Samuel Stalnaker

[4][5] In December 1742, he first appears in the records (as "Samuel Stolenacre"), in the estate settlement of Matthias Harmon in Hanover Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

He paid John Buchanan, agent for the company, £3 for 100 acres opposite the Buffalo Pound (later Bingamon's and then Pepper's Ferry) near what is now Radford, Virginia.

[2] Dr. Thomas Walker writes in his journal that in April 1748, he met Stalnaker, then on his way to visit the Cherokees between the Reedy Creek settlement and the Holston River.

Walker himself states in his journal:[7] "March 23rd, we kept down the Holston River about four miles and camped; then Mr. Ambrose Powell and I went to look for Samuel Stalnaker, who I had been informed was just moved out to settle.

His route to the Cherokees, with whom he was trading for skins and furs at the time, was a passage through the mountains later to be named the Cumberland Gap by Walker, in honor of Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II of Great Britain.Stalnaker acted as a guide and Indian liaison to Walker and his crew leading them through the trecherous path to the lands west so that they could chart the then unknown territory.

[1] On 7 November 1752, he posted a large bond, in the amount of ten thousand pounds of tobacco, with Alexander Sayers, for an ordinary (tavern-keeper's) license:[9] "Know all men by these presents that we, Saml.

Stalnaker hath obtained a license to keep an ordinary in this county; if therefore, the said Stalnaker doth constantly find and provide in his ordinary good, wholesome and cleanly lodgings and diet for travelers and stablage and fodder and provender, or pasturage and provender as the season shall require for horses, for and during the term of one year from this seven day of Nov. and shall not suffer or permit any unlawful gaming in this house on the Sabbath day or suffer or permit any to tipple or drink more than is necessary; then this obligation to be void and of none effect or else to remain in full force and virtue.

Colonel Stewart, and William Long, on their Return from Fort Cumberland, where they had been to supply Provisions for the Army, were shot at there several Times, but escaped unhurt to the Augusta Court-House, from whence they were about 45 Miles distant.

[20]On 20 August 1755, John Buchanan, Samuel Stalnaker's colonel in the militia, assuming he was dead, filed at the Augusta County Courthouse to administer his estate.

An article in the New-York Mercury of 16 February 1756, describing Mary Draper Ingles' escape from captivity mentions that, during her stay in Lower Shawneetown in August 1755, she met Stalnaker and reported "that Capt.

"[22] Major Andrew Lewis led the Sandy Creek Expedition from mid-February until April 1756, in a failed attempt to rescue prisoners taken by the Shawnee.

[23] On Sunday, 29 February 1756, Captain William Preston wrote in his journal: "The creek has been much frequently used by Indians both traveling and hunting on it, and...I am apprehensive that Stalnaker and the prisoners taken with him were carried this way."

The expedition was planning to attack Lower Shawneetown (where Stalnaker was being held), but bad weather and inadequate supplies forced them to turn back and abandon their mission.

[24]: 210 On 10 May 1756, Stalnaker escaped and traveled for 40 days,[25] covering over 460 miles to Williamsburg, Virginia to report to the Governor Robert Dinwiddie on an impending assault by the French and Indians on English frontier settlements.

[32] Governor Dinwiddie wrote to Major Lewis on 17 December 1756: "As to Stalnaker...I'm of the Opin'n he sh'd, and desire [you would] apoint him a Lieut., in one of the Forts, as probably he may be of Service hereafter, being well acquainted in the Woods and a good Pilot or Guide on Occasion.

"[34] Stalnaker must have remarried, because in the fall of 1761 he and his wife Margaret served as administrators of the estate of Valentine Snyder, who had died in 1755, and Vincent Williams, killed by Bemino in a raid in 1756.

[35] Stalnaker continued to operate his tavern, which served Colonel William Byrd and his troops in 1761 during the Anglo-Cherokee War, when they constructed a blockhouse named Fort Attakullakulla nearby.

Stalnaker, still wise in all the learning of the wilderness was able to describe to Smyth, as he had to Walker many years before, a new route into Kentucky, which had recently been discovered, and which was a nearer way than commonly used.