By Jarred Marlowe
In 1796, two of the most consequential men in early American history completed a land transaction that left a permanent mark on Henry County. Benjamin Harrison V, signer of the Declaration of Independence and former Governor of Virginia, sold a plantation called Belle Mont in the Leatherwood section of Henry County to General Joseph Martin, frontier soldier and statesman. It was the kind of deal that looks routine on paper and reveals itself to be anything but when you examine the men behind it.
Benjamin Harrison V needs little introduction to students of the founding era, though his contributions are sometimes overshadowed by the dynasty he launched. Born in 1726 at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, Harrison was one of Virginia’s great planter aristocrats and a dominant figure in colonial politics. He served in the Continental Congress and was among the Virginians who put their names to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He later served three terms as Governor of Virginia between 1781 and 1784. His son William Henry Harrison would become the ninth President of the United States, and his great-grandson Benjamin Harrison the twenty-third. The family’s reach across American political history is almost without parallel, and it began with the man who signed away Belle Mont in Henry County late in the eighteenth century.
General Joseph Martin was a different kind of man entirely. Where Harrison moved in the drawing rooms of Williamsburg and Philadelphia, Martin made his reputation on the frontier. Born in 1740 in Albemarle County, Virginia, he spent much of his adult life at the edge of the known world, serving as an Indian agent, militia commander, and negotiator with the Cherokee Nation at a time when those negotiations shaped the future of the American Southeast. He was a trusted figure on both sides of the cultural divide, respected by the Cherokee leadership in ways few colonial officials ever achieved. He served in the Revolutionary War, rose to the rank of General in the Virginia militia, and spent decades navigating the complex and often violent politics of the Virginia and North Carolina frontier.
By 1796, Martin was ready to settle down. He purchased Belle Mont from Harrison and retired to the Leatherwood community of Henry County, bringing to a close one of the more remarkable frontier careers of his generation. The plantation gave him the kind of rooted permanence his life had never really allowed. He lived out his remaining years there and was buried on the property, his final resting place in the same county soil he had chosen for his home.
The legacy Martin left behind is woven into the fabric of this community in the most literal way possible. Martinsville carries his name. The city that grew up around the courthouse and the factories and the speedway is named for a man who once negotiated treaties with the Cherokee and retired to a plantation he bought from a signer of the Declaration of Independence. That is a founding story worth knowing.
Jarred Marlowe is a local resident and historian. He is a member of the Col. George Waller Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Blue & Gray Education Society, and the committee chair for the Martinsville-Henry County 250 Committee. He may be reached at [email protected].
