The Draper's Meadow Massacre was an attack in July 1755, when the Draper's Meadow settlement in southwest Virginia, at the site of present day Blacksburg, was raided by a group of Shawnee warriors, who killed at least four people including an infant, and captured five more. The Indians brought their hostages to Lower Shawneetown, a Shawnee village in Kentucky. One of the captives, Mary Draper Ingles, later escaped and returned home on foot through the wilderness. Although many of the circumstances of the massacre are uncertain, including the date of the attack, the event remains a dramatic story in the history of Virginia.
Reconstructed 18th-century pioneer cabin on Smithfield Plantation, near the site of the Draper's Meadow Massacre in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Blacksburg is an incorporated town in Montgomery County, Virginia, United States, with a population of 44,826 at the 2020 census. Blacksburg and the surrounding county is dominated economically and demographically by the presence of Virginia Tech.
Downtown Blacksburg
Blacksburg's old town hall
The downtown Post Office in Blacksburg
Coal Breaker of the Virginia Anthracite Coal Company at Merrimac Mines near Blacksburg, 1904