Wallen Family in Southwest Virginia

Several members of the Wallen family appear in the formal records of Southwest Virginia at an early date. Person:Elisha Wallen (3), for example is shown to have settled property in the Holston watershed as early as 1769. A land transaction in 1781 shows him as being the first person in an assignment chain for a parcel settled in 1769.

Adam Hope, assignee of Robert Gamble, assignee of Elisha Wallen...400 ac...on the Fifteen Mile Creek...340 ac surveyed on January 28, 1774, includes improvements, actual settlement made in 1769...August 25, 1781. [See entries under Robertson on the talk page.]

Settlement dates are only given when a commissioners certificate is involved. Such certificates authorize ownership by virtual of settlement, and it was was important to show the date of initial settlement to establish authority that the first member of an assignment chain had for obtaining initial right to the property.

The Wallens, however, had passed through this area at a much earlier date. Person:Elisha Wallen (3) and at least one of his brothers passed through the area during the "Long Hunts" of the presettlement era, establishing a temporary hunting camp in Powell Valley. Wallen's Ridge, and Wallen's Creek, on the eastern edge of Powell's Valley were named for him. During the settlement era some of the Wallen's acquired land in the area, and appear in low frequency in the records. Several of these families, including Person:Elisha Wallen (3), and Person:Joseph Wallen (1), eventually moved south through the Powell River Valley, settling in Hawkins County, and at a later date, onward deeper into Tennessee, and to Missiour.

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Index

The following persons have been identified in the records of Southwest Virginia during the settlement period. We presume that they are all related, but we do not, as a rule, know how.

Person	DOB	Father	Mother	Spouse	Comment
person: Daniel Wallen (1)
person:Elisha Wallen (3)	1734	Elisha Walling b. 1708 (minority view is Thomas Walling)			"The Long Hunter"; DOB fide Hamilton's extractions from Redd's Narrative
person:Elisha Wallen (2)	1760				DOB from pension statement
person:Elisha Wallen (4)	1784				DOB From Court records "March, 1811, Elisha Wallen, aged 27, deposes. Caveat, 12th August, 1799, by John Mackenny and Elisha Adams against John Donnell, assignee of Andrew Cowan and John Campbell, Jr., for 400 acres in Lee County on North Fork Clinch." Source:Chalkley, 1912 vol 2:227
person:James (2)
person:John Wallen (1)					mentioned in at least two indian captivity stories. Lived near Clinchport
person:Joseph Wallen (1)					uncle of person:Elisha Wallen (2)
person:Stephen Wallen(1)
person:Thomas Wallen (1)					Appears in land records with 400 ac both sides N Fork Clinch; had a son who is said to have been attacked by Indians near his father's home, but escaped

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Disambiguation

The Wallen-Wallin-and Walling surnames all seem to be interchangeable variants in the records, and, preumably the people involved are are all related. Their relationships are not, however, clear. Over the period 1760 to 1800 the following given names of this group are noted in the easily available literature: Daniel, Elisha, James, John, Joseph, and Stephen. In most cases the records do not easily permit us to tell how these individuals were related, nor can we tell in most cases whether a given name that's repeated in the records corresponds to the same person each time, or to different individuals with the same name. In the case of "Elisha Wallin" it is clear that there are several persons of this name in the records.

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