USA > Kentucky > Madison County > Boonesborough > Boonesborough; its founding, pioneer struggles, Indian experiences, Transylvania days, and revolutionary annals; > Part 2
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3 For full description of the boundary of the Kentucky grant, see copy of the deed in Appendix E.
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their share of the territory, the transaction seems to have been open and fair,1 and certainly they all joined at the close of the meeting in the big feast the Company had provided.
The plans of the Company for taking possession of the magnificent Kentucky domain had already been arranged. A spot had been selected for headquarters directly on the Kentucky River, near the mouth of one of its tributary streams, which was known even then as Otter Creek, 2 and, as a road to it was a matter of immediate necessity, the Company, assured of success, determined to rush the making of it in advance, and Boone left Sycamore Shoals for Long Island before the treaty was concluded, and just as soon as he could be spared, in order to direct the work. His quota of woodmen with their hatchets and axes were all in waiting at the island, and among others there who had cast in their fortunes with the expedition were his brother, the tried explorer, Squire Boone, and his old Yadkin neighbor, Richard Calloway, who was consider- ably older than Boone, 3 was a native of Caroline County,
I See deposition of Charles Robertson in Appendix F.
2 Probably so named by an early hunter from the Peaks of Otter, though the otter itself was found there.
3 Calloway was born about 1724. Daniel Boone, according to the records of the monthly meeting of Exeter Township (now Berks County), Pennsylvania, was born November 2 (new style), 1734, and Doctor Draper says that date was entered by Boone himself on his family record.
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Boonesborough
Virginia, had been a captain in the French and Indian War, and was a colonel of the Bedford County militia when he removed to North Carolina. The Company also included Captain William Twetty and seven other adventurous land hunters from Rutherford County, North Carolina.
On the tenth of March, all being ready, this memorable party of thirty mounted men, armed, but mainly for hunt- ing, as no trouble was expected from Indians, and followed by negro servants, loaded pack-horses, and hunting dogs, started out under the command of Captain Daniel Boone to connect buffalo roads, Indian traces, trails of hunters and Indian traders, and the great Warrior Path, to cut through forests and canebrakes that were trackless, blaze the dis- tances on mile-trees, and thus to make the first regular and continuous road through the wilderness to the Ken- tucky River. Climbing the dreary ridges that loomed up between them and Cumberland Gap, they threaded that sublime defile,2 forded rivers that for ages had been name- less and swallowed up in a region vast and solitary, were heard of no more until they had toiled over that depression of the since historic Big Hill of the present county of
I Draper.
2 Cumberland Gap is one of the grandest of natural passages. Its narrow roadway extends for six miles between mountain sides that rise twelve hundred feet above it.
DANIEL BOONE. In his old Age )
From an Oil Painting In Chester Handing owned by Colonel R. T. Tomme f 1 . nisville, Kentucky.
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Madison, Kentucky, known to this day as "Boone's Gap," and had camped by a forest stream five miles south of the site of the then undreamed-of town of Richmond,1 Ken- tucky. Here, on the 25th of March, before daylight, after an undisturbed journey of two weeks, and while confident of continued peace, they were suddenly fired on by Indians, who quickly retired. A negro manservant of Captain Twetty was instantly killed, Captain Twetty himself was mortally wounded and soon died, and a young companion, Felix Walker, was dangerously wounded .? Only two nights after this another attack was made, and presum- ably by the same Indians, and this time on a little detach- ment which had camped near a stream some distance from the main party. With characteristic imprudence the men had lighted a fire and were drying their badly-soaked moc- casins when the savages surprised them, killing and scalp- ing Thomas McDowell and Joseph McPheeters, and stam- peding the balance, who ran barefooted through the snow and escaped. One of the men, Samuel Tate, of Powell's Valley, took to the stream to hide his tracks, for it was a moonlight night, and from that day to this the stream has been known as Tate's Creek.3 Boone, who evidently
I Walker's Narrative, Appendix G, and depositions of pioneers.
2 Walker's Narrative, Appendix H, and Boone's letter to Henderson.
3 Boone. Nat. Hart, junior, in Frankfort Commonwealth of July 25, 1838. Hart errs in date of this attack, which is correctly given in Boone's letter, which was written only four days after the affair.
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thought this was the beginning of a serious effort to drive all the white people from the country, and who seems to have been invested by the Company with military powers, posted off a courier at once, ordering "all of the lower com- panies" of hunters and settlers then in the vicinity of the present HarrodsburgI to concentrate at the mouth of Otter Creek, and on the first of April, after the burial of the dead and careful attention to the wounded man, he started a messenger to Judge Henderson, urging him to bring or send aid as soon as possible, and said in his quiet, self- contained way of the excited people who were sure that another Indian war had commenced, that they were "very uneasy," and that he and his men would start that day for the mouth of Otter Creek, and would erect a fort there.
Boone did not even know for certain that Henderson was yet on the road, but he was. Prompt and energetic, he had completed his preparations two days after the treaty was signed, and on the third day, the 20th of March,2 in spite of a threatened denunciation from another
I Henderson says in his journal : "These men had got possession some time before we got here."
It is plain from both Boone and Henderson that the site of Harrods- burg had been occupied just before they came, but Boonesborough, organ- ized, garrisoned, and provisioned, was the only substantial settlement in Kentucky in the spring of 1775, and the only one that insured the per- manent occupancy of the country.
2 Henderson's Journal, Appendix I.
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governor, Lord Dunmore, he started from sturdy little Watauga toward the distant land of his golden dream. The expedition was a prophecy of permanent occupation, for it included not only forty mounted riflemen and quite a number of negro slaves, but a drove of beeves, forty pack-horses, and a train of wagons loaded with provis- ions, ammunition, material for making gunpowder, seed corn, garden seed, and a varied store of articles of prime necessity at an isolated settlement. Henderson was accom- panied by four other members of the Company, viz : the Harts and John Luttrell, by his brother, Samuel Hender- son, and by the patriotic William Cocke,? who had recently declined militia service under the royal Governor of Vir- ginia, whose proclamation3 was issued the very day after they started, threatening the Company with fine and imprisonment if it persisted in the occupancy of crown lands in Virginia "under a pretended purchase from the Indians." Cocke was from Amelia County, Virginia, and had left his young wife at Watauga when he started to " prospect." He was a stranger to Henderson, who little suspected what material was in this black-eyed, black- haired rifleman of twenty-seven. Another member of the party was William Bailey Smith, one of the witnesses of
1 Walker and Calk.
2 Appendix, Henderson's Journal.
3 For text of Dunmore's proclamation see Appendix J.
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the recent treaty, who was going out as surveyor.' He, too, was a native of Virginia, where he had served as major of militia, but had lately migrated to North Carolina. He was a tall, rollicking, unstable bachelor, energetic and brave, but with quite a turn for embellishing facts.
The expedition, following directly in Boone's tracks, managed in ten days, after clearing the road still more, to get through with the wagons to the last cabin on the blazed route leading up to Cumberland Gap. This log shelter was occupied by Captain Joseph Martin, the Company's agent for the Powell's Valley division of its purchase, who with several men seems to have gone on in advance of Henderson's party. Martin knew that region and the savages who frequented it, for he had explored it as a peltry buyer, and the cabin 2 is said to have been the same one he had used five years before this time when he had established a little trading - post at this distant and lonely spot, from which he had subsequently been driven away by the Indians. Here at Martin's,
I Draper.
2 This cabin or station was in what is now Lee County, Virginia, and is known as Boone's Path Post-office. Captain Martin, who at the above- mentioned time was about thirty-five, was a native of Albemarle County, Virginia. He was a soldier in the French and Indian War, later on was a fur trader, and in 1769 settled in Powell's Valley. He served as cap- tain of a company of scouts in Dunmore's War of 1774, and at its close became interested in the Henderson and Company scheme. (N. Cyclopedia of American Biography, Volume VII.)
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Henderson's party was joined by William Calk and four other immigrants from Virginia, and here they had to give up their wagons, hide sulphur, salt, and overplus of other heavy material, and start out with pack-horses only to carry their baggage over the freshly marked but very narrow trace. It was on the 7th of April,' when they had just reached the Gap, that Boone's letter about the Indian attack arrived, striking the camp like a small bombshell and causing a few of the men to start on the back track that very night. The next day they met the first of several companies of panic-stricken adventurers who had started from Kentucky at the earliest news of savage troubles, and it became at once vitally important to notify Boone in advance of the slow-moving pack-train that aid was approaching in order to encourage his men to hold their ground. It was the tenth of the month and they had reached the banks of the Cumberland River before any thing was done. There, when most of the force had been further demoralized by the sight of more fleeing refugees, when Henderson despaired of find- ing a messenger to Boone, and when everybody was expecting to hear that even Boone's party had turned back, the gallant Captain Cocke volunteered? to be the
' Henderson's letter, Appendix K.
2 Henderson's letter, Appendix L.
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courier to the unterrified pioneer. No one offered to go with him. So, provided with "a good Queen Anne mus- ket, plenty of ammunition, a tomahawk, a large 'cuttoe '_' knife, a Dutch blanket, and no small quantity of jerked beef," he started out alone on a ride of a hundred and thirty miles over a wild and solitary path which, according to the stampeded throng, was beset by murderous ambus- cades.2 It was one of the most romantic deeds in the annals of the wilderness, and the hero of it was destined to be heard of again.
But the sturdy and determined Boone had not turned back. He had started, as he said he would, from "the battle-ground," had cut a way through the cane down the meandering course of Otter Creek to the southern bank of the Kentucky River, and had there connected his path with a great buffalo trace which led broad and clear to the site, on the same side of the river, which he had chosen for the official seat of the Company. As the horsemen moved on there was a sudden sound like the trampling of many feet, and when with eager interest they hastened nearer to the selected ground they saw a
I Corruption of the French word " couteau " and redundancy besides.
2 According to Mr. William Chenault, the historical writer of Richmond, Kentucky, Cocke was fortunate enough before he reached Boone's camp to catch up with another horseman named Page Portwood, and the two then journeyed together.
THE SULPHUR WELL.
Outgrowth of the Sulphur Spring that Centred the Ancient Lick in Sycamore Hollow, Boonesborough.
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Boonesborough.
drove of two or three hundred buffalo' making off from a salt lick in the midst of it and followed by young calves that played and skipped about as they went, unconscious of an enemy that was to nearly wipe their kind from the face of the earth. The ponderous beasts forded the river and disappeared, and the haunt that they had known for unnumbered ages was abandoned to the white man forever. The woodsmen realized with relief and some wonder that the project that so many had shaken their heads at so solemnly was really accomplished. Here the road ended. How long they seemed to have labored at it! Day after day they had toiled, chopping down saplings, cutting away vines and overhanging branches, blazing the way through woods, marking mile-trees, remov- ing logs and fallen timber, connecting paths, filling sink- holes, burning ways through dead brush, logging streams for future footmen, cutting swaths through almost endless canebrakes, and so pushing that rough, thread-like but all- important trace deeper and deeper into the silent wilder- ness, until home and settlements seemed left behind forever. But the work was finished at last. At last in deed and in truth they stood by that river Kentucky which so often had seemed but a fable and a dream. The settlement site, where the long road and historic march terminated, included
' Walker's Narrative.
4
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a beautiful level in a sheltered hollow, where Boone gave the order to halt. It was an ideal place for a camp.1 The rich soil, thanks to generations of animals that had haunted the lick, was open, firm, and almost free from undergrowth, and, except about the trampled lick and in the broad buffalo path, was adorned, early as it was,2 with great patches of fine white clover and thickly carpeted with a natural grass incomparable for richness and beauty, now so widely known as "Kentucky Bluegrass."3 The spot was blessed with two bold springs, a feature whose importance no one but a pioneer could appreciate, and which, more than any thing else, caused Boone to select it.
" Boone, Walker, and Henderson.
2 According to the journals of early settlers and to Filson and Imlay, spring began much earlier in the days of the pioneers than now. The destruction of the once all-pervading forests worked a great change in the climate of Kentucky.
3 The familiar tradition that blue grass was growing at Boonesborough in 1775 is fully accepted by the writer, but not the story that "it grew from seeds planted by an English woman who settled there when Boone came." There was not only no white woman of any nationality at the fort until September, 1775, but the evidence is incontestable that blue grass was known as a native Kentucky product long before that time. James Nourse in his journal says, under date of May 30, 1775, that the growth of blue grass in central Kentucky was "amazing," while Gist in his journal of 1751 mentions blue grass as a product of the almost unknown country of the Miami Indians nearly a quarter of a century before the white man settled permanently in the western wilderness. The term " blue grass" is misleading, for, like all other grasses, it is green, and its apparently contra- dictory name can only be accounted for as an abbreviation of "blue limestone grass," for it reaches its highest state of perfection on the blue limestone soil of Kentucky.
THE LICK SPRING.
(Of fresh water.) As it appeared in the Fall of 1900
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Boonesborough
The spring that was nearest the river was a sulphur ' one, which soon accounted to the experienced woodsmen for the existence of the lick around it, for they found that the soil had been impregnated for ages with salt2 which the sulphur water contained. The other spring, which was still further from the river, furnished an abundant supply of fresh water, but, curiously enough, it eventually became known as "The Lick Spring," a name that the sulphur one was naturally entitled to. Not far from them both were grouped some of the grandest trees that ever delighted the human eye. Four of them were especially noticeable. Of these, three were immense sycamores, 3 whose white trunks had been polished by the incessant touch of the salt-hunting elk and buffalo and deer, and one was an elm so magnificent in size and so exceptional in its proportions and in the spread of its far-reaching branches that one who saw it in all its glory, and had a
' The terms "salt spring" and " salt lick " are not synonymous, as some authorities on Kentucky seem to have supposed. Filson mentions a salt " spring " at Boonesborough, meaning, probably, a lick, for none of the actual settlers of the place record the existence of a spring of that kind in the locality, and so far as now known the lick was the result of the salt precipitated from the water of the sulphur spring, and not from a common salt one. Felix Walker, writing in his old age, speaks of both springs as sulphur ones, an error which the waters themselves make plain. 2 Chloride of sodium, or common salt.
3 The occidental plane tree, called in some American localities the buttonwood tree.
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soul to appreciate it, called it "divine."' Near by the ancient river ran solemn and beautiful, deep down between the rugged steepness of its southern side and the wooded heights and everlasting hills that shut in the other shore. The natural charms of the distant treaty ground of Syca- more Shoals were strangely duplicated in the camping- ground of "Sycamore Hollow." And here, on the Ist of April,2 1775, about a mile and a quarter below the mouth of Otter Creek, Boone and his harassed and tired woods- men unloaded their horses, cooked a simple meal, and, after a good long rest, began the erection of several log huts for temporary shelter and defense.3 They were located "about sixty yards from the river,"+ something over two hundred yards southwest of the lick,5 and con- stituted what was immediately named "Fort Boone."6 This so-called "fort" was neglected from the start. The road-makers were so much engrossed with securing land and in the wholesale destruction of animals for their skins that
' Henderson.
2 Boone.
3 . Daniel Boone had prevailed upon fifteen men to assist him in erecting some small huts for defense," says an extract from a manuscript fragment of William Cocke. (Copy in Wis. H. Library.)
4 Boone's own words.
5 Compare distances given by Henderson, W. B. Smith, and Bowman.
6 It seems to have received that name as soon as erected, and is so called familiarly in both Henderson's and Calk's journals, under date of April 20, 1775. The " borough " termination was added later on.
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even the killing of one of their comrades by the Indians on the 4th of April did not move them to complete it. It is plain, though, that only the coolness and intrepidity of Boone prevented the country from being entirely aban- doned, as it was the year before. Henderson afterward declared "it was owing to Boone's confidence in us and the people's in him that a stand was ever attempted."? The whole panic subsided as quickly as it had started when it was found that the attacks came from a ridicu- lously small number of adventurous Indians. Fortunately for the settlers, all such violent acts of bad faith were strongly condemned by the chivalric and influential Corn- stalk. 3 The treaty of Point Pleasant was, for a time at least, observed, and for more than a year from the date of this last murder no regular party of Indians visited Kentucky, and no skulker did mischief at Boone's settle- ment, except in one solitary instance.3 It was a blessed season of peace, and so when Captain Cocke arrived the savages were almost forgotten, and he, greatly to his surprise, found that his plucky adventure and the letters he brought excited as much interest as the news of reinforcements which he had risked his life to bring.
I Boone's Nar.
2 Henderson's letter of July 12, 1775, Appendix. The Company, at its September meeting, granted Boone two thousand acres of land for his services.
3 Williams' letter, Appendix.
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Boonesborough
Judge Henderson and party, which now included Robert and Samuel McAfee,' reached the unfinished and only half-watched little fort on the 20th of April, the Judge's fortieth birthday. They were welcomed with a discharge of rifles and with much rejoicing, and were all seated down forthwith to a dinner of cold water and lean buffalo beef, which the Judge declared was the most joyful ban- quet he ever saw. Of that there could not be the shadow of a doubt, for with it ended the most intense and pro- tracted strain of care and anxiety he had ever experienced. The immense region of incalculable value for which he and his Company had risked so much, and which day after day for many days seemed about to slip from their grasp, was still safe, and a journey of a solid month, which, to one used to inns, offices, and court - rooms, seemed a solid year of hardships, aggravations, and mis- eries, was over. To such a man, worn out and disgusted, the lifting of such a burden changed the poorest hunter's meal into a banquet fit for the gods. And to the negroes, who saw an "Ingin," bloody - handed and awful, behind every rock and tree on the route, the sight of the little log huts was as a sight of heaven itself, and their loud laughter, merry songs, and exclamations of delight echoed
" Henderson's journal. Henderson met them returning to Virginia and persuaded them to go back.
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along the river and among the very hill-tops. But with eighty persons in the united companies, including boys and negroes, the food question was a serious one, and especially since the improvident woodsmen had quickly driven away the but lately abounding multitudes of big game. Even this early in the action squads of hunters, detailed from the sixty-five riflemen,' had to range fifteen, twenty, and even thirty miles away for the wild meat that was almost the sole dependence of the settlers, for bread was already becoming a rarity and promised to give out altogether long before the corn crop2 could mature. Fortunately some of Boone's men had planted corn a few days after they arrived. More was now planted, and com- panies were organized to work it in common -the mem- bers signing an agreement to appear every morning at the blast of a horn or sound of a drum and labor in the fields or stand guard while others worked, as the "cap- tain " required. 3
Henderson saw as soon as he came that his men, stores, and especially his gunpowder, would require much more commodious and substantial shelter than either his tents or Boone's little cabins could afford. It is also
I Cocke.
2 Of course we refer here only to maize or Indian corn, the accepted meaning of the word in America.
3 United States Register.
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Boonesborough
intimated that Boone's position was exposed to rifle fire from the over-topping hills on the other side of the river, which is doubtful, considering the distance, but especially the fact that the forests on both sides were then so dense as to completely shut off observation. But it might be that danger from very probable overflow of the river was considered. Be that as it may, Henderson decided at once to erect a fort that would be large enough and strong enough to accommodate and protect the stores and present settlers, and be capable of easy future extension. He selected a site for it on the opposite side of the lick from Boone's quarters and about three hundred yards from them,' but staked off the line of its front wall within less than a hundred yards of the lick itself, from which it was reached by a hilly ascent. The chosen spot, there- fore, was much higher than the camp-ground it overlooked, which soon became known as "The Hollow "-the " Syca- more Hollow" of to-day -which was much deeper in pioneer times than it is now. The fort site was on a plateau, and was probably as close to the river as the log " huts," but though it was many feet above the water, it could hardly be said to have extended along a cliff, as it has sometimes been represented. At any rate, as far back as the memory of the oldest residents of the neigh-
1 Henderson and Cocke.
SITE OF FORT BOONESBOROUGH.
(A Cornfield.)
As it appeared in November, 1900, looking toward the River.
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Boonesborough
borhood goes, the southern bank of the river has always fallen away from the spot, as it does now, in a succession of little ridges, and the site does not appear nearly as elevated as it really is, and especially when viewed from the river itself or from the opposite shore. The selected ground was occupied by Henderson and most of the last comers on Saturday, April 22d, the third day after they reached the settlement.1 Nearly a week was consumed in making a "clearing," felling trees, shaping and notch- ing logs, and splitting clapboards, but on the 29th the fort was begun, under the supervision of Daniel Boone, with the building of a small log magazine, which seems to have been half under ground, with a shed roof covered with clay to protect it from sparks that would surely come from chimneys and snapping flints, from "live chunks" that settlers were always borrowing from each other to start fires with, and from possible torches that attacking Indians might use. One of the earliest cabins, one story high, erected after this was made especially commodious to accommodate the Company's supplies, which were thrown open to an eager crowd of rangers, hunters, and road- makers, to whom the Company was indebted for services.2
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