned in the carriage in the middle of the mudhole. A rider came along and gallantly offered to help out the ladies in distress. He unstuck their carriage and escorted the ladies to their destination. The young man was love struck. He approached her uncle and guardian, Rev. Samuel Cowan of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and asked permission to court his niece. Mary Ann married her chivalrous savior, who went on to become the feared Confederate cavalry leader General Nathan Bedford Forest (John and Esther Houston Montgomery 1719-1973, p. 77) Forrest was a cotton planter and slave trader. After the Civil War, he became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, but resigned when the organization became too violent for even his hardened sensibilities. The above Montgomery history attempts to whitewash Forrest's career:

From Hernado they (Nathan and Mary Ann) moved to Memphis, where he was a successful businessman, a kindly and considerate dealer in slave trading, a cotton planter who participated in city government and matters concerned with law and order. (the KKK)

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Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest was the first cousin once removed to Esther Cowan, who married Enoch Cooper. The above Rev. Samuel Cowan would have been a son of James Benjamin Cowan. He is the Samuel Montgomery Cowan mentioned in the next account.

We have this account of the Indian attack in 1778 in which Ann Walker Cowan, her nephew William Walker, and her son James B. Cowan, were taken prisoner and her daughter Jane was killed. It was a part of the book entitled The Shadow of the Chilhowee, by P.D. Cowan. This account was given to him by Dr. James Benjamin Cowan of Tullahoma, Tennessee, a grandson and namesake of James Benjamin Cowan (c 1770-1815). There are some errors of names, generation, location, etc. (Corrections and additions in parenthesis.) The account gives some idea of the circumstances in the escape of Ann Cowan from her Shawnee captors.

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Tullahoma, Tennessee, March 28, 1895
My father was Samuel Montgomery Cowan. My great great grandfather was Samuel Cowan. My great grandfather was Joh. He was a Major in the Continental Army, in the war for independence. The father, Samuel, and all his sons were in the army and fought to the end. My great grandfather, as stated, was Major John Cowan (Samuel Cowan?). He was killed by the Indians at some part in East Tennessee (Washington Co VA). At the time he was killed, his wife, a daughter and a son -my grandfather-, James Cowan, were captured. The Indians adopted my grandfather into their (Cherokee) tribe. He was only fifteen (eight) years old. His mother was taken by another (Shawnee) tribe. His sister was killed. My grandfather was kept a year (seven) and made his escape (at age 15). His mother was carried north and kept seven years. Her maiden name was Walker. My grandfather (James Benjamin Cowan) -had but one brother, John (John Cowan). He moved at an early day to Indiana. His son, Judge John M. Cowan, has visited my father and myself before the late war at our home in Mississippi.

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There was another James B Cowan (1777-1831) who lived in Franklin County Tennessee. He is easy to confuse with our subject. Both served in the War of 1812. (For his son's biography see Goodspeed's History of Franklin County, Tennessee, Nashville, 1886).
For more information on the descendants of our subject, James B. Cowan, See Maxwell History and Genealogy, pp. 290-1.

(3) Jane Cowan was a small child, probably less than eight years old when she was captured by Indians with her mother in 1778. She was tomahawked to death by the Indians for crying.

SOURCES: Files of Franklin County, Tennessee Historical Society, P.O. Box 130, Winchester TN 37398; The Cowans of County Down: Genealogy of the Dependants of John Walker of Wigton, Scotland, p. 13-14, John and Esther Houston Montgomery 1719-1973, Brazos Printing Co., Maryville TN, pp. 73-74.

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