PERRY FRANCIS AND HATTIE SLUSS FAMILY

WILLIAM PERRY FRANCIS FAMILY

When my mother’s parents, Perry Francis and Hattie Sluss Stepp, got married it was a second marriage for both of them. Perry was previously married to T.C. and they both were born in Pike, Kentucky and they took to live with them, when she was an infant, a little girl named Belvia. His profession was a barber. They were divorce before Perry was forty-one.  Hattie Sluss was previously married to M.S.  and they both were born in Martin, Kentucky.   Her husband was a preacher by profession, and Great-Grandma Hattie said that he would go to church on Sunday, preach all day then come home from church and beat her up, She left Moses and went to live with her brother Ben.   Great-Grandma Hattie divorced him before she was nineteen.

Perry's mother and father, William (Bill) Francis and Sophia Maynard, moved to Dehue where Bill worked in the coal mines.  After Perry's divorce,  he went to live in Dehue, too, as he had other family that live in Slagle on Rum Creek Hollow.  Hattie had siblings that also moved to Slagle, that is how Perry and Hattie met in the year 1918, he was forty-one and she was nineteen.

They got married in Slagle and moved to back Martin, Kentucky.  They had four children; three girls and a son all born in Kentucky.  They were Alice, Marie, Vondon and Tince. Sometime, between 1924  and 1926,  Perry and Hattie moved back to Rum Creek, West Virginia. Perry went to work for the coal mines in Argyle and they had one more child, a daughter, whom they named Belvia. I don’t know if my Great Grandma Hattie named Belvia after my Great Grandpa’s daughter from his first marriage because she likes her or was jealous of her.  I have heard both stories.  I never saw a mine at Argyle but Aunt Belvia said that there was one when she was a little girl, and her father worked in the sand-house.

Hattie Sluss' father was born in Virginia and her mother, Mary Polly, was born in Magoffin, Kentucky.   Polly was Indian, and at the time, Magoffin, was the only part of Kentucky which allowed  the Indians and Colored to live peaceful.  Hattie's father moved to Kentucky with a couple of his brothers where he met Polly. When his brothers moved back to Virginia he stayed and married her.

 
Perry's grandfather, William, (three times remove) was born in Virginia and later his family moved to South Carolina.  He met and married an Indian woman and since his dad was in the  Revolution War and hated Indians, he took his wife and moved to Kentucky. They had five children; four boys and one girl.  He bought 300 hundred acres of land.  The oldest boy was named after his father, William Jr., and he also brought three hundred acres land in the same hollow as his parents but trouble began when Devil Anse had his eye on the same land for the trees or lumber. So this is the story as it was past down in the family and it goes like this:

William Francis Jr. was a farmer, he owned 300 acres of land in 1850.  He was elected (or appointed) Justice of the Peace from 1855 to 1861 in Pike, Co. Kentucky.  He enlisted in the Civil War in 1861 at the age of 41, as a private. He was promoted to full Lieutenant on May 15, 1862 and to full captain on November 10, 1863.   He was a "General" in the Union Army  and a Captain John Buchanan of the Confederate Army was reportedly charged with taking him "dead or alive".  According to a Logan Banner newspaper article dated 12-01-1938; military records show William Francis death as a captain attached to the 167th Va. Militia in Pike, Co. Ky. in 1863 but do not report cause of death. It is believed that just before the war ended, Ole Devil Anse Hatfield (of the Hatfield & McCoy Feud
Line) shot and killed William "Bill" and claimed it as a war shooting.  Family tales can often have some truth to them.

 
Upon Bill's death, he died Intestate, he was the legal owner of a large and valuable tract of land in Pike County on Peter Creek, the legal title to which was descended to his heirs and his widow, Margarette. However, a claim was made in the Pike Circuit Court sometime in 1865, naming James M. Francis and John Charles as administrators of the Francis Estate and they stated that part or all of the lands should be sold as necessary for the payment of descendant debts. The personal estate was insufficient. We know Bill was much in debt to a Richard Daniels and George Hatfield.

 Grandma Hattie, a granddaughter, Sue, and her brother Ben Sluss

Evan Sluss

Mary Polly Hale Sluss

Ida Marie, Hattie Sluss, Golden Alice, Vincey Jane Francis

                                             

                                             

William Francis

                                           

Uncle Vondon Francis

Aunt Belvia Francis

Massacre of the Sluss Family

Here is a story that was past down in our family.  Of all the stories that my grandmother, Hattie Sluss,  told me this wasn't one of them. I don’t know if she had even heard the tale herself, because if she had I believe she would have told me.  According to the Sluss family members that I've got on my family tree website, my great grandfather, Evan Sluss, is the grandson of Marian - the son in the Sluss Massacred.

The Massacre of the Sluss Family (Southwest Virginia Enterprise):
Interesting Paper Tells of Massacre Which Occurred at Sharon Springs, in 1774.

"Through the courtesy of our townsman, Mr. R. P. Johnson we are able to give the readers of the Southwest Virginia Enterprise, an interesting article, written by Mr. S. H. Williams, of Lynchburg, one of the descendants, on the massacre of the Sluss family.

According to the tradition a number of the Sluss family was members of the St. Paul's Lutheran Church on the Lee Highway west of Wytheville and they would walk from Ceres for the 11 o'clock sermon and back home that afternoon. The women of the family would accompany the men when they attended service, making the trip across the mountains on foot.

The massacre of the Sluss family occurred at Sharon Springs in what was then Fincastle County ( now Bland) near the present village of Ceres, Virginia, August 2, 1774, the year of the Indian uprising known as "Lord Dunmore's War" and just two months prior to the famous battle of Point Pleasant.

It was common knowledge among the settlers of this section of Southwest Virginia that Indians, particularly the Cherokees and Shawnees, had been on the war path since early spring and were committing depredations along the Ohio and Kanawha rivers and that scattered bands were gradually making their way up New River and across the Allegheny mountains toward the fertile valley where game was to be found in abundance, massacring all with whom they came in contact.

Warning of the close proximity of marauding savages had repeatedly sent the pioneers scurrying with their families to the protection of a blockhouse fort surrounded by dugouts or trifle pits, (constructed by them for just such an emergency) only to learn after days of self imprisonment that the rumors were without foundation, when they would return cautiously to their homes.

Like the story of the shepherd and the wolf, these false rumors had caused so much inconvenience and waste of time that crops in the valley were getting little or no attention, yet time after time, in response to repeated warnings they retreated within the walls of the block house to defend themselves against red skins that never put in an appearance.

Late in July 1774, rumors were rife that Elinipsico, son of the famous Shawnee Chieftain, Corn stalk, with a party of fifty or sixty braves were infesting the neighborhood and that a family in Giles County by the name of Lybrook had been massacred by them. Jared Sluss, the pioneer, believing this to be another wild rumor and loath to lose the remainder of his crop, decided to remain at home while keeping a vigilant watch for any indication of the presence of Indians in the vicinity, thinking he would then have time to seek refuge within the fort. Never permitting him to get beyond sight of his house for four days and satisfied that the Indians were nowhere about, on the fifth day he and his eldest son, James, a lad twelve years of age, proceeded to work in a field just over the brow of a hill and out of sight of home.

Two of his daughters being away from home at the time (one of them afterward married a Mr. Groseclose and the other a Mr. Sharitz) he left three of his children, Marion aged seven, Hazel aged ten, and Laura aged four, playing in the bright sunshine of a perfect summer morning, their laughter ringing in his ears as he passed out of sight. They had been cautioned to go no farther away than the "spring" a short distance from the house and to keep a sharp lookout for Indians. Christine, the mother, after rocking her six-months old baby, Mary, to sleep, had placed her tenderly in a cradle and shoved it under a high bed in a corner of one of the rooms to keep the flies from annoying her while she slept, little knowing that this act would save the child from a horrible death.

Unaware that savages lurking in the underbrush a short distance away had their beady eyes upon them, the children continued innocently at their play.

The mother was busy with her housework and the first intimation she had of danger was a terrified scream from one of the children closely followed by others from the trio. Looking through a partly opened door she beheld a sight against which she had for years vainly tried to steel herself. A party of Indians had stealthily worked themselves between the children and the house and before any one was aware of their presence had cut off all avenue of escape within doors, forcing them to flee for their lives in the direction their father and brother had gone earlier in the day. A rail fence some fifty yards distant obstructed their way. Laura was  overtaken immediately and her brains dashed out with a war club. Hazel managed to climb over the fence and was well on her way to safety when glancing back she discovered that her seven year old brother, Marion, would certainly be caught before he could get over unless someone went to his assistance. Without further thought of trying to save herself she darted back and bracing herself against the top rail, reached over and lifted him across, shielding his body with her own as best she could while they ran. But for this heroic act, she paid with her life.

The twang of a powerful bow-string drawn its full length and released from the grip of a Herculean savage and an arrow sped through to its mark piercing her frail body through and through while the impact caused its shaft to quiver for seconds in her lifeless form after she had fallen.

The sudden appearance over the brow of the hill of father and son just at this time who, greatly alarmed by the screams they had heard were on a dead run for home, was a moment too late to save this little heroine but did have the effect; however, of momentarily halting the pursuers; thereby, enabling the boy to make his escape.

Meeting his father and brother he was told by them to hurry to the fort for help and that was the last time he saw them alive. Arriving at the fort bruised and bleeding, the little fellow through his tears implored those within to hurry to the rescue. After some deliberation, a party sallied forth and reached the scene of the massacre without sighting the enemy. The scene they beheld was long to be remembered. James, though a lad of tender years, and fought and died valiantly by his father's side. The habit of the Indians to invariably carry off their dead and wounded made it impossible to estimate the extent to which they inflicted casualties upon their adversaries, but the condition of their bodies, the ground about them and scattered pools of blood was mute evidence they had sold their lives dearly in defense of their loved ones. Both had been scalped.

The body of the girl lay just over the fence, her scalp missing, and arrow still in the wound. The mother was found just outside the kitchen door, her body hacked to pieces by tomahawks, her scalp torn away, her forearm broken and bearing other evidences of a terrible struggle , but still alive. She afterward regained consciousness and was able to relate some of the terrible details of the tragedy, but was unequal to the heart rendering struggle for life and after three days of indescribable suffering with her torn and mutilated form, the light from Heaven streamed down through the gathering mists of death and her soul was wafted into that world of blessedness where the great riddle of life, the meaning of which we can only guess at here below, was unfolded to her in the quick consciousness of a liberal reward.

While their victims were being buried the people grouped around their graves could plainly hear the war whoops, howls, and jeers of the Indians who had appeared on a ridge in the distance in full view dancing in glee and defying the settlers to pursue them for their deed. Of three of the survivors the writer has been able to learn no more than has been mentioned in a previous paragraph, but Mary, the six-months old babe who was found in her cradle under the high bed in the corner where loving hands had tenderly placed her, somewhat fretful at having been so rudely awake but otherwise unharmed, under the care of a friendly neighbor grew to womanhood. The exact spot where the Sluss home stood can be located on a farm not far west of the North and South Highway near a stiff curve which leaves the valley to approach Walker Mountain. The graves of the victims are in an old cemetery near Ceres.  The fort itself was only torn away about forty years ago."
 

There is a plaque for the Sluss Family standing on the grave yard.