USA > Kentucky > Petitions of the early inhabitants of Kentucky to the General Assembly of Virginia, 1769-1792 > Part 3
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Slavery, of course, is referred to in the petitions. Peti- tion No. 7 asks compensation for a negro killed at the
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Introduction
siege of Boonesborough in 1778, in the famous attack by Indians in September. He was described as very "likely" and his value was estimated as six hundred pounds. The charge is made that he was put in an exposed place pur- posely. Petition No. 37 requests that the administrator of an estate be allowed to dispose of part of it and purchase a couple of "likely fellows" for the young heiress of the estate.
Petition No. 61 is the request of a slaveholder in 1787, who had come from Maryland, bringing with him his slaves. Through ignorance of the law-passed by Virginia, requiring notice from those bringing in slaves-he had forfeited his property. The Assembly was lenient to his petition, asking relief for "those who have neither education nor leisure to enable them to be acquainted with the Laws of their country." He asks for such relief as "will secure to him the possession of the hard earnings of many years industry."
The law referred to required that those coming into Virginia should give oath within ten days that no slaves were brought from Africa or the West Indies since Novem- ber, 1778, and that none were brought with the "intention of selling them." The petitioner in this case was allowed extra time to conform to the law, "as such failure hath been chiefly, if not altogether, owing to the impracticability of complying with the said act."
The social relations and development of the pioneer community are suggested in several of the petitions. The
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Introduction
early population was awake to the advantage of schools, and the parent Commonwealth seems also to have had that interest at heart. By an act of 1780 the Assembly had vested some eight thousand acres of lands, forfeited from loyalists in the Revolutionary War, in a board for the cause of "public education." The preamble of the act refers to "the interest of the commonwealth always to promote and encourage every design which may tend to the improve- ment of the mind and the diffusion of useful knowledge, even among its remote citizens, whose situation a barbarous neighborhood and a savage intercourse might otherwise render unfriendly to science." The land was placed in trust of a body of thirteen trustees "as free donation from the commonwealth for the purpose of a public school, or seminary of learning, to be created within the said county as soon as the circumstances of the county and the state of its funds will admit and for no other purpose whatever." At a future time it was thought these lands might "be a valuable fund for the maintenance and education of youth."
Several petitions pertain to the incorporation of the Board of Trustees for the Transylvania Seminary and the vesting in them of the forfeited land, defining their powers, fixing the number, and increasing their facilities for getting funds. The attitude of the pioneer population toward education may be seen in the words of Petition No. 18: "The solicitous anxiety which discovers itself in the principal inhabitants of this country for having Schools or Semi-
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Introduction
naries of Learning among them that their children may be educated as becomes a civilized people, encourages your Petitioners to hope that the Liberality of Individuals will be extended in aid of the public Donations were Trustees incorporated by Law &c." They are confident that the "Assembly will listen with pleasure to every proposition that has a Tendency to banish Ignorance and Error and to introduce in their room what may polish the manners, encourage the improvement of the mind promote liberality of sentiment and by refining give additional Incentives to virtue."
By Petition No. 50 a request is made for an allotment of one-sixth of the land surveyors' fees to the funds of the institution. This had previously been assigned to William and Mary College, "a Seminary which we greatly respect but from which the Inhabitants of Kentucky are too remote to derive any immediate advantage." This was granted, as also the request that escheated lands should revert to the benefit of education. Petition No. 90 asks the privilege of conducting a lottery to raise five hundred pounds for the erection of an academy, a request which was granted in an act allowing the same privilege to a church and a school east of the mountains. Petition No. 9I also pertains to the educational matters. Petition No. 70 is a request from a descendant of the owner of one of the confiscated estates which had been donated to the cause of education. He had been informed that the Assembly "have always shewn a readiness to give the value
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Introduction
of all confiscated property to the next in succession" and he requests the value of the property. The request is marked as reasonable but no act seems to have been passed.
Social conditions and needs are illustrated, along other than educational lines, by requests made in various peti- tions. In Petition No. 17 the settlers of Lincoln County ask for the passage of a "few more laws indispensibly neces- sary for this District." Among these is one seeking "some civil power to solemnize the Rites of matrimony as we have no clergy either of the church of England or Presbyterians, who compose the Greater part of our inhabitants."
This request was granted in 1783 and provision was made that "Where it shall appear to the court of any county on the western waters that there is not a sufficient number of clergymen authorized to celebrate marriages therein, such court is empowered to nominate so many sober and discreet laymen as will supply the deficiency." Those so nominated were to receive a license and could perform the ceremony according to the church of which they were members. Parties to the ceremony were obliged to have a license or a certificate of the publication of the banns made for three successive times.
In the same petition was a request for a law to provide for the "orphans of poor people as we have no church wardens to bind them out." The law of Virginia required that orphans should be bound out to a master or mistress under certain conditions. An act of 1785 provides that they must "be taught some trade, art or business;" also reading,
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Introduction
writing, and if a boy, arithmetic, including the rule of three. Monthly reports had to be made by the overseers who had the authority to bind out the orphans.
A large number of the petitions are claims of various kinds. Such are Petitions Nos. 5, 13, 35, 83, 85, 89, 92, 94, 95. 100, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, and 110. Three of these requests are from George Rogers Clark. In No. 13 he refers to his services in Illinois in the War, speaks of a grant of land adjoining the Falls on the northwest side of the Ohio River, of an extent of thirty-six thousand acres "which he could not refuse without giving umbrage," given by the Indians with the request that he live among them. Though claiming no title by virtue of this gift he asks the Commonwealth to confirm the title, as it would save the State the expense of purchase and would re- imburse him for what he had lost through his service to the country.
In Petition No. 100 Clark asks half pay for life or full pay for five years for debts "arising from past Military services or from advances of the better part of his Fortune for the credit of the state"; for debts incurred in "the neces- sary maintenance of your Troops under my Command in the Western country, troops (it behooves me to say) who with a fortitude, fidelity and martial hardihood, perhaps unexampled, have braved heroically and with successful effect every kind of want and every Species of peril to pre- serve the very fairest portion of your State and indeed of the whole Union"; debts for "having, from my own funds,
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Introduction
supplied your Garrisons and those heroic Troops with bread to feed on."
There are many personal claims presented of various kinds. Petition No. 5 is a request from the impulsive Hugh McGary, who figured so prominently later in the defeat of the settlers at the battle of Blue Lick. He asks pay for his services as a messenger to Pittsburgh, as bearer of a list of horses stolen by the Indians that they may be recovered by an expedition about to start for the recovery of stolen property. Petition No. 35 is a request for bounty as a reward for three years in the service. Petition No. 83 is a request for extension of time to present claims to the commission appointed to hear them. Petition No. 110 is the request of a member of the regiment of Clark, in the Illinois campaign, for land. The petitioner gives account of the difficulties of the campaign; says he was at the taking of Lieutenant Governor Hamilton and acted as his guard part of the way to Kentucky, and the rest of the way he served as spy. He had received a discharge from the army but had lost it. He could have shared in the lands allotted to the followers of Clark but he had lived in isolation "in the hills and mountains detached from almost every com- munity or opportunity for information."
Petitions Nos. 85 and 103 are requests from scouts for consideration. Petition No. 89 is the request of a quarter- master in control of supplies for the Illinois division of the army under Clark for three years. The memorialist had drawn bills of exchange on the State for some of the bills,
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Introduction
they had been protested, and he was in "a very disagreeable situation not only on account of these bills but by being charged with monies paid him during the time he was in the office and no credit allowed him." Petition No. 92 refers to a suit brought in the High Court of Chancery for pay- ment of salt purchased by a public agent of Virginia. Peti- tion No. 94 is the claim for payment as compensation for the keeping of Indian prisoners. Part of the bill had been paid but the amount had been reduced in the later months and petitioner could not get rid of the Indians. Petition No. 95 is a claim for service in raising a company on the Holston, supplying them with arms, provisions, bags, pack horses, and marching them to the Falls of the Ohio in 1779, for the reduction of Illinois under Colonel Clark. The amount had once been allowed by the commissioners, but some person had been making trouble by stating that the petitioner was "enimical to the United States" when he was a captive at Detroit where he was taken in 1780. Petitions Nos. 107 and 108 are requests for payment for horses impressed into the public service.
The petitions, lastly, are valuable as a means of deter- mining the feeling which the settlers west of the mountains had for the parent State and the gradual movement toward separation. We have already seen that there was a popu- lation unfriendly to the jurisdiction of Virginia, even from the beginning. The Revolutionary War, however, had led them to prefer her jurisdiction to any alternative. There were many causes for dissatisfaction which were due to
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1
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Introduction
the necessities of the case rather than intentional neglect. As the War drew to a close and the new system of Federal Government was established, expectation turned toward a separate existence as a State.
Petition No. 15, May, 1782, contains the first expression of that feeling in this collection of petitions. It grew out of the discontent of the settlers with the land policy of Virginia, especially the grants to absentee purchasers. The petitioners had proposed the setting aside of tracts of land for actual settlers; they referred to considerable dissention among them as the result of a pamphlet in circulation on the "Public Good" and asked the Assembly to create them "a power sufficient for the Controul and Management of all Civil and Military affairs in this Country" or else to grant them "a Separation with your Intercession with the Hon- ourable the Continental Congress for their incorporation with them." The request is respectfully worded and they speak of "a proper deference to your wise Determinations, Reposing special Trust and Confidence in you." Part of their request was rejected, but "so much thereof as prays for the establishment of some kind of controuling power for the better management of their civil and military affairs is reasonable."
Petition No. 16, June, 1782, renews the same complaints and asks in definite terms for the passage of an act for cultivating and improving the lands and the creation of a superior court which will "carry us towards that stage of maturity when with the tenderness of a kind parent to a
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Introduction
departing child, you will direct us to form a constitution and act for ourselves." They refer, in Petition No. 24, to the unsatisfactory conditions, mention a resolution of Con- gress denying Virginia's title to lands northwest of the moun- tains, but express loyalty in the words: "When your memorialists through your Honble. house make a request to Congress for a new state and are received into the Union, They are then and not before subject as another state"; and again they say, "your memorialists have ever considered themselves and country as part of Virginia and were happy in being so. Her laws suited them and do yet suppose it to be their interest to be Governed by Her, untill it shall appear for their mutual advantage to separate at which period it is expected there will be no objection." The creation of a superior court in the same year seems for a time to have satisfied the requests of previous petitions.
Petition No. 25, October, 1785, is the request of a convention for separation. It was called "to take into consideration the General State of the District and especially to decide the expediency of making application to your Honorable Body, for an Act of Seperation." They give various reasons for their request; they say they have waited patiently "the hour of Address nor ever ventured to raise their voices in their own cause, Untill Youth quickening into manhood hath given them vigor and Stability." If their application is granted they count it "a new spectacle - in the History and Politicks of Mankind. A Sovereign Power, solely intent to bless its People, agreeing to a dis-
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Introduction
memberment of its parts, in order to secure the Happiness of the Whole," the beginning of a movement which "we persuade ourselves is to diffuse throughout the World the inestimable blessings which mankind may derive from the American Revolution." Their request was considered in committee of the whole by the Assembly, referred then to a special committee, and a bill was passed which provided for the calling of a convention at Danville, to consider the matter of separation. Three bills were passed before the separation actually took place.
The opposition to separation is seen in Petition No. 58, which says: "An augmentation of states under the general government, by the erection of a new government here which will be clothed with no new national power " will only serve "as one of Pharos lean kine to devour our liberty whilst it can be of no security to our property." They ask for a repeal of the act of separation lest it "injure us until time shall be no more."
The general tone and tenor of the petitions here printed is considerably different from that of the petitions sent to Philadelphia or New York, now in the Library of Congress and which have been referred to and quoted in the printed histories of Kentucky.
The list of names attached to the petitions is the third and last source of value to be mentioned in this intro- duction. The signatures of the larger part are autograph which adds to their worth. Many of the lists of early pio- neer populations have been gathered secondhand and often
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Introduction
from the sound of the name. Thus the army rolls of the Virginia soldiers found on pay-rolls or official papers are often incorrect. In some cases it is evident that the list of names attached to a petition was copied in one hand- writing and in some cases names have been written for the petitioner, but in most cases the autograph signature appears on one of the petitions if not more. The editor spent over a month on the names, examining them with a magnifying glass and copying them. In this way it was possible to gain a familiarity with them. Where the name appeared several times, as most of them do, it was possible to check and come to a judgment as to the proper form. Variations of spelling have been preserved in order to make the list of as much value as possible. The same name occurring on different petitions does not necessarily indicate the same person. No effort has been made to go beyond the preser- vation of the name in this work.
Facsimile reproductions have been made of some of the signatures by way of illustration. Not all the auto- graphs are so good as these. Many are barely legible, but there were very few that could not be made out after some study. Surely this list of names is abundant proof that the pioneer population of Kentucky was not illiterate.
The list of names is important for two main reasons, first, it throws light on the racial composition of the early population of Kentucky, and second, it is of use for the study of genealogy.
The earlier petitions show a decided preponderance of Scotch and Scotch-Irish names with a large number of
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Introduction
English and a few German, Dutch, and French. The num- ber of English names increases in the later petitions. The large number of religious names indicates the nonconformist character of much of the population.
While the list will not give much detail to aid the gene- alogist, it fixes the existence of a certain name in a locality at an early period and thus gives a clue that may be fol- lowed further.
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TEXT OF THE PETITIONS
Verbatim transcript with editor's emendations in brackets only when meaning requires the same.
33-34
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1596246
TEXT OF THE PETITIONS
NUMBER 1.
TO THE RIGHT HONBLE. NORBORNE BARON DE BOTETOURT HIS MAJESTY'S LIEUT. AND GOVERNOR GENERAL OF VIRGINIA AND VICE ADMIRAL OF THE SAME AND THE HONBLE. COUNCIL THEREOF :-
The Petition of Joseph Cabell, Junr., Nicholas Cabell, William Megginson, William Horsley, Robert Horsley, John Horsley, Wm. Hopkins, Jas. Hopkins, Saml. Burks, Cornelius Thomas, John Thomas, Jas. Thomas Junr., Henry Hopson, Samuel Hop- son, John Hughs, Joseph Hornsby, Edward Harris, John Harris, Thos. Harris, John Davis, John Warberton, Benj. Warberton, Gary Wilkinson, Emanl. Taylor, Joseph Turner, Wm. Cabell Junr., Sanders Cabell, Hector Cabell, Frederick Cabell, John Cabell Junr., George Cabell, Frederick Cabell, Hugh Innes, Robert Innes, Harry Innes, Jas. Innes, James Buchanan, Tavener Beal, Abraham Hite, Isaac Hite, the Younger, Abra- ham Hite Junr., Joseph Hite, Thos. Harmon, Benj. Hains, Joseph Hains, Ebenezer Severn, Philip Ross, Felix Seymour, Isaac Hite, Isaac Hite, Junr .. John Mc. Donel, Abel Randle, Garret VanMeter, humbly sheweth that his Majesty's Title to the Lands situate on the east side of the Ohio having lately been recognized by the six nations of Indians, your Petitioners humbly pray that they may have leave to take up and survey sixty thousand acres of Land to begin at the Falls of the Cum- berland River and extend down the said River for compliment in one or more surveys and your Petitioners will pray.
(December, 1769. According to Calendar of State Papers.)
In the Calendar of State Papers reference is made to a Petition of April 25, 1772, asking for a large grant of land in the valley of the Louisa River; in the Journal of the House of Burgesses for May 25, 1774, reference is made to a Petition from several persons on the Western Waters; in the Journal of the Con- vention reference is made to several Petitions: on May 21, 1776, to a Petition from settlers in West Fincastle; on May 30, to a Petition from John Craig, a settler in Transylvania; on June 15, 1776, to a Petition from Richard Hen- derson and his associates of the Transylvania Company; and on June 10, 1776,
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Petitions of the Early Inhabitants of Kentucky
to two Petitions from settlers in the western part of Fincastle beyond the mountains.
In the sources there are quite full summaries of the above mentioned Peti- tions but the text itself has not been found. The Petitions or copies of them may be in existence. Together with Petitions Nos. 2 and 3, of this collection, they led to the act separating Kentucky County from Fincastle, confirming the land titles of the settlers and ensuring the jurisdiction of Virginia over the country west of the Alleghanies.
NUMBER 2.
TO THE HONORABLE THE CONVENTION OF VIRGINIA.
The Humble Petition of the Inhabitants of Kentucke (or Louisa) River on the Western parts of Fincastle County. Humbly Sheweth that many of your Petitioners became Adven- turers in this part of the Colony in the year 1774, in order to provide a subsistance for themselves and their Posterity; but were soon obliged by our Savage Enemy to abandon their Enterprise and in the year Following, after the Country had been discovered and explored, many more became Adventurers, some of whom claimed Land by Virtue of Warrant by Lord Dunmore agreeable to the Royal Proclamation in the year 1763 and other by Preoccupancy, agreeable to the Entry Laws of Virginia. And in the meantime a Company of men from North Carolina purchased or pretended to Purchase from the Cherokee Indians all that track of Land from the southernmost waters of the Cumberland River to the Banks of the Louisa or Kentucke River including also the Lands on the which inhabi- tants live in Powells Valley, By Virtue of which Purchase they stile themselves the true and absolute Proprietors of the new Independent Province, (as they call Transylvania) they are indeavoring to Erect and in consequence of their Usurped authority officers both Civil and Military are appointed, Writs of Election issued Assemblys convened, a Land Office opened, Conveyances made, Lands sold at an Exorbitant Price and a System of Policy introduced which does not at all Harmonize with that lately adopted by the United Colonies, But on the Contrary for ought yet appears this Fertile Country will afford a safe Asylum to those whose principles are Inimical to American
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To the General Assembly of Virginia
Freedom. But your Petitioners have the greatest Reason to question the Validity of those mens purchase being well in- formed that the Cherokees never extended their claims north of the Cumberland River, nor would warrant any Lands on the other side. Besides its well known, that the Indians of the Six Nations Claimed and ceded those very Lands to the Crown of Great Britain at a Treaty held at Fort Stanwix in November 1768. We therefore are not willing to obey those men, or the Authority they have assumed or indeed to acknowl- edge any power or prerogative, which is not derived from the Convention of Virginia whose subjects we desire to be considered.
Virginia, we conceive, can claim this country with the greatest justice and propriety, its within the Limits of their Charter, They Fought and bled for it. And had it not been for the memorable Battle at the Great Kanaway, these vast Regions had yet continued inaccessable. Nor can we conceive how it is practicable for those men who stile themselves Absolute proprietors, to settle this Country at so great a Distance from all the Colonies and in a Neighborhood of some Enemy Indians.
But should our Infant Settlement become the object of your deliberations, and be taken under your protection and Direction unto whom we justly conceive to Belong, Every obstacle would be Removed, Population increase and of con- sequence a Barrier to the interior parts of Virginia from the Indians. A new source of wealth would then be opened, as Trade and Navigation under the auspices of Virginia would Flourish, in the Western world, And therefore willing to acquit our conscience and not entail Slavery upon our posterity by submitting to the pretensions and impositions of the pretended proprietors, We the Inhabitants of the North and South Sides of Kentucke River having assembled togather after preparatory notice on the Eighth day of June 1776 and continued to poll till the 15th. of said Instantin . . [illegible] a majority has chosen Captain John Gabriel Jones and Captain George
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Petitions of the Early Inhabitants of Kentucky
Rodgers Clark, and hope ye Honorable the Convention will receive them as our Delegates from this the Western parts of Fincastle County. And as we sincerely concur in the measures established by the Continental Congress and Colony of Virginia, And willing to the utmost of our abilities to support the present laudable cause, by raising our Quoto of men and bear a pro- portionable share of Expense that will necessarily accrue in the support of our common Liberty. And that good order may be observed we proceeded to Elect a Committee consisting of Twenty one members, already some in West Augusta and which precedent we rely upon to justify our Procedings to the world, for without Law or authority, Vice here could take its full scope having no Laws to Restrain or Power to Controul. Upon the whole we Cheerfully submit to the Authorities and Juris- diction of this House, not doubting but you will take us under your protection, and give us such direction by our Representa- tives, as you, in your great Wisdom may think Best, and your petitioners as in duty Bound &c.
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