348
VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY
The Clevelands have become illustrious.
One of Den's granddaughters married Sen-
ator Thomas J. Rusk, and another Gov. C. J.
McDonald of Georgia, and a great-niece,
Judge Underwood of Rome, Georgia. His
sister's son was Gov. Franklin, of North
Carolina. His brother's son, Jerry, was the
patriarch of Greenville, and another, Jesse,
of Spartanburg. North Carolina named a
county after him, and a monument to the
niemory of him and the other heroes stands
on the historic King's Mountain, conse-
crated by patriotic valor, while his family
have erected one at Ben Cleveland, Oconee
county. South Carolina. He died in Tugalo
valley. Oconee. South Carolina, October,
1806.'
Martin, Joseph, born in Albemarle county, Virginia, in 1740, son of Joseph Martin. The father, born in Bristol, England, of a wealthy family, was sent out by his father, as super- cargo of the Brict% and, on coming to Vir- ginia, married Susannah Chiles, daughter of a respectable and well-to-do planter. This marriage offended the pride of the father, who disinherited the son, believing with many other Englishmen, that the colonists were "an inferior, degraded set; the son never returned to England, and in Virginia he reared five sons and six daughters, "all of unusually large stature, and in other re- spects above mediocrity," and from whom descended a large and widely dispersed line of Wallers, Carrs, Lewises, Marks, Over- tons. Minors. Chiles, and others. Joseph Martin, whose name begins this narrative, was the third son of this family, and became a man of fine ability and commanding pres- ence. Impetuous in his youth, he gave little attention to schooling, and his education
was limited. He was bound out to a carpen-
ter, but his ardent temperament would not
admit of his being confined to such a call-
ing, and he left his master and joined the
army at Fort Pitt, in his sixteenth year.
While in the ranks, he met, as a fellow sol-
dier, Thomas (afterward General Sumter,
whom, after a separation of thirty years, he
was destined to meet again, he being a mem-
ber of the Virginia legislature, and Sumter a
member of congress. After his return from
the army, he went to the West, about 1768.
with a party of fur trappers and traders, and
on this journey he discovered the famous
"Powell's \'alley." At a place which came
to be known as **Martin's Station," in \'ir-
gfinia. on the west thoroughfare to Ken-
tucky, they cleared land and planted corn,
but in the summer the Indians broke up the
settlement, and the party returned home.
Martin now became overseer for one Minor,
and after a time removed to Pittsylvania
county, where he bought a tract of land. In
year of 1776 he recruited a company and
took part in the war against the Cherokees,
and he was connected with the peace treaty
commission in the following year, and was
designated by the government to reside on
the "Island of Peace," now in Sullivan coun-
ty, Tennessee, and he so remained until
1789. He was elected to the North Carolina
legislature, was brigadier-general of militia,
and frequently campaigned against the In-
dians. In 1785 he was one of the commis-
sioners to organize a new county in Georgia,
and in 1788 he was a member of the North
Carolina convention called to act upon the
new United States constitution, which he
favored, though the convention rejected it;
he was also a member of the convention the
next year, and which ratified that instru-
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