Cooperative Living October 2016 - 33

Powell Mountain
is a ridge that curves to
form a fishhook shape near
the Kane Gap, where Daniel
Boone came through in
1769 on his way
to Kentucky.
daughter of Joseph Duff, a member of the
pioneer Duff family.
Vastine was injured in a dynamite
explosion at the area known as " Big
Bend " on Powell Mountain while
supervising work on the Fincastle Road.
According to tradition, a rock struck his
head following a blast, a gold coin was
inserted to lift up the skull, and he was
transported to Richmond, Virginia, for
medical help.
He died Nov. 6, 1855, and is buried in a
sarcophagus in a small cemetery on the
Kane Gap Road on property formerly
owned by the Duffs and more recently the
Hagan Hughes family. Mr. Stickley's young
children were listed in a Lee County
census as living in the home of their Duff
grandparents. The youngest child, Vastine
Jr., was born the following year, the same
year the mother Elizabeth died. The cause
of her death is unknown.
Powell Mountain was named for
Ambrose Powell, who came with Dr.
Thomas Walker and his party in 1750 to
explore and survey the region of southeast
Kentucky for the Loyal Land Company,
which had received a royal grant of
800,000 acres. Powell Mountain is a ridge
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that curves to form a fishhook shape near
the Kane Gap, where Daniel Boone came
through in 1769 on his way to Kentucky.
His 16-year-old son James was killed by
Cherokee and Shawnee Indians near there
in 1773, along with Henry Russell, and
brothers John and Richard Mendenhall, as
they attempted to settle in Kentucky, the
Gateway to the West.
Wallen's Ridge was named for Elisha
Wallen, one of the longhunters who
traveled through this area in 1761. The
pioneers initially traveled trails carved out
by buffalo that visited the salt lick in
nearby Blackwater as well as paths used by
the Indians. On March 10, 1775, Daniel
Boone, with the help of 30 axe men, was
to select the most direct route from
existing trails and blaze that trail from the
Holston Valley to the Kentucky River
through 200 miles of wilderness. The
Scott, Allen and Stout way stations
provided resting places for pioneers
and stagecoach travelers as they traveled
along the Wilderness Road on their way
to Kentucky.
During the Civil War the old Fincastle
Road was used by Union and Confederate
troops alike. On July 7, 1862, a band of
Southern guerillas known as " Witcher's
Boys " captured 30 or 40 men they believed
to be Union sympathizers, one of whom
was John Davis Sage. They were taken to a
log structure called Blue Springs Church,
only a few hundred yards from Sage's
birthplace. Witcher's Boys barricaded all
windows and the door, imprisoning them
for the night.
Two of the smaller prisoners managed
to escape by lifting a loose puncheon in
the floor and squeezing themselves
through the opening, crawling from under
the floor into the shadows of surrounding
willow and sycamore saplings at the rear of
the old church. The escape infuriated their
captors and under heavy guard, the
remaining prisoners were taken eastward
to the south side of Powell Mountain and
brutally slain, one by one.
One of the captors was hanged, not
in the normal fashion but tied to a bent
sapling and flung into eternity. Sage
was decapitated. As soon as friends and
relatives dared, his body was recovered,
identified by undergarments his wife
had improvised of bed ticking. Some of
these men are buried in the Duff Cemetery
in Stickleyville.
October 2016 | Cooperative Living | 31
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Cooperative Living October 2016

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