Founders of Damascus

Founders of Damascus. . , The first settlers in this area were the Cherokee, an Iroquois-speaking tribe with widespread settlements along the river valleys of what is now Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee. A hunting camp was located adjacent to Laurel Creek north of present-day Damascus and arrowheads are still found there. With the expansion of European settlements westward the Cherokee lost control of the land through a series of treaties with the Colonial government. They left the area and moved deeper into the mountains of Tennessee, leaving the land unpopulated. , The first white settlers were Thomas McSpadden and his wife Mary, who in 1776 settled on 85 acres extending from the junction of Beaverdam and Laurel Creeks north. They lived here only a short time before moving to North Carolina. , The first official Land Grant was given in 1785 to Jacob Wright and his 22-year-old son John, a Revolutionary War veteran. This consisted of 100 acres in what is now the Extract section of Damascus, plus another 880 acres extending from town back into the hills along the Glade Spring Road. Members of the Wright family still live and work in Damascus. , Other homesteaders, including the Hands, the Rambos, the Larimers and the Wideners followed within a few years, clearing the land and building homes and farms. Many descendants still live in the area, and names like Widener Valley and Rambo Street reflect their heritage. , The first name given to the community that is now Damascus was Mock's Mill, after Henry Mock who came here in 1821 and built a grist mill. He also purchased much of the land within the present corporate limits of Damascus. He had 30 children by three wives. He and many other family members are buried in Damascus. , In 1886 General J. D. Imboden bought most of the property owned by the Mock family and changed the name of the town to Damascus, believing that the local mountains had great deposits of iron, like the ancient Damascus in Syria. Imboden is buried in Richmond, Virginia, in a section of Hollywood Cemetery reserved for Civil War generals., Design by Trailhead Designs , Text from different sources including Louise Fortune Hall’s “History of Damascus” , In Loving Memory of , Linda “Mia” Wright. , [other photo captions] , . Lonnie Lewis, Jr., has found over 500 arrowheads at the old Cherokee hunting camp near Columbus McKinnon , . Widener Valley, named after one of the original settlers.