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| This 1656 home was used in Surry County VA as a fort during Bacon's Rebellion |
Our SAVAGE family line begins over 100 years before the American Revolution, in the Colony of Virginia, on the southwest side of the James River, in the Parish of Lawnes Creek, in the County of Surry. The only facts we know about our head of this line, is by the 1697 Last Will and Testament of Robert SAVAGE, in which he names his wife Mary and children as heirs. We know that his son, our next in line, had an unusual name, Loveless SAVAGE, but we do not know what his parents were thinking when they named him. Loveless Sr. (spelling varies) also lived and died in Surry County, Virginia, and we have his will, dated October 6, 1728, which begins, "'In the name of God Amen. I Loveless SAVIDGE, living in Lawnes Creek Parish, in the County of Surry, Being Weak and Sickly in body but of Perfect mind and memory, thanks be to God therefore, and calling to Mind of the mortality of my body and knowing that it is ordained for all Persons once to die, therefore I appoint and ordain this to be my last Will & Testament ..." Ready for, and aware of his impending death, Loveless itemized and gave away such things as a feather bed and a pewter dish to his wife Sarah and children, while an Inventory taken after his death listed his possessions as including a spinning wheel, old trunks, honey jugs, and brass candlesticks. Loveless SAVAGE was dead by May of 1729, where we pick up the story with his son, Lovelace SAVAGE Jr.
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| A Spinning Wheel was part of the Lovelace Savage Sr. Estate. |
Sometime between 1729 and 1759, Loveless SAVAGE Jr. decided to head south, and moved his family to Edgecombe County, North Carolina, created in 1741, an area that soon would become known for its vast pine forests used to produce pine tar, a necessity used for sealing tight the wooden ships of that period. (Today's Carolina "Tar Heel"s get their nickname from this process in the 1800's). Not much is known about Loveless SAVAGE Jr., and he died around 1775, leaving behind his wife Lucy, and a son Robert.
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| Edgecombe County, North Carolina |
Robert SAVAGE was born most likely in the 1730's, but we are not sure if he was born in Virginia, or after his family moved to North Carolina. He married Elizabeth BELL, and by 1788 they had raised eight children during the period that included the turbulent times of the French and Indian War, and the American Revolution. On December 21, 1776, Robert and Elizabeth sold their 200 acres on Deep Creek in Edgecobe County, NC, and moved to Martin County, NC, about 70 miles to the east, where Robert SAVAGE wrote out his Last Will and Testament on September 13, 1788, listing his wife and seven children as his heirs. One of the Executors of the Will, was son Sterling SAVAGE.
Sterling SAVAGE had married early, but his young bride died when he was about 25 years old, leaving him with two young sons, Jesse and Sterling King SAVAGE. He soon married young Susannah Swales, and together they added three children of their own to the two boys Sterling brought into the marriage. Sterling and Susannah SAVAGE appear on a land deed in 1786 in Martin County, NC, and are listed on the 1790 Census there as well. In 1794, Sterling SAVAGE died, leaving his widow Susannah with five children, including her two step-sons Jesse and Sterling K.. Susannah remarried to Henry J. A. Hill, the son of the Sheriff of Edgecombe County, North Carolina, and shortly thereafter the new family moved to Georgia around 1800 for a few years, and then on to Warren County, Tennessee. Before we go on with the Tennessee SAVAGE story, a footnote about Susannah and her new husband is in order. Around 1808, Henry began an affair with 16 year old Polly Johnston, and continued the relationship, eventually having six children. The arrangement apparently was common knowledge to Susannah and the community as well, and the children of both families are entered in the same Family Bible. Henry Hill was well liked, and served three consecutive terms in the Tennessee Legislature. Oh well....
Jesse SAVAGE went to Hancock County, Georgia with his step-parents around 1800, and there met and married 14 year old Bersheba in about 1803. Jesse's step-father, Henry Hill, led a group of about 30 men from Georgia into the Tennessee wilderness to research where they should settle on recently acquired Land Grant property. When they returned, the family moved to the Hill's Creek area of present day Warren County, Tennessee, about seven miles east of Mcminnville, land given to Jesse SAVAGE's step-parents. Jesse's brother Sterling King Savage had also married in Georgia, and he and his wife did not stay long in Warren County, before moving in the 1820's to what is now Sequatchie County, along Stocker Road on Savage Creek, at the head of Savage Gulf only a few miles from the Grundy County line. They lived there the remainder of their lives and had eight children. Savage Creek and Savage Gulf are both named after Sterling K. Savage and his family that were the first to settle in that area.
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| Sterling Savage Farm on Savage Gulf in 1890's. |
Jesse and Bersheba SAVAGE raised nine children in Warren County, who were all grown to adulthood when a series of tragic events hit the family. First, in 1844, Jesse and Bersheba's son Sterling. apparently got involved in some sort of disagreement with the husband of a cousin. On a cold winter afternoon, the day after Christmas in 1844, Dick Killian, also a grandchild of Jesse's grandparents, shot and killed Sterling SAVAGE. The exact reason for the murder is not known, nor the fate of Dick Killian.. Tragic as it was, more was to come in the following years.
In 1848, four years after Jesse and Bersheba SAVAGE had lost a son to a murderer, another evil act would befall my 4th great grandfather and his wife. It all began in the early 1820's when a man named Hill chartered and built a wagon/stagecoach road between Warren County and lands to the east, know as "Hill's Road". Meanwhile, Jesse SAVAGE and a partner chartered a Turnpike along a section of the same route, and Hill's Road began to be known as "SAVAGE Road". This resulted in a long lasting dispute in the Hill's Creek Community over who really had the rights to the road. The dispute ended in 1848, when an unknown assailant/assailants ambushed and shot dead Jesse SAVAGE "at his own place of residence" in Warren County, Tennessee. Bersheba SAVAGE, now age 59, had lost a son and a husband to murderers in just four years. She would live another twenty years, raising the children orphaned earlier by her son's murder.
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| Grundy County Moonshine still around 1896 |
Just as you think the family had suffered enough murder and mayhem, the grandchild of Jesse and Bersheba SAVAGE, Sterling Savage Jr., would die a terrible death....just like his father Sterling murdered in 1844, and his grandfather murdered in 1848. The story begins and ends with Moonshine.....whiskey or bourbon made by families on their farms.. Contrary to popular myth, Moonshine liquor was NOT illegal in the 1800's, but was taxed by the government for revenue. Thus, the Revenue Agents, or "revenuers", were the collectors and enforcers of the tax, which many Moonshiners did not pay so they could make more profit. Illegal moonshine stills were operated everywhere by farmers avoiding the tax revenuers, which set the stage for booze running, shootouts, raids, and a slew of bad Hollywood movies in the next century. An unsettling problem in communities arose when a Moonshiner was arrested and interrogated, and "spilled the beans" on his fellow Moonshiners to avoid prosecution. Such was the case of Sterling SAVAGE Jr. in 1896. Sterling was 56 years old, and the father of eleven children, when he was "brought in" for questioning by the Revenuers about the "wildcat liquor" in the hills, and shortly thereafter was released. A group of neighbors suspected Sterling SAVAGE had informed the Revenuers of their activites, and became increasingly angry. Sterling, aware of their threats, went to stay at a friend's house, but in the dark of night, a group of about twenty of Sterling's neighbors came to the house, dragged him out, and took him a few miles away to the present-day spot of Wannamaker Cove, where Hwy 56 and a bend in the Collins River meet, the boundary line of Grundy and Warren Counties, in Tennessee. The mob found a nice sturdy oak tree, slipped the noose around Sterling's neck, and hung him there to his death. Some say he was innocent, others say he was not.....but the result was the same....Sterling had been murdered like his father and his grandfather in the past.
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| Moonshine and Revenuers were the death of Sterling Savage in 1896 |
Our direct line of SAVAGE names ends with Lucinda SAVAGE, who had lived through two of the three murders, and was the daughter of Jesse and Bersheba SAVAGE mentioned previously. Born in 1803, Lucinda SAVAGE married Hugh J. SLAUGHTER, who ironically was the son of a murdered Justice of the Peace in Georgia, as told in a previous post. SAVAGE and SLAUGHTER.......appropriate names for two families on the edge of frontier America. Robert SAVAGE is the 6th great grandfather of Anthony MARTINI
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| Site of the hanging murder of Sterling Savage 1896 |
