Horses for Sale in Big Stone Gap VA, Kingsport TN

About Mendota, VA

In 1770, Peter Livingston and his family settled on 2,000 acres beside the North Fork of the Holston River at the mouth of Livingston Creek near present day Mendota, Virginia. The beautiful and fertile river bottoms of his farm yielded good crops and he soon had expanded his cleared land to several acres and eventually brought in slaves to help him work it. All appeared well until the morning of April 6, 1794, when the feared, Cherokee Chief Benge and his followers quietly crept upon the unsuspecting cabins in an attempt to capture enslaved people to sell to the British. Working some distance away in the fields, Peter and his brother Henry only suspected trouble when they saw smoke rising from the direction of their homes. Rushing back to the scene, they soon learned that their wives and some of their slaves had been carried off.