Joseph Martin (general) - Family Life, Legacy and Descendants

Family Life, Legacy and Descendants

Gen. Joseph Martin had a son by his second wife Susannah Graves, Col. Joseph Martin, born in Henry County in 1785, who served in the War of 1812. Another of his sons, Patrick Henry Martin, Joseph Martin named after his friend and sometime neighbor, Governor Henry. After helping adjudicate the western boundary line between North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia as far as the Cumberland Mountains, General Martin retired to his Belle Mont plantation at Leatherwood, which he purchased in 1796 from Benjamin Harrison V of Berkeley Plantation. General Joseph Martin died at his Leatherwood plantation in 1808, and was buried in the family cemetery there. Buried alongside him at the graveyard at Belmont are three other Joseph Martins: Colonel Joseph Martin, son of the general, and his son Joseph and grandson Joseph, who lived at Greenwood plantation.

Initially known as Henry Courthouse, the town of Martinsville, Virginia was later renamed in honor of this early soldier, planter, pioneer and real estate speculator. For many years afterwards, General Martin remained an obscure figure, until Lyman Draper began collecting reminiscences about him, including those of Major John Redd, a prominent Henry County planter who served under Martin, and who also wrote about his early recollections of General Nathaniel Greene, George Rogers Clark, Daniel Boone, Col. Benjamin Cleveland, Dr. John Walker, and other early prominent Virginia figures.

Joseph Martin had 18 children by his two wives and his Cherokee common law wife. Martin's descendants include his eldest son Col. William Martin, Tennessee pioneer, and member of the South Carolina and Georgia legislatures; son Col. Joseph Martin, member of the Virginia House of Delegates, the Virginia State Senate and the Virginia Constitutional Convention 1829–1830; daughter Martha Martin, who married her cousin William Cleveland, son of Benjamin Cleveland, hero of the Battle of King's Mountain; son Major Brice Martin, Tennessee pioneer, and surveyor in 1801 of the disputed boundary between Virginia and Tennessee; Dr. Jesse Martin Shackelford, founder of Martinsville's Shackelford Hospital, later Martinsville Memorial; Judge Nicholas H. Hairston of Roanoke.; United States Senator from Virginia Thomas Staples Martin from Charlottesville, Virginia.; Judge John Dillard of the North Carolina Supreme Court; American theologian and Biblical Greek scholar Archibald Thomas Robertson.; Alabama Governors Joshua L. Martin, Gabriel Moore, John A. Winston, and Charles Henderson; as well as Alfred M. Scales, Confederate General in the Civil War, and subsequently Governor of North Carolina. Also descended from Martin was Henry Smith Pritchett, an educator born in Missouri who served as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.