John Alexander McClung, Kentucky's romantic historian and novelist, was
born near the ancient town of Washington, Kentucky, September 25, 1804.
He was educated at the Buck Pond Academy of his uncle, Dr. Louis
Marshall, near Versailles, Kentucky. Having united with the Presbyterian
church when he was sixteen years old, McClung entered Princeton
Theological Seminary, in 1822, to fit himself for the ministry. He
accepted his first pastorate in 1828, but, as his religious views were
undergoing a profound change, he withdrew from the church and devoted
himself to literature. His first work was a novel, called _Camden_
(Philadelphia, 1830). This was a story of the South during the
Revolutionary War. His _Sketches of Western Adventure_ (Maysville,
Kentucky, 1832), though almost as fictitious as _Camden_, came to be
regarded as history, and it is upon this work that McClung's reputation
rests. In a general way the _Sketches_ are "of the most interesting
incidents connected with the settlement of the West from 1755 to 1794."
Many of them are most certainly figments of the author's imagination,
yet they have come to be regarded as literal truth and history. His
story of the women at Bryant's Station, who carried water for the
defense of the fort while it was besieged by ambushed Indians under
Simon Girty, in 1782, is his _piece de resistance_. John Filson,
Alexander Fitzroy, Gilbert Imlay, Harry Toulmin, William Littell,
Rafinesque, Marshall, and Butler, the Kentucky historians that published
their works prior to McClung's, are silent concerning the tripping of
the women to the spring for water while the Indians lay upon the banks
of Elkhorn with rifles cocked and ready. All Indians have been
scalp-hunters, regardless of whatever else they have been, and a woman's
scalp dangling from their sticks afforded them as much pleasure as a
man's. When the Collinses, both father and son, reached this romance
they merely reproduced it "as interesting," allowing it to pass without
further comment of any kind. McClung blended romance and history as
charmingly as did Judge James Hall, of Cincinnati, whom Mann Butler took
to task. The climax of this tale came in the erection of a memorial wall
encircling a spring which sprang out of the ground some years prior to
the Civil War! McClung began the practice of law in 1835, but in 1849 he
returned to the ministry. He subsequently held pastorates at Cincinnati
and Indianapolis, but finally settled at Maysville, Kentucky. He
declined the presidency of Hanover College, Indiana, in 1856. On August
16, 1859, McClung was drowned in the Niagara river, his body being
carried over the falls, but it was later recovered and returned to
Kentucky for interment.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _History of Kentucky_, by Z. F. Smith (Louisville,
Kentucky, 1892); _Kentucky in the Nation's History_, by R. M.
McElroy (New York, 1909).