[2] The original 7,500 acre (30 km²) tract that became known as Draper's Meadow was awarded on 20 June 1753 to Colonel James Patton, an Irish sea captain turned land speculator, by Governor Robert Dinwiddie.

At the time of the attack, the area had been populated by a group of around twenty settlers who were a mix of migrants from Pennsylvania of Irish and Germanic origin,[1] some of whom were landowners and others tenant farmers.

Rising tensions between the natives and western settlers were exacerbated by fighting in the French and Indian War and the encroachment on tribal hunting grounds.

On 9 July a force of about 1300 British soldiers under the command of General Edward Braddock had been decisively defeated by French troops and Shawnees at the Battle of the Monongahela, which encouraged further violence against settlers in the region.

On Wednesday, 30 July (see below regarding disagreement of sources about the date) a group of Shawnee (then allies of the French) entered the sparsely populated settlement.

[6] Colonel John Buchanan sent a party of soldiers from the Augusta County militia after the Shawnees, but they failed to locate them and returned empty-handed.

"[6]: 85  The location of the graves of those killed in the massacre remains unknown, but it is believed to be in the vicinity of the Duck Pond on the campus of Virginia Tech.

[3]: 20 In mid-October Mary escaped from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, without her children, and made a 42-day journey of more than eight hundred miles (1,300 km) across the Appalachian Mountains together with another woman, reaching Draper's Meadow on 1 December, 1755.

[16] In September 1756, Governor Dinwiddie wrote to Colonel Clement Read: "Give Stalniker £100 to...build a little Stockade Fort at Draper's Meadow."

[18] William Preston, who had been in Draper's Meadow on the morning of the attack but was sent by Colonel Patton to assist with the harvest at Sinking Creek and so was saved, purchased the property on 24 May 1773,[4]: 41  and completed the construction of his Smithfield Plantation home in 1774.

Concerned about continued Shawnee raids on neighboring settlements, they moved to Fort Vause, where a small garrison safeguarded the residents.

"[3]: 40  Glanville and Mays counter this opinion: "The overall accuracy of Mrs. Floyd’s 'My Dear Rush' letter is surprisingly good...She made minor errors in dates and places.

"[6]: 106 John Peter Hale (1824-1902),[24] one of Mary Ingles’ great-grandsons, claimed to have interviewed Letitia Preston Floyd, and his 1886 narrative contains numerous details not cited in any previous account.

[27] A wall on the Virginia Tech campus, between the golf course clubhouse and the duck pond, commemorates the massacre, with the date "July 8, 1755" inscribed on it.

[28] In 1938, the Alleghany Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR) placed a brass memorial plaque at Smithfield Plantation, near the site of the Draper's Meadow Massacre in Blacksburg, on the Virginia Tech campus, on which is written: "To Colonel James Patton and pioneers who lost their lives in the Draper's Meadow Massacre, July 1755.