USA > Kentucky > Madison County > Boonesborough > Boonesborough; its founding, pioneer struggles, Indian experiences, Transylvania days, and revolutionary annals; > Part 4
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obnoxious to the Kentucky settlers. But a meeting of a majority of the Company's members was held on the twenty-fifth of the month' at the little town of Oxford, Granville County, North Carolina, about which several of them resided, and immediately steps were taken to secure the recognition of Transylvania as the fourteenth member of the United Colonies by the adoption of a memorial to the Continental Congress, then in session at Philadelphia, and the election of James Hogg as a delegate to that body. Mr. Hogg reached Philadelphia on the 22d of October, and, though not received as a delegate, he labored faithfully among the great spirits of that great assembly, and one of them, Silas Deane, thought so seriously of the new colony as to draw up a paper (which is herewith appended)? to aid in the proper shaping of its economy and government, but advised him to sound the Virginia delegates, "as they would not chuse to do any thing in it without their consent." Other Connecticut men besides Mr. Deane were thinking of Transylvania at this time, but in a different way. The prospect of secur- ing generous slices of its rich domain at a trifling cost was so enticing to his constituents that two thousand of them, it is said, were considering the matter of settling
I See Proceedings of Meeting, Appendix O.
2 Appendix P.
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there.1 Of the Virginia members of the Congress, Thomas Jefferson said it was his wish to see a free government established back of theirs, "but would consent to no congressional acknowledgment of the colony until it was approved by the Virginia Convention"; so to that conven- tion the matter went. It is plain that none of the Con- gressmen that Hogg consulted countenanced a proprietary government. In what Hogg styles "an account of my embassy,"? he says, "You would be amazed to see how much in earnest all these speculative gentlemen are about the plan to be adopted by the Transylvanians. They entreat, they pray that we may make it a free govern- ment, and beg that no mercenary or ambitious views in the proprietors may prevent it. Quit rents, they say, is a mark of vassalage, and hope they shall not be established in Transylvania. They even threaten us with their oppo- sition if we do not act upon liberal principles." In this same report to Judge Henderson, Mr. Hogg significantly adds, "Enclosed I send you a copy of a sketch by John Adams,3 which I had from Richard Henry Lee." In this
1 Letter of Governor Martin, of North Carolina, November 12, 1775, to Lord Dorchester, in Canadian Archives for 1890, pages 103-156.
2 Appendix Q.
3 This sketch was in the shape of a letter to George Wythe, of Virginia, and was entitled, "Thoughts on Government Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies." At this time " there was much discus- sion," says Mr. Adams, "concerning the necessity of independence, and the
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document Mr. Adams, like Jefferson and Deane, urged the adoption of full and complete republican constitutions by all the colonies. It must have been plain to Hender- son and Company, even six or eight months before the Declaration of Independence, that the prospects of an American colony with a proprietary form of government were not encouraging.
At the before- mentioned September meeting of the Proprietors they advanced the price of land in Transyl- vania from twenty shillings to fifty shillings per hundred acres, which had much to do with raising a storm that was already threatened.
On the first of December John Williams, uncle of Judge Henderson and recently elected general agent of the colony, arrived at Boonesborough, accompanied by some immigrants, and opened a land office. John Floyd, who had returned from a trip made in the summer, was appointed surveyor, Nathaniel Henderson entry officer, and Richard Harrison secretary. Williams soon found
several States were advised to institute governments for themselves under the immediate authority and original power of the people." But the con- templated transition from a royal to a republican form of government presented difficulties. The important question was how to overcome these difficulties, and Mr. Wythe, in seeking more light upon it, requested Mr. Adams "to advise a plan for a colony to pursue in order to get out of the old government and into the new." This essay was in answer to that request. It can be found on page 189 of Volume IV of Life and Works of John Adams, by Charles Francis Adams.
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that the rise in the price of the land was causing great dissatisfaction to the Transylvanians, which some of them at Harrodsburg soon exhibited in a formal remonstrance delivered to him by a special committee. His reply 1 was not satisfactory, and the trouble grew.
On the 23d of this month Boonesborough was amazed as well as exasperated by an Indian outrage,2 for the Western savages were still neutral in the Revolutionary struggle. On that day two boys, McQuinney and San- ders, left the place without their rifles-a common thing with the long undisturbed settlers-crossed the river, climbed the hills opposite the fort, and fell into the hands of some lurking Shawanese, who fired on another member of the garrison who was also on that side. At first it was feared that quite a body of Indians had arrived, and, as the boys did not return, great anxiety was added to alarm, but on the 27th McQuinney, killed and scalped, was discovered in a cornfield about three miles north of the river, and it was evident that his slayers had decamped. A party of rangers under Jesse Benton, 3 father of the afterward famous Thomas H. Benton, scoured the woods with an offer of the Colony before their eyes of £5 for the scalp of each of the fleeing
' Appendix R.
2 Williams' Report of January 3, 1776, Appendix S.
3 Transylvania Company's books.
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murderers, but no such gruesome trophy was secured, and Sanders, killed or a prisoner, never returned. It was soon learned that there were only about a half-dozen of the Shawanese, and that they were the unauthorized marauders alluded to by Cornstalk at the October con- ference at Fort Pitt between the American commissioners and the chiefs of the Western tribes. That noble Indian gentleman informed the commissioners that such a party had left for Kentucky just before the conference ; that he could not be responsible for them, and that if any of them got killed he would take no notice of it whatever.1 The settlers were relieved to know that the outrage was not yet the beginning of Indian hostilities, but all the same the first Christmas at Boonesborough was one of grief, anxiety, and tears.
The New Year, 1776, opened peacefully enough at the station, business at the " land office" went on, and the spring was uneventful, but immigration was checked by the tragedy just related, unauthorized though it was, and by fears for the future. The English and the Americans were both working for an Indian alliance, but it was evident already that the savages, as usual, would side with the strongest, and the outlook was gloomy for the pioneers.
1 Williams' letter.
2 See Appendix T for specimen of the Company's land survey warrant.
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In May a petition' embodying the substance of the December remonstrance was received by the Virginia Convention from "the inhabitants and some of settlers of that part of North America now denominated Tran- sylvania." It was the last time that Transylvania was formally recognized as the name of the colony. Hen- derson, who was at Williamsburg watching the interests of the Company, filed an answering petition,2 and feeling waxed hotter in the Kentucky wilderness. The rise in the price of its land, the uncertainty of its title, and its feudal features were not the only objections to the Pro- prietary government. It was not countenanced by any of the old colonies, and had no organized militia, and these deficiencies grew suddenly momentous when a warn- ing came to the settlers from friendly Indians that some of the Western tribes were leaguing against the Long Knives. The people realized at once the importance of an open and decided recognition of their territory as a part of Virginia ; steps were taken to effect this, and an eight-day election held at Harrodsburg, and commencing June 6th, resulted in the choice of two representatives, George Rogers Clark and John Gabriel Jones, from "West Fincastle," as the colony was newly called, to the Con-
" Appendix U. This petition to the Convention (not to the Assembly, as some authors have it) was received May 18, 1776.
2 Filed June 15th. See Journal Virginia Convention.
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vention of Virginia, and of an Executive Committee to voice the wishes of the people, which was done on the 20th of the month by the adoption of a petition' to the Convention, which in its own unique way prays for the incorporation of West Fincastle as a county of Vir- ginia. This was not what the high-spirited and adven- turous Clark was after, but the people had settled the matter and he acquiesced. He declares in his Memoirs : 2 "I wanted deputies elected at Harrodsburg to treat with the Virginia Assembly. If valuable considerations were procured we would declare ourselves citizens of the State, otherwise we would establish an independent government." The Convention adjourned before these proceedings could be submitted to it, but not before it had made provision to accurately determine Virginia's chartered interests in the Kentucky territory, and for an inquiry into alleged illegal purchases from the Indians,3 both of which were ominous for the Transylvania Company, and brought from it a warning proclamation as to settlement on disputed lands. 4
' Appendix V.
" Dillon's Indiana, Volume I, page 128.
3 See journal of Virginia Convention, pages 63 and 83, for resolution adopted June 24, 1776, against purchase of land from the Indians without authority from the State, and for act of July 3, 1776, appointing Com- missioners to examine into such illegal purchases.
+ See Appendix W.
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The summary action at Harrodsburg against the Pro- prietary government made but little stir in a region that was by this time constantly exercised about threatened Indian hostilities, and from which many an apprehensive soul had already departed. The tribes still claimed to be friends of the "Long Knives," but all the same Indian "signs" and alarming rumors increased, and early in July the significant fact was noted that several of the men who had left the settlement on hunting trips had never returned. Boonesborough was anxious, but more than six quiet months had elapsed since the murder of McQuinney, and no enemy had threatened the station yet.
It was as quiet as ever on the afternoon of Sunday, July 14th, and the customary Bible reading was over, when Elizabeth and Frances Callaway, daughters of Rich- ard Callaway, and Jemima Boone,1 daughter of Daniel Boone, started in one of the rough canoes of the settle- ment to visit a family located on the other side of the river, and only a short distance from Boonesborough. They had crossed and were only a few yards from a land- ing when the canoe struck a little sandbar nearly opposite a spot on the shore which tradition says is the same now known as "The Four Sycamores," from the four trees
" Boone's Narrative and W. B. Smith. Floyd's letter of July 21, 1776. See extract, Appendix X.
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of that kind which afterward grew there, and which still designate the place. And here, when neither the faintest sight nor sound had intimated the presence of an enemy, the little boat was suddenly seized by five Indians - four Shawanese and one Cherokee - who darted from the thick cane that bordered the river. The eldest of the girls, "Miss Betsey," though startled and terrified, instinct- ively dealt one of the savages a blow on the head with a paddle, while her younger companions, paralyzed with fear, covered their blanched faces with their hands. In a moment, while too breathless and bewildered to give an alarm, they were rushed through the shallow water to shore and then up a densely wooded ravine to the summit of the high and lonely hills that stretched along that side of the river. From there, made dumb by a threat of the tomahawk, they were marched in silence through streams and canebrakes and woods toward the ancient "Warriors' Trace " that led to the Ohio. So cleverly had the savages managed that it was hours before the girls were missed- for it was not until milking time that the alarm was sounded by a hunter who had gone out to meet them. In the midst of the grief and excitement that ensued, and after exasperating delays, one band of riflemen under Daniel Boone and another under Colonel Callaway, comprising about twenty men in all, started in pursuit. This force
THE HILLS OF CLARK, ON THE KENTUCKY RIVER OPPOSITE BOONESBOROUGH,
Stuwing on the extreme right the traditional locality, now designated by " The Four Sycamores," where the three girls were captured by the Indians July 14, 1750
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included,' besides the leaders, John Holder, Samuel Hen- derson, Flanders Callaway, William Bailey Smith, John Floyd, Nathaniel Hart, David Hart, Nathan Reid, John Gess, David Gess, and others, from Boonesborough ; and John Martin, John McMillan, and William Bush, who had recently built improvers' cabins across the river in easy distance from the fort. The outcome of this romantic incident is familiar to every reader of early Western his- tory. The savages were surprised, routed, and two of them killed as they halted three miles south of the Upper Blue Licks, the tattered, torn, and despairing girls were rescued unharmed, and, after a torrent of happy tears and exclamations, were caught up on horseback and brought back worn out but safe to the rejoicing settlement.
But the event was a prophecy of evil. It was the beginning of days and years of trouble, and the rescuing party did not return a whit too soon. In fact, some mis- chief was done before they did return, for Indian stragglers went to Nathaniel Hart's clearing,2 burned his cabin, and ruined his young apple trees, while the force left behind was too small to punish them. The news brought in by scouts and messengers was plain enough. Small parties of hostile Shawanese were haunting all the stations. The Indians had dug up the hatchet. Such of the neighbor-
' Names from John Floyd, John Bradford, and Draper manuscripts.
2 United States Historical Register.
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ing settlers, including those across the river, as had families brought them into the fort, which was now pro- vided with cumbersome but substantial gates, and all the open gaps in the walls were filled in either with more cabins or with sharpened posts that stood ten feet above the ground. "The works" were finished at last' accord- ing to the original plans, and now another panic set in. Numbers left the country. On the 20th the discouraged settlers of Hinkston's Station2 camped inside the stockade while en route to Virginia, and ten of the Boonesborough people went with them when they departed, leaving less than thirty riflemen to defend the place. 3
Fortunately the Indians made no formidable move- ment this year, and though murders and depredations by skulkers and petty bands were incessant, all was not dark among the undaunted holders of the wilderness forts. On the 7th of August, three weeks after the capture of the girls, there was a wedding in one of the cabins at Boones- borough, when Squire Boone, Baptist Elder as well as Indian fighter, officiated, and Elizabeth Callaway, the oldest of the heroines of that adventure, and Samuel Henderson, a brother of Judge Henderson, were made
' Floyd's letter.
2 One of the earliest settlements in Central Kentucky, located in the present Harrison County, and afterward called " Ruddles."
3 Floyd's letter.
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husband and wife.' At this, the first marriage that took place in Kentucky, there was dancing to fiddle-music by the light of tallow "dips," and legend says the guests were treated to home-grown watermelons, of which the whole station was proud. A few days later a returning settler brought in the first news of the Declaration of Independence and a copy of the Virginia Gazette con- taining the text of it. The immortal document was read out to the assembled garrison, was concluded amidst cheers and war-whoops, and was given the endorsement of a big bonfire that night. There were Sons of Liberty in the Kentucky wilderness as well as on the Seaboard, and some of them were right in Boonesborough at this time.
In September the station lost two more officers of the Proprietary government, John Williams and John Floyd, who left for the old settlements in the interest of the jeopardized Company. Their plans were soon changed by the action of Virginia in the Transylvania matter. Williams returned to North Carolina, became one of her leading citizens,? and saw the backwoods capital no more. Floyd, who was not destitute of love of adventure,
' Alfred Henderson to R. H. Collins.
2 Williams was elected judge the next year, 1777, and was afterward a member of Congress. He died in October, 1799, on his farm a mile west of Williamsboro, in what is now Vance County, North Carolina, and was buried on the place.
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embarked in the Revolution as a privateersman.1 Isaac Shelby acted as surveyor for a short time at Boones- borough in his place, but the uncertain fare with its lack of salt injured his health, and he, too, departed.2
During the first session of the newly created State Legislature of Virginia, which began at Williamsburg in October, Henderson and his colleagues fought hard and long for the recognition of the claims of their Company, 3 but the battle ended in the assumption by the Common- wealth itself of jurisdiction over the disputed territory. On the 7th of December an act was passed creating the county of Kentucky out of the domain which was destined to be rechristened the State of Kentucky, and the new county included the Henderson purchase. The Proprietary government of Transylvania now ceased to exist, and Boonesborough suddenly found herself figuring unequivo- cally as a wilderness settlement of the extremest western county of the State of Virginia. The splendid and prom- ising scheme of the Transylvania Company to possess an empire of territory and garner the magnificent revenues
" Floyd was captured by the British, and after an imprisonment of about a year returned to Kentucky.
2 Wheeler's History of North Carolina.
3 See Appendix T for deposition of Charles Robertson, a sample of the evidence taken by the Commissioners appointed by the Convention to investigate the purchase from the Cherokees. (Volume II, Cal. Virginia State papers.
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it was to yield ended in a struggle for mere compensa- tion for the expenses, labor, and trouble incurred in the enterprise. Much of the documentary history of that struggle is herewith appended.' Certain features of the Company's plan of government deserved the condemna- tion they received, but for the great work it did in open- ing up a continuous path to the banks of the Kentucky, in planting the strongest early barrier against the Indi- ans, inspiring the desperate people with hope, and insuring the permanent occupation of the soil, it fully merited all the compensation it received, and will ever hold a prominent place in the history of the Common- wealth. And such a place will certainly be held by the master spirit of the Company, Richard Henderson, one of the ablest and boldest of the American colonizers of his day. The name of Transylvania was stricken from the map of "the country on the western waters," but his own name is justly perpetuated by one of the most fertile counties2 of the Commonwealth he unwittingly but power- fully helped to plant. Henderson's brilliant hopes were
I See sundry documents in Appendix, including above deposition.
2 It was mainly through Henderson's exertion that Virginia, in Decem- ber, 1778, granted the Company by way of compensation two hundred thousand acres of land in Kentucky below the mouth of Green River. The present city and county of Henderson are on this tract, where Will- iam Bailey Smith and heirs of Luttrell, Hogg, and other associates of Henderson finally settled.
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blasted, but the future proved him undaunted. He was to visit Boonesborough once more.1
On the Ist of January, 1777, about half a dozen refugees from McClelland's fort (Georgetown) reached Boonesborough, which meant that the Indians, contrary to their usual custom, had been active in the winter, and that the last station north of the Kentucky River had been abandoned. Early in March, just after Boone had been regularly appointed to the command of the fort, and before the feeble militia of Kentucky County had been organized a week, a number of Shawanese were lurking unseen about Boonesborough. They were under the distinguished Black Fish, who was to be heard of in this locality again. Some one else was hiding near the fort at this time. It was Simon Kenton, known then by his assumed name of "Simon Butler," who was waiting for a chance to warn its inmates of their danger. But the stalwart adventurer, then only twenty-one but six feet tall, already understood Indians too well to attempt to enter the station in the daytime. He got safely in at nightfall, but not in time to avert a tragedy, for two of the garrison who had not waited for the darkness, as he had, were waylaid and killed as they openly went toward the stockade.2 Incursions of small parties of the enemy
1 See infra.
2 Collins.
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now constantly occurred, and Kenton and Thomas Brooks, who were appointed by Boone as special scouts, had a perilous task, and a bigger one than two men could always perform.
The first time "the big fort" was actually attacked was about sunrise on the 24th of April,' while the scouts were in. The Indians, numbering from fifty to a hun- dred,? arrived without their advance being either sus- pected or announced, and the station, with its poor little force of twenty-two riflemen,3 barely escaped capture. During a successful maneuver to draw out the garrison an Indian tomahawked. and scalped Daniel Goodman, when Kenton, who was at the fort gate with his loaded gun, killed the exulting savage. The garrison, in pursuing the apparently retreating enemy, was cut off from the fort and only regained it after a desperate fight, in which Boone, Isaac Hite, John Todd, and Michael Stoner + were wounded and a number of Indians killed - three of them, it is said, by Kenton alone. It was on this occasion that Kenton saved the life of Boone, carried him into the fort, and was knighted in backwoods fashion when his leader, of
" Boone says April 15th in his Narrative, dictated seven years after the event. We accept the date given in Clark's journal, as it was written at the time.
2 Boone says "above a hundred ; " Clark says "from forty to fifty."
3 Boone.
+ Clark's journal.
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few words and fewer compliments, called Kenton "a fine fellow." After the failure of their familiar stratagem the Indians, who were never prepared for a protracted siege, retreated, carrying their dead off with them. Threatened as Boonesborough now continually was, her defenders, true to the pioneer trait that more than once brought disaster, would risk much to gratify their love of adventure. One day in June Captain William Bailey Smith started after some retiring marauders with a force that left the station almost unprotected. The riflemen ventured clear to the Ohio River, killed one of the Indians, and in returning had the gratification of surprising and scattering another party. Fortunately the fort was not attacked in their absence, and they got back uninjured except John Martin, a scout, who was wounded.'
About two weeks after this the Indians made another and more serious attempt than the April one to capture Boonesborough. After a swift descent to the Kentucky they sent detachments to threaten the other stations and prevent the march of reinforcements, and early on the morning of the Fourth of July they suddenly encompassed the fort with two hundred warriors,2 who swarmed up from the river bank and hid themselves in the now deserted hollow, and behind trees and stumps, and in such patches
* Bradford.
? Boone's Narrative.
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of corn as their predecessors had spared. But this time the scouts had warned the garrison, and there was not only no surprise, but no rushing out after retreating decoy parties. For two days and two nights the savages, by their persistent firing and repeated attempts to burn the fort,' kept the handful of men in the station incessantly employed while the weary and anxious women loaded the extra rifles, passed the precious water from the rain- barrels, distributed food, and attended to the horses, cows, and other live-stock that had been hastily gathered in. Failing in surprise and stratagem, the Indians left before sunrise on the 6th, carrying off -to hide away- seven dead comrades whose bodies had been seen and counted from the portholes by the garrison, which had one man killed and two wounded. As soon as the scouts reported the enemy as certainly gone the cumbersome gates of the fort were dragged open with a will, when the live-stock delightedly rushed out to the green grass and to the river, while the settlers as eagerly sought the cool, fresh water of the lick spring. A small party immediately set out to scour the country for wild meat, a mounted messenger was soon hurrying over Boone's Trace on his way to the old settlements to implore aid for the sorely tried and diminishing people, the wounded now were given full
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