The Lewis-McClanahan Line: Colonial Virginia's Frontier Soldiers
Near Roanoke, Virginia
On a knoll to the northeast of this marker lie the graves of Colonel Elijah McClanahan and his wife Agatha Strother Lewis. Their family names connect two of the most prominent military lineages in colonial Virginia. Agatha belonged to the family of General Andrew Lewis, the commander of Virginia forces at the Battle of Point Pleasant in seventeen seventy-four, one of the decisive engagements of Lord Dunmore's War against the Shawnee.
General Andrew Lewis's victory is often seen as helping open the Ohio Valley to American expansion. His family, including Agatha and her husband, continued to shape the Virginia frontier into the early republic. The grave site here, in Botetourt County, sits in the heart of the territory that men like Andrew Lewis fought to claim, and later to settle.
