Revolutionary Soldiers in Kentucky

LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN IN MEMORY OF STEWART S. HOWE JOURNALISM CLASS OF 1928 STEWART S. HOWE FOUNDATION 973.344 Q48r 1959 I .H.S Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/revolutionarysolOOilquis REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIERS IN KENTUCKY. CONTAINING A Roll of the Officers of Virginia Line who received Land Bounties A Roll of the Revolutionary Pensioners in Kentucky; A List of the Illinois Regiment who Served under George Rogers Clark in the Northwest Campaign ALSO A ROSTER OF THE VIRGINIA NAVY COMPILED BY ANDERSON CHENAULT QUISENBERRY, FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. 1895 BALTIMORE SOUTHERN BOOK COMPANY 1959 This work is dedicated to TTbe IfcentuckE Society, Song of tbe Bmerican "Revolution, who, first of all, began an organised effort to rescue from oblivion the records of the services of Kentuckians in the war which gained our national independence. 973. 3*4 \y\ Introduction. IN no State in the Union, perhaps, are there so many descendants of Revolutionary soldiers, in proportion to population, as in Kentucky, where, more than in any other State whatever, the blood of the fathers has been kept pure and free from inter- mixture with that of the post-revolutionary immigrants to our shores. Professor Shaler, in his charming work on his native State, says: " In Kentucky ... we shall find nearly pure English blood, mainly derived through the Old Dominion, and altogether from districts that shared the Virginia conditions. It is, moreover, the largest body of pure English folk that has, speaking generally, been separated from the mother country for twT o hundred years." In other words, the Kentuckians of to-day are mainly descended from people who, on an average, had already been established in Virginia, or some other American colony, for a hundred years when the Revolution began. Less than one per cent of the people of the State are descended from those people who came to this country subsequently to the war for independence. While Virginia furnished most of the original settlers of the State, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Pennsyl- vania each contributed not a few, and the other colonies, without exception, supplied some. Nearly all the original adult male settlers of the State had seen service in the Revolutionary War, and especially was this the case with those from Virginia, very many of whom had been granted lands in Kentucky by that State on account of their services in the war. Kentucky was then " the great West" of the Union — the land of abundance and of promise — " The Unknown Land, that on the sunset rim Stretched over distance limitless and dim — Lay with its spread of plain and vale and hill, Beyond the eye, mysterious and still." So when the veteran patriots laid down their arms at the advent of the peace they had conquered, and returned to their (55) 56 REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIERS IN KENTUCKY. homes broken in fortune, but rich in hope and courage, their eager eyes saw the brilliant bow of promise toward the land of the setting sun, and thither many thousands of them wended their way with wives and children and lares and penates, to build new homes and carve out new fortunes in the forests primeval. Such men, says Shaler, were, by their native strength and their deeds, the natural leaders in the new settlements, both in peace and in war. Thus the Kentucky spirit was the offspring of the Revolution. The combative spirit left by the war for independence was elsewhere overwhelmed by the tide of com- mercial life ; here it lived on, fed by tradition, and by a nearly continuous combat, down to the time of the Civil War. These men of the Revolution practically controlled affairs in Kentucky, and so long as they lived they were called upon to fill not only the highest but essentially all the public offices of the State, and their descendants have done so after them. The spirit of those old heroes is nowhere better exemplified than in the names given to the counties of the State as they were organized from time to time. Almost invariably some brilliant hero of the Revolution was honored at the creation of each new county, until later wars began to put forward new heroes to be honored. And even in the later wars many of the veterans of the Revolution, though beginning to bend beneath the weight of years, performed a full and noble share, often side by side in the ranks with their sons and grandsons, and under the command of their old leaders, who had learned war with Washington at Mon- mouth and at Trenton, and had suffered with him the hardships and privations of the historic camp at Valley Forge. In 1815, at New Orleans, " the hunters of Kentucky," who so signally defeated the British troops who later in the same year assisted in vanquishing the great Napoleon and his unparalleled "Old Guard " at Waterloo, reasserted that invincible courage by which they, or their fathers, had destroyed the haughty hosts of Patrick Ferguson at King's Mountain. " When Pakenham, with England's proudest means, Swept boldly down on salient New Orleans, Who held the sacred bonds of union then Like young Kentucky's stalwart riflemen?" ; INTRODUCTION. 57 Lyman Draper, one of the most accurate of historians, says that nearly all the men who served under Campbell and Shelby and Cleveland and Sevier at King's Mountain, settled in Ken- tucky either before or after the close of the Revolution. Isaac Shelby, one of the leaders in that great fray, became the first Governor of the State. What an honor it was for old Kentucky to become the home of such heroes ! Than King's Mountain there has scarcely been a more glorious battle in history ; certainly no more glorious one in the history of America. When the darkest hour had arrived for the American cause, when even the most sanguine had begun to despair, and when the Southern colonies were almost totally sub- jugated and overrun by the victorious and arrogant hosts of the foe, suddenly a glorious light of hope and promise broke resplen- dently forth from a new and wholly unexpected quarter. A few hundred settlers on the Holston, the Nolichucky, and the Watauga, being threatened with invasion by Ferguson, who in derision called them " backwater men," quietly unhooked their horses from the plows, carried meal for bread in sacks across their saddles, and driving their beef on foot before them, swiftly crossed the Apalachian range, and, almost before the haughty Ferguson knew that danger was impending, they fell upon him at King's Mountain, and in about an hour annihilated his band of rough riders (equal in numbers to themselves), who with fire and brand and bloody hand had gloried in harrying the patriots of the Carolinas so unmercifully and cruelly. Then these " embattled farmers " quietly recrossed the mountains to their humble homes on " the back waters," and resumed their plow- ing. Their service had been entirely voluntary. They received no pay, were furnished no rations, transportation, arms, or equip- ments. They went at their own expense, and merety from a sense of duty, and having abated a nuisance that annoyed them, they resumed their daily avocations. To the credit of the Gov- ernment be it said, many of these men were afterward pensioned though, as they were not regularly in the service, they could not, under a strict construction of the law, be considered as entitled to pensions. Major Patrick Ferguson was one of the crack officers of the 58 REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIERS IN KENTUCKY. British regulars, and had trained and drilled his troops until they were the best disciplined soldiers on the continent. The utter destruction of his force was the turning-point of the war, and from that time forth new courage animated the hearts of our ancestors, and they pressed steadily onward to the final victory at Yorktown, which gave us independence, and made it the highest honor in this land to-day to be a Son of the American Revolution. And let it never be forgotten that nearly all the victorious heroes of King's Mountain settled in Kentucky, and have there to-day thousands upon thousands of descendants ! The one event of the Revolution the most far-reaching and important in its results, was the conquest of the Illinois by that gallant Kentucky pioneer, George Rogers Clark, with a handful of Kentuckians and Virginians. The Virginians almost to a man afterward became Kentuckians. A more thrilling and romantic enterprise than the conquest of the Northwestern Ter- ritory has seldom, if ever, been recorded. By her charter Virginia possessed the great extent of country north of the Ohio and south of the lakes, but it was occupied by the British, who had posts at Kaskaskia and Vincennes. In the winter of 1777, General George Rogers Clark, then a citizen of the District of Kentucky, recognizing the importance to the American cause of Virginia holding her own, proposed to the Governor, Patrick Henry, to permit him lead an expedition for the reduction of those posts. Clark was thereupon supplied with means and with several companies of troops, partly from Virginia and partly from Kentucky, for this purpose ; and in the summer of 1778 he marched swiftly through the intervening wilderness with his small but stout-hearted band, and surprised and captured Kaskaskia, after which he proceeded to Vincennes and took that post also. Father Gibault, a priest, assembled the terrified French citizens in a church, assured them (as he was authorized by Clark to do) that the Americans were their friends, and they then " took the oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth of Virginia." The rolls of Clark's regiments, published here- with, show that he received many of these Franco-Virginians as recruits in the ranks of his little army.

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