and Indians came into Augusta county, murdered and scalped some of the unweary and unguarded people, but I think the militia drove them over the mountains." It is tantalizing that we cannot ascertain the scene of this raid, and other circumstances; but it probably occurred on the frontier, and more or less remote from the western limit of the present county. In a letter to General Abercrombie, dated August 12th, the Governor alluded to the raid just mentioned, or another—we cannot tell which. He says: "About a month ago, a hundred of them" [Shawnee Indians] "with some French, came into the county of Augusta, in this Dominion, killed and carried away prisoners twenty-four of our people. We killed sixteen of them."
The record book of Courts Martial held by officers of Augusta militia, from 1756 to 1796, has in part escaped destruction. Both backs have disappeared, and some leaves also here and there, but a large part of the volume remains.
We find from this volume that "a Council of War" was held at Augusta Courthouse, July 27, 1756, by order of the Governor, to consider and determine at what points forts should be erected along the frontier for the protection of the inhabitants. The Council was composed of Colonels John Buchanan and David Stewart, Major John Brown, and Captains Joseph Culton, Robert Scott, Patrick Martin, William Christian, Robert Breckenridge, James Lockhart, Samuel Stalnicker, Israel Christian, and Thomas Armstrong. William Preston acted as clerk. The William Christian mentioned could not have been Captain Israel Christian's son of the same name, who twenty years later was a prominent man, unless he was a wonderfully precocious boy in 1756.
The Council unanimously agreed that forts should be constructed at the following places: "At Peterson's, on the South Branch of Potowmack, nigh Mill Creek," two miles from the northern county line; at Hugh Man's Mill, on Shelton's tract, 18 miles from Peterson's; "at the most important pass between the last named place and the house of Matthew Harper, on Bull Pasture" [the place afterwards designated was Trout Rock, 17 miles from Man's]; at Matthew Harper's, 20 miles from Trout Rock; and at Captain John Miller's, on Jackson's river, 18 miles from Harper's. The Council then say: "As the frontiers are properly protected by the forts of Captains Hog [Dinwiddle's],
