xt759z908v54 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt759z908v54/data/mets.xml Ranck, George Washington, 1841-1900. 1896  books b92f454r252009 English Transylvania Print Co. : Lexington, Ky. Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Blue Licks, Battle of the, Ky., 1782. Bryan Station (Ky.) --Siege, 1782. The story of Bryan s station : as told in the historical address delivered at Bryan s Station, Fayette County, Kentucky, August 18th, 1896 / by George W. Ranck, at the dedication of the memorial to the women of Bryan s Station erected by the Lexington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Aug. 16, 1896 ; with historical notes by the writer. text The story of Bryan s station : as told in the historical address delivered at Bryan s Station, Fayette County, Kentucky, August 18th, 1896 / by George W. Ranck, at the dedication of the memorial to the women of Bryan s Station erected by the Lexington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Aug. 16, 1896 ; with historical notes by the writer. 1896 2009 true xt759z908v54 section xt759z908v54 
   **JheJ^tory of

"J^ryan's ^^tation

Ranck.

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   MEMORIAL ENCLOSING THE FAMOUS SPRING AT BRYAN'S STATION 
   THE STORY

0 f

BRYAN'S STATION

AS TOLD IN* THE

HISTORICAL ADDRESS

DELIVERED   AT    BRYAN'S STATION, FAYETTE COUNTY, KENTUCKY, AUGUST 18th. 1896

b y

GEORGE W. RANCK

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE MEMORIAL TO THE

. WOMEN OF BRYAN'S STATION

erected by the lexington chapter of the daughters of the american revolution, aug. 18, 1896

With Historical, Notes by the Whiter

Author nf "O'Hara and His Elegies." "History of Lexington Kentucky," ''Girty. the White Indian," "The Traveling Church," Etc., Etc.

Corrected and Approved Edition.

LEXINGTON. KY

TRANSYLVANIA 1'RINTING co 1886 
    
   ADDRESS

Madam Regent and Ladies of the Lexington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Ladies and Gentlemen : I have been honored by the Lexington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution with the commission to write for this notable occasion.* The Story of Bryan's Station. The ladies gave me no easy task, for while much of the material that has come down to us on this subject is good, all of it is fragmentary, some of it is confused and inaccurate, and not a little is mere repetition embellished by an exuberant fancy. It is for these reasons partly that Bryan's Station has not taken the place it deserves in general American history, a place from which, let us hope, it will no longer be missing after the events of this auspicious day.

*As the date of the anniversary of the event commemorated    August IB   fell this year (1890) on Sunday, the dedicatory exercises at Bryan's Station were, for convenience, held on Tuesday,. August IS, lSUtl. 
   4

I have tried in this address to remove these blemishes and to overcome these disadvantages. To do this I have gone back to original sources of information entirely    to eye-witnesses of the events and actors in the scenes of Bryan's Station, and to authorities who actually lived when the pioneers lived, who knew them personally and received their facts directly from them

If this address, therefore, has any merit it is mainly due to the u-:e of contemporary evidence which furnishes the strongest material from which history can be written ; to the fact that the writer has conscientiously endeavored to make it accurate, impartial and reliable, and because it is the first attempt that has ever been made to give to our literature a full, complete and consecutive

Story of Bryan's Station.

An eloquent and jierpetual reminder of    the coining of the pioneers to the Blue Grass Region of Kentucky is an English name.

In 1773, when the McAfees penetrated for    the first time to these luxuriant depths an    elk was killed that so surpassed all others 
   5

they had seen that his grandly branching antlers were set up as a trophy on the bank of a newfound stream, and from that day to this the once unheard of water has been known by the beautiful name of " Elkhorn."* The earliest known explorers identified with the north fork of this romantic stream*, and witli the ground now known as "Bryan's Station," came here in 1774 and 1775, and included John Floyd, James Douglas and Hancock Taylor, thiee deputy surveyors of Fincastle county Va., of which Kentucky was then a part; William Bryan, a hunter from that section of North Carolina now known as Rowan county, and John Ellis, a Virginia veteran of the French and Indian wars.f The land they sought was all that even the land-craving heart of the Anglo Saxon could desire, and claims were located, surveys made and temporary improvements were started. But the day of possession was not yet. The explorers wero suddenly forced to abandon their camp, which remained abandoned for

   McAfee's Pioneer Sketches.

   J-Henderson's Journal; see also Fayetle records. Denhnni vs. Johnson, in which William Bryan proves settlement of John Ellis on .North Elkhorn. 
   6

years, for war had broken put between the outraged Ohio Indians and the colony of Virginia, and it had barely ended when the great struggle for American independence commenced. The experiences of the adventurous spirits we have named strikingly illustrate the perils of the Kentucky wilderness at this time. They all endured almost incredible privations and sufferings, all of them were wounded by the Indians and three out of the five met death at their hands. *

In 1779 that remarkable and mischievous land law of Virginia was enacted which turned such a tide of immigration into Kentucky, and permanent settlements were made for the first time within the present limits of [Fayette county. One of these was Bryan's Station    It was founded by four Bryanf

"Taylor was killed in Madison county in 1774, Bryan in Fayette in 1780. and Floyd in Jefferson in 1788, Douglas died in Bourbon iu 1798and Ellis in Fayette in 17i  7. Floyd secured an immense amount of Kentucky laud, and Fayette county records credit Ellis with theenonnons number of IW.OOOacres, variously located. Ellis and Floyd both served In the Continental army after the visit to the North Elklmrn region detailed above.

-(   We give tlie name as it was used by most of the members of the family in Kentucky at lhat time, though it was then known as'   Bryant" also. Thf> certillcates issued by the Land Coram is-   sionersat the session of their court held at the station in December. 17711, and January, 1780. culled the family "Bryan" and the locality "Bryant's Station." (See Bryan and OWei s vs. Wallac e, Fayette records.)  And this precedent was followed by the Court 
   7

(brothers from North Carolina   William, Morgan, James and Joseph, of whom the above mentioned William was the leading    spirit, and with them was AVilliam Grant, who, like the leader, had married a sister of Daniel Boone. All five were elderly but    stalwart woodsmen, and as each was blessed with a great family of children, in accordance with a striking feature of the day, and .as the children themselves were nearly all grown, they felt prepared for straggling Indians at least, as with dogs and flint-lock rifles, pack horses and cows they set out from the valley of the Yadkin. At the Cumberland river they were joined by two land hunters they accidently met there, Cave Johnson and William Tomlinson, from Virginia, who for their better protection, made the journey with the party and helped to build the station when the trip ended.* They all came by way of Booiiesborough, where

Of Appeal?. (See same ease.) In the official reports of the battle of the Blue Licks. Augu-t. 17*2, Boon* gives the station name without the4't." while Caldwe 1 (British) and Levi Todd both use that letter. John Filson. 1784, pi ints it one way on hi-, map and the other way in his book, anil so on from the settlement of the station down to the present lime b.uh foiius of the name have been used in court records and by historians and the public.

   Autobiography of Cave Johnsou. He and Tomliu-sou went    back to Virginia in a few weeks, but both returned. 
   8

they stopped to replenish their supply of corn, and from that fort, after a laborious march, they came to the North Elkhorn creek, where they made a final halt at a spot about five miles northeast of the little stockaded settlement of Lexington. Here in the very heart of the neutral ground of the Northern and Southern Indians, in the center of their choicest game park where all might hunt, but where no tribe might remain, and in that section of it which Bancroft describes as "the matchless valley of the Elkhorn," was Bryan's Station planred. How little did these rich acres cost in gold   how much did they cost in suffering and in blood. The new station was quickly built. It was a rude and solitary habitation, but as strong as it was rude. It consisted at first of twelve or fourteen cabins of logs with the bark on, with roofs of roughest clapboards and provided with chimneys of sticks and clay, but unlighted by one pane of glass, and all arranged as a hollow square by the aid of great pickets made of the trunks of trees split in two and planted firmly in the ground. And the whole, green as the forest from which it 
   9

had been hewed, was fashioned by the ax and1 put together by wooden pegs and pins without the help of a nail or a hinge of iron. The-station was more noticeable at this time for its situation than for its size. It stood on an elevated point* that had been cleared of trees big enough to screen an enemy and-which tapered steeply down to the southern bank of the heavily wooded creek. At the foot of the hill which hid it from the station, and facing the creek, was a spring of almost ice-cold water that issued from a ledge of rocks that long jutted from the hillside, but which was covered then by wild vegetation and thick primeval mosses, and the clear little stream that came from it uniting with another like it flowed unseen into the creek through a thicket of waving cane. This spring which had much to do with determining the location of the fortf was destined through the heroism of Kentucky women to become the most famous fountain of the western-

   Marshall's History of Kentucky. Johu Bradford's Notes on the Early .-ettlement of Kentucky

f A spring was such a necessity of eariy pioneer life that it nearly always determined the location of a settlement. It was a spring that "caused the en ction of the cabins at llarrodsbir g ,. Boonesborough. Oeoi getown. Lexington and a multitude of other forts and stations in Kentucky. 
   Ill

wilderness. A foot path zigzagging through the freshly made stumps of trees and past -some saplings of dogwood and pawpaw, led down from the station to this spring, while a much broader track sloped from"; the main gate on the southeastern side of the stockade to a road a little distance away, and|nearly fronting the fort, thai; was a priceless boon to the pioneers. It seemed an ancient product    of human skill, but was, in fact, a "trace," hard and firm, made by the buffaloes alone which had thundered over it for a thousand years in their journeys to the Salt Licks. Near by was a clearing planted in corn, but all else but the hill itself   the forests, the canebrakes, the wilderness stream, the wild rye, the peavine and the white clover   was unchanged by the hand of man. The settlers were very busy, for they had to depend upon themselves alone for the commonest comforts and necessaries of life. Pots and skillets and a few ordinary implements they    did possess, but nearly everything else they had to make, from slab tables to buffalo tallow dips, from hand mills to deerskin moccasins.   And hunting seemed never to stop, 
   11

for the settlers lived on wild gams, and times were bad indeed at Bryan's Station when the ranger came back without his usual load.

Thanks to the blow inflicted by the genius of Clarke in his Vincennes campaign, the Indians halted for a little season in their work    of murder, and game could be had without the constant risk of life and more immigrants found their way to the Blue Grass Region in the fall of 1779. Some of them settled at Bryan's, greatly to the delight of its lonely little band, and among them was Stephen Frank, Nicholas Tomlinson, Thomas Bell, David Jones, James Hogan, Huttery Lee and Daniel \\Tilcoxen. Others under the leadership of Col. John Grant, of North Carolina, and Capt. William Ellis, of Vir-ginia, went five miles further toward the spot where Paris now stands and established Grant's Station. *

*Opl. Grant, who was a Revolutionary soldier, was one of the most active of the pioneers* lie and Otipt. Elli.s seem to have first met in che Continental army, to which they both returned when their settlement was broken up by Byrd in 1780. They both came back to Kentucky and settled permanently, Ellis in the winter of 1781 and Grant in the spring of irs-2 (not'in 1781 as Collins has it) Col. Grant died at his home on the Licking where he hail erected salt works years before. There were five of the Grants, including William at Bryan's, and all came from the Shallow Ford of the Yadkin, and all.were conspicuous as fion-tiersmen.   Israel was with Boone in his pursuit of the Indians 
   12

As the new settlers were mostly kinsmen or friends of those at Bryan's, and as neighbors were not overly plentiful, a trace was quickly cut and cleared between the two forts, and it, like the buffalo trace to Lexington, now gave signs of human travel

Bryan's Station was unusually animated in December, 1779, and January, 1780, in spite of the bitterly cold weather, as the Commissioners appointed by Virginia to settle land claims held their court within its snow covered walls and the piom ers gathered in to get the certificates that meant so much to them, for these documents secured to each holder 400 acres of land actually settled, and a pre-emption right to purch ise at the St ite price a thousand acres or less adjoining his settlement, provided the settlement had been made before January 1, 1778 ; on unappropriated land, to which no other had a legal right Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, Robert Patterson, the Todds, Ellis, McConnells and many others of the early pioneers of

wh> kllleil Edward lloone, brother of Daniel, in October, 1781. S-m lei Grant was killed by the Indians ne.r the Ohio in 1791. William was wounded in the tragic hunt on the Elkhorn. Squire was State Senator from Booae county in 1801. 
   13

Fayette county visited Bryan's Station at this time. It wa-; while this court was in session that the Bryans. who had rested secure in the belief that they were the owners of the station land by right of settlement, met the first of a series of discouragements tlnv caused them to abandon the place. Tl eir settlement was found to be within the limits of a survey made in July, 1774, for William Preston, then surveyor of Fincastle county, Virginia, who had already traded it off tj Joseph Rogers, also a resident of Virginia.*

This misfortune, a long spell of terribly severe weather and other adverse circumstances made the winter a gloomy one at Bryan's. As the season advanced, the little store of corn was exhausted, owing to the presence of new-comers, who increased the consumption of it and had arrived too late to plant for themselves. So there was no bread, and even meat was scarce, for the larger game went further away as settlers increased.

   Deposilion of Joseph Rogers in 1791, Fayette county records. The patent says: "Granted to Joseph Rogers and John Seahuiy;" liledsoe vs. Tandy. Preston was never in Kentucky. He died i n 171:3 in what is now Montgomery county, Virginia. 
   14

The spring of 1780 came, and with it came the Indians, as they always did at that season of the year. All the traces were infested with them, and several hunters had already been killed, when the salt gave out both at Lexington and at Bryan's, and as salt was indispensible, a party of men made up from both places started for Bullitt's Lick, near Salt river to get some. But they had hardly passed the little cluster of stockaded cabins called Leestown and reached the bank of the Kentucky river, when they were suddenly attacked by Indians who killed Stephen Frank and wounded Nicholas Tom-linson, William Bryan and several others of the party, who, however, quickly recovered, but the expedition had to be abandoned. Frankfort, subsequently settled near the site of this occurrance, is said to have taken its name from the unfortunate hunter killed that day. More Indians than ever now beset the traces and the fort, and neither the pioneers nor their stock could go beyond the clearing without danger ; meat grew scarcer still, and hunting parties, to avoid the savages, had to Slip out of the station before 
   15

daybreak, make a wide circuit and return at; night. When a man went out at this time he was never certain that he would ever get back.

About the 20th of May this year   1780*    meat was so badly needed that twelve mounted men rode from the station in quest of game to some woods near where Georgetown now stands. There they divided, with the understanding that one party under AVilliam Bryan and another under James Hogan should range down the Elkhorn   each party taking a side   and meet at night at the mouth of Cane Run. Soon after they parted Hogan and his men were pursued by Indians,, and abandoning a led horse, brought along to carry game, they distanced the savages and galloped back to the station. Early the next morning, Hogan, with reinforcements, went to the relief of Bryan's party, which had camped at the place agreed upon, but they arrived too late to prevent disaster. The Indians had used the captured pack-horse, which was provided with a bell, to-

*Several writers, including Collins, have incorrectly given the year as 1781. 
   L6

lead the other party into an ambuscade, and Jiad defeated the hunters, mortally wounding William Bryan and severely wounding William Grant, when Hogan's band rode up and finally routed the savages in turn. In this .last fight one of the Indians was killed and scalped and three of the white men were wounded. One of the wounded was David Jones, after whom " David's Fork," a tributary of the Elkhorn was named.* He was shot through the middle of the chest, but survived. The suffering hunters supported .in their saddles were brought to the station, where protracted anxiety gave way to successive feelings of joy, sympathy and fear as the faint and bleeding little party filed slowly through the gate. William Bryan, who had been mangled by three bullets, was carried to his cabin, in a dying condition, and before the dawn of another morning the unfortunate woodsman expired. And then in the midst    of sorrow and great depression, while four wounded men required attention, and with every male mourner carrying a rifle, occurred

*Thc stream was lirst known as "David Jones' Fork." and afterward familiarly shortened to "Davy's Fork." but for nearly a .century has held to the more diguined appellation of "David's Fork." Sec depositions, Fayette county records. 
   17

the first funeral at Bryan's Station. No church bell tolled as the little train went carefully over the rocks and logs where the buffalo trace crossed the creek, and there was no music but the rippling of the forest stream when the settlers halted in the woods on the other side opposite the station. A good man made a simple prayer, and William Bryan was laid to rest under the sp:eading branches of an oak which stood at his head, with his initials deeply cut into the bark.

The Bryans had talked of leaving the station as soon as they tound that they were not the owners of the land, and now after the    death of their leader they were more inclined to abandon it than ever. One more event settled the matter, for they barely escaped    destruction. On the 22d of June, Col. Byrd,    of the British army, at the head of one of the largest and most formidable bodies of Indians and Canadians that had ever invaded Kentucky, captured Ruddle's Station in the present Harrison county, and immediately took Martin's also, which was only a few 
   18

miles from Bryan's* Consternation reigned in all the log forts, for the invaders had brought to Kentucky for the first time the-one tiling the pioneers dreaded   artillery. Grant's Station was instantly evacuated, much to the disgust of scouting Indians, who managed, however, to kill some of the rapidly retreating garrison, and then pushed on to Bryan's, where they seized many horses, ruined much of the growing corn and were confidently expecting the arrival of the army, when Col. Byrd, either through fear of the sudden falling of the waters of the Licking, from disgust at the utter disregard of his-authority by his wild allies, or from horror at their atrocities, hastily retreated, and the station that seemed doomed to immediate destruction was saved as by a miracle.

The Bryans and others from the same State were now utterly discouraged and determined to return to North Carolina. But it was no easy matter to get away, with land selling for a song, and everything else enormously high, and with women, children, household goods

   Ruddle's fort \va- about n mile and a quarter above the site-now known ns Lair's station, while .Martin's was still closer to BrvanV, as it was on Sioner Cieek in Buiirbon county. It was-abont live miles fro.n Huddle's. 
   19

and provisions to move, after the Indians had stolen nearly idl the horses In July corn was selling at a hundred and twenty dollars per bushel in continental currency, and one man was known to have given as much as nine hundred acres of pre emption land for a horse. All the wounded hunters in the station had time to get well before the arrangements for the trip were completed, but the emigrants were ready at last, and early one morning at the close of the month of August, 1780, the pack-horses were loaded, farewells were said to the few who remained, the conch shell was blown, the train moved off on the old buffalo trace, and the Bryans and their party abandoned the station forever.* They had been there but little more than a year, but troubles and privations had made the time seem infinitely longer. Some years after this, when the war was over, and

   Morgan Bryan, one of (he four brothers, in a deposit on before .lames Trotter, taken March 10.17:15. refers to the mov. mems of the Bryans and others in May. 17-0. and says: "All of whom and myself removed from Ihe Kentucky country in tbe August following, and i one of us let rued, as far us I know before the i e ir 17S4." Daniel Bryan and Ueorne Bryan depose that ihev left in 17S0. but slate that they retui ned at a later date than 17S4. while Samuel Bryan simply deposes that he remained al the station Until the summer hi I7<0. -ee Fa.ette records, Bryan and Owens, vs. Wallace; Bledsoe vs. Tandy, and other suits. 
      20

pioneers could live outside of the prison-like forts, members of this family and party came back to other lands they baa taken up in Fayette county, but to Bryan's Station they returned no more.

So at the beginning of the autumn of 1780 only a few of the cabins at Bryan's Station were occupied, and the place seemed about to be entirely deserted when its prospects brightened. Clarke's expedition against the Piqua Indians, immediately after Byrd's invasion, restored confidence ; immigrants began again to pour into the country and a number of them from Virginia settled at Bryan's, making the station stronger than ever. Among them were John Ellis, one of the original [explorers, with his family and negroes ; three Craig brothers, Elijah, John and Jeremiah ; Joseph Stucker and relatives, and John Martin, John Suggett and several Hendersons and Mitchells. Later in the fall    came Mr. Williams, of North Carolina, with his young son Ellison, and about the same time arrived Robert Johnson* brother

"Autobiography of Cave Johnson. Both ol the Johnson brothers hail to gii to Virginia in the spring of 1782 and did not return .until the fall of that year. 
   - 1

of Cave Johnson, from Beargrass, near the present Louisville, with his family, including his infant son, Richard M , born at that place and afterward distinguished as a soldier and Vice-President. The new-comers added more cabins to the station, increased its comforts and conveniences, and what was of vital importance, increased its strength, for now since the fall of Martin's and Ruddle's it was the most exposed of all the stations north of the Kentucky river. Lexington was superior, but it was mainly because her founders had the forethought to include a splendid spring within her walls, an advantage, strange to say, that none of the othtr stations enjoyed.

When the winter came on the Indians left the setilers to fight the snow and ice and starvation, but they were back again as soon as the spring of 1781 brought pleasant weather. Before the dogwood bloomed they had crept up to the station and killed a man who was on the lookout, while Daniel Wil-coxen ploughed the corn, and it was only by a lucky accident that Wilcoxen escaped with his life.   June opened with another tragedy, 
      li

foi1 11 Littery Lee was killed while trying to give his horse grass outside of the walls so iiicessantly watched by the skulking foe. His horse was shot and he himself was scalped, dying while yet a youth. Both of these victims of the Indians were buried by the side ot William Bryan in the rude station graveyard across the creek. But the settlement survived in spite of everything, and the hearts of the inmates were strengthened when the news was brought in December that a whole congregation of Virginians had arrived at Gilbert's Creek,* and that a num-'ber of old friends and neighbors who formed part of it would settle near them in the coining spring. Not only were more strong arms needed but all hungered and thirsted for news from their J'ar-diotant old home, for letters were few and hard to get and not a single newspaper was published in the entire Kentucky wilderness. The winter was monotonous, but the spring of 1782 was marked by an early omen of a tragic year, for the station was shocked on the 23d of March by the news of Estill's defeat, brought

   Neir Lancaster, Ky.  See "Traveling Church," published 1891. 
   23

   by two survivors of tbe fatal engagement.    One was William Irvine, helpless from three gun shot wounds, and the other was Joseph Proctor, who had rescued him .after the most desperate and gallant exertions. In April, about two weeks after this incident, the expected Virginia familes arrived from    Gilbert's Creek, re-enforcing Bryan's and other Blue Grass forts to some extent, but mainly uniting to settle on David's Fork * None, however, were distant from Bryan's, where their leader, Capt. William Ellis, and some of his riflemen were destined soon to gather.

Bryan's Station was at its best in the summer of 1782. It then included about forty cabins with clapboard roofs, all of which sloped inwardly, and like all the larger pioneer forts in Kentucky, was a parallelogram in shape, with a block house at each angle, and every space not occupied by the back or outside wall of a cabin was filled in with pointed log pickets twelve feet high.    Commencing a little distance from the north-

*Xow known as the Chilesburg neighborhood. History of Pay-   ette cjuuty, Kentucky, p.ige 2i2. 
   24

eastern brow of tbe hill overlooking the-creek, it ran back two hundred yards in length by fifty yards in width, and was provided with two big gates that swung on enormous wooden hinges   one of the gates-being on the southeastern side nearest the buffalo trace, which long afterward developed into the Bryan Station turnpike.* On the outside and close to the palisades were several cabins, in one of which lived James Morgan, his wife and one infant child, and there were other structures that sheltered tanning vats, rude contrivances for making rope and other absolutely necessary articles. The live stock had increased, more land had been cleared and fenced, a vegetable garden was flourishing and a hundred acres of full grown corn extended along one side of the buffalo trace past the fort and down to the forest covered bank of the creek. Trees still thickly lined the other side of the trace, making it now a narrow lane. There was a heavy growth of hemp west and north of the present old brick residence which stands on

*It remained II "dirt road" until 1859. wheu the live miles from the city limits of Lexington were macadamized. 
   25

the ground, then clear of everything but stumps and tall weeds ; wild rye and a thicket of lofty cane, in which a man on horseback could hide, covered the marshy bottom between the hillside and the creek in the neighborhood of the spring, so that the station though it stood in the midst of cleared and elevated land, was rimmed around at no-great distance by luxuriant vegetation.

Such was Bryan's Station before the sun set on the loth of August, 1782, but there was excitement; in the little garrison of forty-four riflemen, and among the women and children, by the time bear grease lamps and buffalo tallow dips were lighted, for a messenger had galloped up with the news that Capt. John Holder, with men from his own station, from McGee's and Strode's had been defeated at the Upper Blue Licks by a band of Indians he had been pursuing, who had committed depredations and captured children at Hoy's Station in the present Madison county. The word was for the settlers to rendezvous   at   Hoy's. *     Lexington had

* Hoy's Stition, which had then (1782) been established about a year, was close to the site of the p esent Foxtown. in Madison county, and as Holder's was on the Kentucky river, only two- 
   26

already been notified and was preparing to go and bunt down the savages, and now the garrison at Bryan's hurried to get ready to    do the same, which was exactly what a wily -foe had commissioned his advance guard to effect, with a view to the destruction of both places,* for one of the largest forces that had ever come against the settlements was even .then at their very gates.

The Northwestern tribes, though ofcen at variance with each other, never forgot that Kentucky was the common hunting ground of them all, and their inveterate hatred of the pioneer intruders upon it bad been repeatedly worked by the British to their own advantage. Such was now the case. Early in August the British Commandant of the Northwest, Lieutenant-Governor Henry Hamilton, whose headquarters were at Detroit, had ordered Capt. William Caldwell to

miles from Boonesborough, the alarm soon reached him. In his pursuit he iner.ased his party llrst at Mc ee's Stai'oii. which    was on 0 aiper'fl Hun, in Fayette county, three miles from hooncHhorough. and then at Stfodes. which was two miles from

    tlie pr. sent Winchester, and then ihe p.lnclpai settlement of what Is mo* Clark county, "strode's Koad" is still a reminder of the old station.

   Holder was .leTealed on the 14th or 15th of August; and if the settlers could be drawn away to Hoy's. Bryan's would not only be without a garrison,Itself but It could obtain no aid from the

.neighboring stations, as they too would lie depicted. 
      1-

collect militia and Indians and "destroy the rebel settlements south of the Ohio."* Caldwell, t who seems to have been a militia officer of foreign birth and a Tory, il not an actual renegade, gathered one company of Tory and Canadian rangers, and figured as the official and ostensible head of the movement, though its real leader was the notorious Simon Girty,+ who had been captured by the savages when a child, and adopted by them, and had finally become an Indian in everything but complexion, and was a power both in the council house and on the warpath. A grand conference of the dusky allies of the crown, to consider the cpuestion of the invasion of Kentucky, was held at old Chillicothe||, about three miles northwest of

   Haldimand MSS. Ottawa, Canada. Sir i rederiek lialdiiuancl was Governor of Canada from 1778 to 1784.

   (-Caldwell figured conspicuously at Sandusky in June (1782). A prejudiced writer makes him tlii inactive Captain of a company of Tory militia disguised as Indians at the battle or Fallen Timber, in 171*4. Shortly after this, when the British delivered up the military posts of the Northwest, he settled at Amherstburg (formerly Maiden). Canada, along with Byrd, Girty and MeKee.

ISe'e "Girty the White Indian" in Magazine of American History for March, 188(1, which