Mountain man's death capped fascinating life
It was a hunting trip like many others before it, in which the only things that got "bagged" were the hunters themselves. On Nov. 21, 1877, five local men set out to hunt the western region of Augusta County near Shenandoah Mountain, but after a day in the wilds came up empty-handed except for a couple of well-drained bottles of whiskey.
They made their way to two cabins in a clearing and rapped on the door of one of them. The resident was Samuel Todd, who lived just a few paces from the cabin of his father, James Todd. Almost immediately an argument erupted, with one of the hunters claiming the younger Todd had poisoned some dogs on a former hunt. Todd loudly denied it.
Soon, the noise roused 70-year-old James Todd, who snatched up his rifle and came out of his cabin to investigate. He quickly ordered the man who had accused his son off the property.
The elder Todd was famous for his marksmanship, so several members of the hunting party tried to disarm him.
During the struggle, one of those men, Reuben Grandle, shot Todd in the chest with a pistol. The old man died an hour later. Grandle, a mail carrier by profession, fled into the mountains.
So ended the life of one of the area's most fascinating and independent characters. A lifelong resident of the mountains, James Todd had gained considerable fame as one of Gen. Robert E. Lee's favorite scouts, a game hunter and marksman extraordinaire. So fierce and independent was he that, after scouting for Lee, he turned on the Confederacy and helped deserters to escape.
Todd was born about 1807 and settled in his Shenandoah Mountain cabin while still a teenager. Naming the area White Oak Lick, Todd set out to carve a name for himself as a hunter and traveled far and wide through the wilds of the western part of the state doing it. By 1860 he was fabled as the keenest hunter in the Shenandoah Valley — some estimates placed his deer kill alone at 2,700 — and a marksman of remarkable, even stunning ability.
For example, Todd, using an old muzzle-loaded rifle that the Staunton Vindicator said "he had bored so many times that you could get your thumb into it," could shoot a bullet through a hat that was located on the opposite side of a tree. He did it by placing an axe blade alongside the tree and bouncing the rifle ball off of it, into the hat.
Politically, Todd was a supporter of the Union. But he was so knowledgeable about the area that when war broke out in 1861, Staunton magistrate Chesley Kinney recommended him as a scout to Robert E. Lee, who was beginning military operations in western Virginia. Kinney stated that it didn't matter whether Todd was a Unionist; if he undertook the work, "he would do it."
And he did.
Knowing every bridlepath in the mountains, he provided invaluable service to Lee. The general stated that Todd was the best judge of the numbers of a military force and made the most reliable reports of any man he had ever seen.
Todd spent three months with Lee. Upon returning to his Augusta County cabin, though, he discovered that Confederate soldiers had ruined his farm and "been rude to his daughters."
"This discovery," noted the Vindicator, "changed Todd's relations to the Confederate cause, and he remained at home, establishing a sort of post on a line from Staunton, through which blockade-runners and deserters from the Confederacy were guided into the enemy's country."
Capt. John Avis, provost marshal of Staunton, sent out a guard to capture Todd, who fled into the mountains. One night he returned home and was accosted by three members of the guard. He refused to surrender and shot one of them in the thigh. The rest of the guard fled, and it was three days before the wounded man was sent for from Staunton. He died shortly after arriving back in town.
No further guards were sent after Todd, who lived out the remainder of the war in the security of his mountain seclusion.
A few days after his shooting death in 1877, a bench warrant was issued for Todd's killer, Reuben Grandle. Little hope was extended for his capture, though. Grandle, it was noted, was "well acquainted with the mountains" and most likely would escape.
Grandle did escape, there being no record of his having been brought to justice in Augusta County. But he may have made an in absentia statement in his own defense.
Just days after the incident, the office of the Staunton Vindicator received an unsigned communication purporting to give "a correct statement of the shooting of Jas. Todd." In this document, the writer — who may have been Grandle himself — put the blame for the incident on Todd and his son, Samuel.
The letter noted that during the struggle, Grandle "grabbed the muzzle of Jas. Todd's rifle to prevent Todd from shooting him, and that in the scuffle Grandle's pistol was discharged and Todd shot and killed."