1747-1792 Virginia
We don't know who the parents of this Samuel are (discussion on separate page - sorry, no longer active), and we're not sure exactly when and where he was born. Sometimes you'll find it on the Internet that he was born 9 April 1750, but that is a different Samuel, who moved on to North Carolina and then to Amite County, Mississippi and lived until 1825. There were several Samuel Lusks in the same area at the same time, and it gets really confusing.
Basically, what we know about our Samuel is that he was an Indian fighter, and that he married Susannah Stevenson, and that he died in an Indian raid, and that his wife then married Thomas Godfrey. I think the best thing I can do at this point is to quote Walter Bailey, whose Bailey-Coulter Archives have been very helpful to me. (available on Rootsweb - link)
"Samuel Lusk, Sr. was an Indian Scout and early pioneer. He was engaged in 26 combat situations with Major Robert Crockett during the Indian uprisings in the late 1700's. Crockett was, for a number of years, including 1791, and later, the military commandant for Wythe County, Virginia. He made his headquarters on the Clinch River at Wynn's Fort. Crockett credited Samuel Lusk with the success of the campaign. Source: Virginia Calendar Papers, Reports of Major Crockett.
"Samuel and his three oldest children, William F, Robert A, and James R., were killed by Indians in 1792. Susan Stephenson Lusk remarried to Thomas Godfrey, and moved to Tazewell County with her other two sons, David and Samuel, Jr. Thomas Godfrey was reputed to be the servant of Valentine Servier. In the mid-1700's Servier and a Samuel Lusk were neighbors near what is now New Market, Virginia. Both sold their land there in the Shenandoah Valley in the late 1760's or early 1770's.
"Samuel was also a neighbor of Daniel Davison. On August 23, 1766, Daniel Davison's estate settlement by his adminstratrix was recorded, and an account rendered -- To estate of Daniel Davidson decesed .....to pay Thomas Harrison the balance of his account....To pay Samuel Lusk for Smith work.... (See Augusta County Will Book III, p. 464, at Staunton, Virginia)
"Daniel Davison was the husband of Phoebe Harrison Davison Moore, daughter of John Harrison (1691- 1771) and his wife Elizabeth Wright. Samuel Lusk was a neighbor of the Harrison and Davison families. Daniel Davi(d)son is supposedly the brother of John Goolman Davidson, who was also residing in Beverly Manor, Augusta County, and who subsequently settled in the Bluefield, Virginia area with surviving members of the Lusk family. The Davidsons had originally immigrated from County Down, Ireland and settled in Pennsylvania. Much of the city of Bluefield, Virginia is part of the John G. Davidson's original tracts. The descendants of Samuel Lusk and John G. Davidson have intermarried numerous times.
"Speculation is that Adam Steph(v)enson, son of William & Sarah, had a daughter Susan (Susannah) who married, first, Samuel Lusk, and second, Thomas Godfrey, the servant of Valentine Servier. They were all present in Augusta County prior to the mid 1790's when it appears, Thomas Godfrey, his wife, Susan Steph(v)enson Lusk, and at least two of her sons, David and Samuel Lusk, and possibly a third son, William Lusk, moved from Augusta County west to the Wolf Creek district of Wythe/Montgomery County.
"The foregoing relationships are based on testimony of Mrs. Varina Godfrey Christian obtained by historian Goode in 1827. Mrs. Christian, a direct descendant of Thomas Godfrey, stated that Thomas Godfrey married Susan Stephenson Lusk, the widow of Samuel Lusk, and that the two surviving sons of Samuel were Eli and Samuel. However, Wyoming County, West Virginia marriage records (Eli's third marriage) record that Eli was the son of David Lusk and Chloe Bailey." (Note by AEB (me): This was the GRANDSON of Susan Stephenson. David, her son, was apparently also known as Eli.)
According to Walter Bailey, Samuel had three brothers, Aps, John and Godfrey - but he has no more information on them and no dates for them. Godfrey is very interesting, considering that his widow would marry Thomas Godfrey. Aps is also interesting: it is a nickname for Absalom, a name that does appear in the next two generations of Lusks. Thomas Godfrey also had a son named Absalom. Godfrey suggests a German connection - and there were of course many Germans both in Pennsylvania (where many of the Virginia Lusks came from) and in the Valley of Virginia.
The only mention I have found of (this early) Absalom Lusk is one that was pointed out to me by Rexanna Smith via Sandy Jessee:
"Upon learning of the atrocity (the massacre of his children), Thomas Wiley and a dozen settlers immediately set out in a rescue attempt (his wife, Jenny Wiley, had been taken captive rather than killed) . They were unsuccessful, as was Capt. Harman and a group of hunters that included Absalom Lusk, Henry and James Skaggs, Robert Hawes, Daniel Harman, Adam and Henry Harman, a man named Horn, and one named Leek, who attempted to track the party of Indians the next day. Finding the slain infant along the way, Harman and his men buried the child under a white oak tree before continuing their search. However, the party was forced to turn back upon reaching the swollen Louisa River."
This comes from a website:
http://www.natchezbelle.org/oldtime/jenny.htm
And the website in turn refers to "The Pack Family of Lincoln County, West Virginia," by Ellen Jane Allen Pack
This Jenny Wiley is the Virginia Wiley who was (according to Johnston's History of the Middle New River . . . ) captured in 1789 by the same Indians who later (in 1792) captured Sam Lusk jr. Johnston says they were both held captive in Chillicothe, and that they escaped together and later separated and made their individual ways home. (Sam jr. says he was carried much further north, to Sandusky, and that he escaped alone, via Detroit and Niagara Falls; the website above, devoted to Jenny Wiley, does NOT mention Sam Lusk as a fellow prisoner, although it describes her captivity and escape in some detail.)
It is generally agreed that Samuel Lusk sr and Susanna Stephenson had three sons who
perished with him in the Indian raid in 1792, and two sons, David Eli b. ~1773 and Samuel
jr b. ~1775, who survived. The names of the sons who died are sometimes given as
William F, Robert A and James R; the birthdates are variously given as 1770, 1771, and
1772 OR 1771, 1778, and 1780. I do not know upon what authority the names or the
dates are based.
There is a William Lusk present in Tazewell County at the same time David and Samuel jr were flourishing there, and a Mary Polly Lusk. William married Charity Runyan in 1806, and Polly married Benjamin Runyan in 1807; in the middle 1830s they moved to Allen (later Auglaize) County, Ohio. It seems not uncalled for to jump to the conclusion that William and Mary Polly were brother and sister - but were they also sibs to David and Samuel? Could William have survived the massacre and moved with the rest of them to Tazewell? Probably not, alas.
Another Lusk researcher, Sandy Jessee, who always impresses me with the depth and thoroughness of her research, thinks that William and Mary Polly are the children of William and Mary Neely Lusk. This fatherly William was the son of William Lusk and Jane, grandson of James Lusk and Eleanor Smith, great-grandson of Nathan Lusk and Elizabeth Nesbitt. James Lusk does not mention a son William in his will, but he does mention a GRANDSON William. James and most of his children went to South Carolina; the land left to grandson William might have been back in Virginia (it is bounded by the lands of William Alexander, Mathew Young and Hugh Beasley), but I cannot be sure of that.
As far as documentation goes, there is this:
Montgomery County Personal Property Tax 1787
List C Dist of Bird Smith (column 1 is white males 16-21, columns 2 & 3 are blacks, column 4 is horses and mules, column 5 is cattle.)
p. 448 Luster William self 10010 not tithable (prob under 21) taken 8/14
Samuel self 00014 taken 8/17
Abner self 00035
Godfrey Thomas self 00010 taken 4/16 (also called on that day: David and John McComas)
If this is our Samuel Lusk, then his sons would have been been born either before 1766 or after 1771. And it's interesting that there is an Abner Luster as well - could this be the elusive brother Aps?
1790 Montgomery County Personal Property Tax list
tax list B person charged with tax wm 21+ // wm 16-21 // slaves // horses
1789, May 19 Godfrey, Thomas Thomas 0 0 3
1789, June 29 Luster, Henry Henry 0 0 6
1790, Mar 8 Luster, Abner Abner 1 0 4
Samuel ----- 1 0 1 no one charged with tax?
In Mont Co List of 1791-2: Luster, Henry, Abner, Samuel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So that is all I have about Samuel Lusk senior - and it is more questions than answers! I would like to look at the Virginia Calendar Papers myself sometime, but other than that, I am not sure where to look for documents to answer some of the questions. Possibly a personal search in each and every one of the county courthouses???
back to Lusk Home Page
to wife, Susanna Stevenson
to next ancestor, Samuel b. 1776
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contact me at: lee@leesgenes.com
page last updated 31 July 2004