The following information was assembled from numerous sources and cannot be used directly as proof of Qualifying Service or Lineage.
It is considered a research aid and is intended to assist in locating sources that can be used as proof.
Mathias Harman was the son of immigrants from Germany, Heinrich Adam and Louisa Katrina Herrman. Mathias was born in 1736 in Strasburg, Virginia, during his family’s slow migration from Pennsylvania to the New River Valley of Virginia, which they reached by 1745.
In 1755 he led an expedition into Kentucky and established Harman’s Station on the Levisa Fork of the Tug River. This served as a base of the Harmans’ hunting trips into that region until that place was permanently settled in the 1780s.
The Harmans developed a close relationship with the Moravian community that was established at Salem, North Carolina, and after the Proclamation of 1763, even moved to live in the vicinity of the Moravian settlements. In the late 1760s, as some western lands were reopened for settlement, he returned to Virginia. By 1771, he and two brothers were living on land at the head of the Clinch River.
Mathias can be found on a surviving roll of Captain James Maxwell’s militia company of the newly-formed Montgomery county in 1778. He was on the far fringes of the settled part of the county by that time, as he and Maxwell lived “at the head of Clinch” river, which is in modern-day Tazewell County.
Mathias married Lydia Skaggs and together they had seven children: Mathias (born 15 Jan 1775, married Nancy Vance), Adam (born about 1778, married Levicey Harman), Katie (born 1779, married Robin Beavers), Henry (born about 1780, married Sara Mitchell), Pheby (married Moses Beavers), Louisa (born about 1782, married Thomas Bailey Christian), and Rebecca (born about 1784, never married).
Lydia died on 2 Oct 1814 and Mathias died 2 April 1832. Both are buried in a cemetery on their land on Dry Fork, in Tazewell County, Virginia.
Author: Philip John C. McEachern
It is remarkable that a young man who stood very little over five feet and never weighed more than one hundred and twenty pounds was feared by the Indians and known for his heroic exploits. Tice, or known as Captain in later years, founded the first English settlement in eastern Kentucky in 1755.His battles against Indians included killing the son of a major Chief in hand to hand contact that led to his being known as the Brave Little Red Man.
Born with an enormous nose, a thin sharp face, a full head of yellow hair, a dark untrimmed beard, blue eyes said to turn green and glittering in battle and said to be fearless! His associates envied his enormous endurance and total lack of fatigue. He could match any Indian in privation and proved relentless by the Indians believing him in league with the devil or some other power. This reputation was supported by the many warriors he killed and by his being known as an excellent marksman with his long rifle. Constant escapes from the Indians and his relentless daring made him a part of the respected “Long Hunters”.
He blazed trails from Virginia to the Mississippi River.
From 1777 to 1790, he was part of the greater Montgomery County Virginia Militia fighting the British and their allied Indians in western Virginia, Kentucky and southern Ohio valleys.
Historical markers #736 in Kentucky, X-25 in Dry Fork and X-27 in Tazewell County, Virginia, mark his exploits and contributions to the conquering of the western wilderness.
Probably his most enduring exploit was the aid in the escaping of Jenny Wiley from Indian capture in 1789. A party of eleven Indians attacked her home and she was held captive for several months before rescue. Her rescuers returned her to Harman’s Station and then to her family. Her story is marked by the Jenny Wiley State Park and Theater in Kentucky. It was believed that she was abducted in retaliation after Harman had killed a Chief in an Indian raid.
He was the seventh child of eleven of Adam and Louisa Harman, born in 1739 and he lived to be 93 years. His wife was three years his senior and they had seven children. He died a widower of twenty five years in 1832 .
It is said that he felt his greatest accomplishment was leading settlers into the western development of our country and assisting Major Andrew Hood and Colonel John Preston’s surveying of the land in western Virginia and eastern Kentucky.
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