Draper’s Mountain, Virginia
“To the South and West lies Draper’s Valley, named for John Draper, who settled here in 1765. He moved hence from Draper’s Meadows (Blacksburg), where his wife was captured by the Indians in the Massacre of 1755. Six years later Draper ransomed her.” Six years? “He served as an officer in the Point Pleasant Indian Expedition in 1774.”
Waymarking.com has a little more detail: “Draper first settled at Draper’s Meadows near present day Blacksburg, Virginia but in 1755, Shawnee Indian made their way from the Ohio River Valley to raid the Virginia Frontier. As a result of one of those raids, Bettie Robertson Draper (John’s wife) and her sister-in-law, Mary Draper Ingalls and five other were taken captive and taken back to the Shawnee Camps in the Ohio River Valley. Mary Draper Ingalls escaped and traveled on foot more than 850 miles back to the new River Valley. Bettie Draper lived for (six) years with the family of an Indian Chief before John Draper found her and was able to barter for her release.”
What’s interesting about this card (made probably in the early 1930s by the Asheville Post Card Company) is that the caption made during the original printing contained a mistake. The original caption, under the row of X’s at the top of the card, says that the mountain is between Pulaski and Marion, Virginia. Apparently this error was not considered problematic enough to scrap the whole run, and the cards were simply overprinted with the strikeouts and the corrected caption. Well, some of them were; here’s a guy that has an uncorrected copy of the card for sale. For six bucks. Plus a dollar shipping. Madness.