Ambrose Mullins
and Nancy Mullins

Ambrose Mullins b 1751 Franklin Co VA d 30 Jan 1838 Russell Co VA; killed by Indians when saving his little daughter's from an Indian who was about to tomahawk her to death; s/o William M Mullins and Katherine E Varner. Ambrose Mullins m. 1775 to Nancy Mullins b about 1760. Children of Ambrose Mullins and Nancy Mullins;

 William "Cooner Bill" Mullins b 1776 Floyd Co KY; m. Rutha Foster b 1780 Botetourt Co VA; d/o Marcus Foster.

 Elizabeth Mullins b 1778 VA

 Sarah Mullins b 1780 VA

 Nancy Mullins b 1784 Burke Co NC; m. James "Dr Jim" Mullins b 1782 Burke (now Yancy Co) NC d 1870 near Breaks, Grassy Creek, VA; s/o John Wesley Mullins Sr and Virginia Jane "Jennie" Bailey.

 Marshall Mullins b 1789 VA

 Ambrose Mullins b 1790 NC d about 1849 m. about 1810 to Nancy Mullins b about 1789 NC.

 Dorcus Mullins b 1794 VA

 Isham Mullins b 1795 VA

 Ollie Mullins b 1804 Franklin Co VA

 Martha Mullins b about 1810 KY

Ambrose was drafted into the Virginia Militia May 9 or 10, 1781 and served in James Peteet's Company under General Greene at the battle of Guilford's courthouse. He was released from service in September 1781 and returned home.

His house, a story and a half of hewn log construction, stood on a slight rise above Ambrose Branch. It was built before the Indian raid on his plantation about 1810. Ambrose had fought with the Indians in Pike County, Kentucky before moving to this location so he built port holes for firing on attackers. The 1810 raid was beaten off, but Ambrose was later killed by Indians when he attempted to rescue a small daughter who had gone to a nearby spring for water. Sometime before 1930 the chimney tumbled and the porch caved in. After that time the house was used as a barn.

THE AMBROSE MULLINS HOME

The home was located two miles east of Route #23, five miles north of Wise, Virginia, at the mouth of Ambrose Branch of Birchfield Creek Ambrose built the house in about 1812 and has been in the family ever since. It is a two story, hewn log house of yellow poplar logs, and hand made finishing throughout with a chimney at the at the south end. Ordinary four light windows on both sides of doors. Doors in center of both east and west sides and a stairway leading to the second floor with one landing.

It was around 1810 that Ambrose Mullins settled on Birchfield Creek. At least fifteen years before Jeremiah Birchfield and his wife, Rebbecca, moved in from Burke County, North Carolina, and gave the stream its name. All the north part of Wise County was a wilderness then. Wild turkeys roosted in the giant oaks on the ridges; bears waddled up and down the Powell Mountain slopes; panthers screamed from the tops of giant poplars; and small bands of Indians skulked through the forest, seeking game --and blond scalps fell into the classification of game from the Red Man's way of thinking.

His descendants say that Ambrose Mullins, in company with his brother, Sherwood, had previous to his settling on Birchfield, gone from his home in Franklin County, Virginia, on a hunting expedition into Big Sandy Valley, in Kentucky, and while there they were attacked by a company of about twenty Indians. The brothers succeeded in barricading themselves in a cave, and the Indians not knowing the number of white men facing them, fled down the river toward Ohio, after six of their number had fallen under the expert marksmanship of the Mullins brothers.

Later the Mullins made a settlement near Robinson Creek in what is now Pike County, but finding it too tame there for adventurous spirits, they moved back across Pine Mountain and made homes in the Birchfield and Bold Camp Wilderness.

Soon after Ambrose had brought his wife and small children to Birchfield, and while they were still living in a two-face camp, four Indians left the trail on Indian Creek and turned up a short tributary, passed through the low gap and went down Ambrose Branch of Birchfield, and made an attempt to run off Mullins' horses, but gave up the enterprise when they were surprised by Ambrose and some neighboring settlers who happened to be visiting him on that particular day. The Indians retreated back up Ambrose Branch, and leaving the trail, approached the Mullins home through the untracked forest. Secreting themselves on a ridge overlooking the little valley, they waited until all the other settlers were gone and darkness had fallen, then swooped down on the small brushed-in enclosure Mullins had prepared for his horses. They had succeeded in catching his best horse and one of the Indians was astride him, when one of the other horses broke through the fence and galloped off down Birchfield, neighing as he went.
The commotion awoke Mullins and just as the Indian was guiding the horse he had mounted through the gate he opened fire. At the first crack of his rifle, the Indian plunged from the horse, dead, and the animal followed the other down the stream, while the other Indians took to their heels and were never seen around the Mullins homestead again.

The next morning Mullins called in his nearest neighbors and they gave the dead Indian as descent a burial as possible under the circumstances. They cleared a little plot on a rolling hill for the grave, and this has grown into a very large country cemetery. When Mullins had brought his horses back from the woods he rigged up an alarm, by stringing a grapevine all around the corral fence and attached a bell to it, so the least disturbance would set off the alarm.

The next spring when the neighboring settlers came in and helped Ambrose Mullins "raise" his house, some of them jibed him for leaving holes in the upstairs wall on all four sides, so he could shoot at "Injuns" when they tried to steal his horses again. But he left the holes just the same. And in a short time he was to use them again.........just once.

While all his neighbors thought the Indians would never make another raid in the Pound Country, and Ambrose Mullins himself did not expect to be molested by them again, but he always kept four rifles loaded and placed, one at each side of the large upstairs bed rooms. And on "Bad days", it is said, he would sit in a chair and shoot deer from the holes in the walls as they came down to the lick across the branch from his house.

Then came a day when the Indians did return. It was late in October. Dusk was settling over little Birchfield valley. Ambrose, tired from a day in the field, had left the supper table and gone up the ladder to the second floor and thrown himself across a bed to rest. One of his small daughters had gone down the trail to gather some chestnuts. Except for the hooting of an owl, all was still. But suddenly the quiet of the valley was broken by a savage yell, and springing to an opening, Mullins beheld ten Indians tearing down the Ambrose Branch trail toward the house. There was no time to lose. He knew the Indians had decided on a charge, and if they succeeded in reaching the house his family was doomed. So, grabbing up a rifle, he fired at the foremost Indian and he went down, but the others came on. Grabbing up a second rifle he brought down another Indian, and was pleased to see the remaining eight seek cover in the surrounding laurel. But his pleasure was but momentary. Looking down the trail he saw his little daughter running toward the house screaming, and at the same moment he spied an Indian rush from the laurel thicket and across the stream to cut the child off from the house. He grabbed his third rifle and fired, and for once in his life he missed his target. The fourth, and last remaining loaded rifle failed to fire. He had no time to reload one of the guns if his child was to be saved. He wasted no time in debating what to do. Springing down the ladder, he grabbed up his hunting knife and ran across the open space to overhaul the Indians making for his little girl. Both he and the Indian reached the child at the same time. Seeing Mullins was upon him, the Indian turned with raised tomahawk with which he was about to brain the child, and lunged at the father. At the same time, Mullins sprang forward with his hunting knife. There was a ripping of buckskin and flesh and crunching of bone, and both men lay dead on the grass. The child fled to the safety of the house.

No doubt the remaining Indians would have stormed the house, left without an adult male protector, and massacred the entire family, had not at that very moment another settler with his two grown sons, who had been hunting in the woods above the Mullins home, come down from the mountains and attacked the Indians from the rear. The Indians fled back across the Indian Creek, but aroused settlers hurried after them, overtook them across Pine Mountain and left not a one of the company alive.

Four new graves were made on the rolling hill. One each for the three dead Indians, and one for Ambrose Mullins.....the man who did not believe in taking chances with danger, but who finally did take a chance and won the life of his child, but lost his own. Today Birchfield Creek is almost wholly peopled by his descendants, and they are scattered into all parts of the country.

The house Ambrose Mullins built still stands, (as of 1932) a landmark, probably one of the oldest houses in Wise County.