When Samuel Cowan was killed in 1776, at Houston's Fort on Moccasin Creek where he had ridden from Castlewood to warn the fort of an approaching attack by the Cherokee Indians, he was riding on a stud horse.
     Mrs. Samuel Scott, a refugee in the fort at the time, states:
     "Samuel Cowan brought the express (news) from Moore's Fort to Houston's Fort that 300 Indians were coming to attack Houston's Station. The next morning he would start to go back and thought he could get through, but was shot. His horse got in safe. His wife fainted when she saw the horse - a stud horse, all in a power of sweat."
     Charles Bickley states in his Revolutionary War Pension claim:
     "Upon arrival at the fort, they (the militia) found that no assault had as yet been made upon it by the Indians and found there a man from Cassell's Wood of the name of Samuel Cowan, riding as this declarant now remembers, a stud horse belonging to one Deskin Tibbs."
     In Washington County Land Entry Book 1, page 55, dated December 23, 1782, John Preston, Sr., assigns to Robert Preston, "400 acres of land on the waters of Clinch, to include Deskin Tibb's cabin and two sinking springs and also to include the great salt petre cave."
     Many know the location of the Salt Peter Cave on Sinking Creek, and so now we know that Deskin Tibbs lived on Sinking Creek and a near neighbor to Captain William and Samuel Cowan, although the records do not show that Deskin Tibbs ever owned any land. Perhaps he, like so many others, in pioneer days only "squatted" on land that he intended to claim, but instead, moved on before there was any provisions for recording land on the Clinch frontier.