Greenbrier County WV Archives Biographies.....Pointer, Dick ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Alice Warner http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00015.html#0003503 July 21, 2009, 11:35 am Author: Virgil A. Lewis /Attack on Donnallys Fort/.--In May, 1778, a body of about two hundred Indians, determined to avenge the death of their chieftain, Cornstalk, began a siege of Fort Randolph, at Point Pleasant, then garrisoned by a detachment of Virginia troops, commanded by Lieutenant McKee. A determined resistance was continued for a week, at the end of which time the siege was raised, and the Indians, instead of returning north of the Ohio, proceeded up the Kanawha. Lieutenant McKee, believing their object to be the destruction of the Greenbrier settlement, dispatched two men to notify the settlement of the advance of the Indians. After following them several days they became frightened and returned to Point Pleasant. Captain McKee then formed his men in line and asked if there were any two among them, who would volunteer to go to the Greenbrier country and warn the people of their danger. John Prior and Philip Hammond stepped from the ranks and replied " We will." The Grenadier Squaw, a sister of Cornstalk, but a friend of the whites, painted them as savages, and though the Indians were far in advance, still by traveling night and day, they were enabled to overtake them, and came upon their camp at the mouth of Big Clear creek, only twenty miles from Fort Donnally. Not knowing whether the Indians had attacked the settlement, one of them climbed a pine tree to ascertain from their movements something of their intentions. The Indians were preparing for a massacre. Prior and Hammond immediately started for the settlement to warn the people of their danger. The following men, with their families, were in the fort at the time of the attack: Colonel Andrew Donnally, Captain Jack Williams, Richard Williams, William Blake, William Hughart, ----- Hughart, Sr., John McFerrin, William McCoy, Sr., William McCoy, Jr., Henry Hedrick, James Jordon, Thomas George, William Hamilton, James Graham, William Strickland, ----- Griffin, Philip Hammond, John Pryor, Dick Pointer (colored), and William Pritchart. Alexander Ockeltree and James Burns were killed as they approached the fort. William Pritchart, an Irish servant of Colonel Donnally, in the morning, just before daylight, went across the run to an old tan-trough, either to wash or get some kindling, and was there tomahawked. No one knew of his going out, therefore his absence created no alarm, but he had left the stockade gate open. The evening before the battle the Indians came to the top of Brushy Ridge, at a point called Bald Knob, one mile from the fort. In the morning they left the ridge and came down to the creek, about a quarter of a mile from the fort, which they followed to where it crosses the road, only a hundred yards from the fort, and knowing the stockade gate to be open, made a sudden rush for the fort. William Hughart, who was standing at the door, saw the Indians, and instead of firing his gun to give the alarm, drawled out in his peculiar style, " Y-o-n-d-e-r t-h-e-y c-o-m-e," and pushed the door shut. The Indians made a rush for the door and began to cut it down with their tomahawks. They could open it only partially, on account of a hogshead of water placed behind it. Hammond was soon on his feet. Dick Pointer had seized an old musket heavily loaded with swan shot, and was jumping about the floor, calling to Hammond, "What must I do?" Hammond said, "D--n you, shoot!" "Where, massa?" said Dick. "At the bunch," replied Hammond. At this the Indians had partly forced the door open. Hammond cut the first down with his tomahawk, and Dick fired, mowing a swathe to the stockade gate, the recoil of the gun knocking him over. This awakened the people above, and springing from their beds, they grasped their rifles and opened a galling fire, which drove the Indians outside the stockade. Before they retired some of the Indians succeeded in getting under the floor and attempted to set fire to the building. The striking of the flint and steel attracted attention, and when they tried to raise the floor the inmates helped them, and every Indian under the floor was killed. The Indians continued the battle, using every conceivable method to capture the fort. By climbing a tree one of the savages was enabled to glance a bullet so that it struck William Blake on the forehead, inflicting a scalp wound. But the Indian paid dearly for his folly, for soon after a ball from the gun of Captain John Williams went through his brains. The whites were scarce of ammunition, and were constantly warning each other in the use of it. An Indian, who had succeeded in getting within the stockade and climbed the corner of the fort, began mocking them by crying out "Load 'em well, shoot 'em sure, ammunition scarce." Richard Williams dug a hole through the mortar and shot him through the body. Letting go his hold, he swung round and fell into a soap trough. At the same time another Indian had gotten under the floor. A kettle of boiling water or soap frightened him out, and a ball from Hammond's gun killed him as he was attempting to climb the stockade fence. The loss on the part of the whites was four men killed and two wounded--Pritchart at the tan trough, Alexander Ockeltree and James Burns, who were on their way to the fort, and James Graham within the Fort. William Blake was wounded in the head and William Hamilton in the finger. Burns fell dead when shot. Ockeltree ran about three hundred yards, and fell pierced by seven bullets. The news was carried to Fort Savanna, now Lewisburg, by a scout sent out for the purpose by Captain John Stuart. He and Colonel Samuel Lewis, accompanied by sixty-six men, started for the fort about noon. They went by the way of what is now Livesay's Mill, up the creek, then westward to Rader's creek, then through a rye field to the fort, arriving about four P.M. When they approached, they thought the Indians had withdrawn, as the firing had ceased, but seeing an Indian behind a tree, Captain Stuart and Charles Gatliff fired, and the savage fell dead. Then with butts of guns foremost, they made a rush for the fort. The inmates at first supposed it to be another charge of the Indians, but soon discovering their mistake, threw open the doors. Although the Indians opened fire upon Captain Stuart and his men, and many of them had their clothes pierced by bullets, not one of them was injured. The Indians continued firing slowly from an old barn two hundred yards northwest of the fort, and at dark withdrew. Just before dark, an old Indian approached the fort and said they wanted peace, but the whites could not induce him to enter. They carried away all their dead accessible to them, but seventeen were left within the stockade fence. These Dick Pointer buried next day, about thirty yards south from the fort. He dragged them to the place with a horse, using a chain, the hook of which was placed in their mouths. Where the remainder of them were buried was never known. The engagement, except for the cry of Hughart, would have been a complete surprise. The whites fought as they came from their beds, and many of the women, in similar attire, moulded bullets. The fort was a single log-house, two stories high, and a kitchen one a half stories high, with a passageway of eight feet between them. The stockade was eight feet in height, made of split logs. The fort stood on the east side of Rader's creek, ten miles northwest from Lewisburg. Dick Pointer was granted his freedom for his work on the day of the battle. John Davis gave him a life lease to a piece of land, on which the people built him a cabin. There Dick eked out a kind of life, and at his death they buried him with the honors of war in Lewisburg cemetery--fulfilling the saying " Man's good deedsare never known through life, but they live after death." Dick was a large, powerful man, very black, and in the latter part of his life became very dissipated. No monument marks his resting-place, but one should be erected over the grave of him who saved more than seventy human beings--most of them women and children--from the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage. A remarkable incident of the day was the birth of a male child, who grew to manhood, and, from his great size, was known far and wide as Big Joe Hughart. Additional Comments: From Greenbrier County section, History of West Virginia, 1889. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/wv/greenbrier/bios/pointer49gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/wvfiles/ File size: 8.9 Kb