University of Virginia Library

County's First Settlement

There is nothing by which the exact date of the
first settlement can be determined. It was probably
about 1740 that the first settlers began to build their
cabins along the water courses and in the fertile
valleys. It is not known who was the first hardy
pioneer to pitch his tent within the borders of Roanoke
County.

McCauley's History of Roanoke County says:

"It may have been James McAfee, who built his
strong block house on the Catawba. It may have
been William Carvin, who settled in sight of the
picturesque "Tinker Knob." It may have been
James Burke, who reared his cabin by "Burke
Spring," south of Roanoke River, on the tract recently
owned by the Salem Development Company.
It may have been Mark Evans, who made his home
beside "Cedar Springs," and became owner of those
rich lands which in after years formed an estate
equal in extent and value to the lordly seat of an
English nobleman. None of the descendants of
these worthies remain to inherit their ancestral
acres. Like the aboriginal owners, who hunted the
deer and buffalo amidst rich glades and "oak openings,"
and made their forays across the border to
pillage and massacre the hated pale faces, they are
gone. Their names have been almost forgotten, and
only perpetuated in the names of mountains and
streams, which have come to us from these remote
times, in `McAfee's Knob,' `Carvin's Creek,' `Mason's
Creek,' `Peters' Creek,' `Evans' Spring Branch,' and
`Burke's Old Place.' "

It is stated that in 1740 there was not a hunter's
cabin southwest of Otter River, in Bedford County.

Continuing, McCauley says: "Whoever these first
settlers were, we know that living in that `debatable
land' on the border, which extended from the Potomac
to the Holston, they were subjected to that
terrible storm of fire and blood which again and
again swept over the infant settlement. In that
bloody era from 1754 to 1764 they lived in constant
dread of the terrible warwhoop which announced
the onslaught of tomahawk and scalping knife. The
massacres and captures at `Draper's Meadows' (now
Blacksburg), Vass's Fort, on the south fork of the
Roanoke, and `Greenfield,' had their counterpart in
the raids into the Roanoke and Catawba valleys."