Jarboe, a native of France, who settled first in Maryland, where he
married Elizabeth, the daughter of Thomas Clelland. She was a well
educated woman, and a deeply spiritual Christian, in membership with
the Presbyterian Church. The family removed to Mason County, Kentucky,
about the year 1796, at which time Elizabeth, the daughter, was
seventeen years old. Her opportunities of education had been such
as were usual in that early day, when the acquirements of women were
generally confined to reading, writing, and the elements of arithmetic.
Not long after the removal to Kentucky, Mr. Jarboe was obliged to go
to Maryland, whence he was prevented from returning to his family by
ill health, for seven or eight years. It will be borne in mind that
travelling, in those days, was no light undertaking. Within that time
Mrs. Jarboe with her children had removed into what is now Clarke
County in Ohio. Her home was with her youngest son, Philip Jarboe,
about four miles north of Springfield, where she died in the spring
of 1808. Shortly after her death Mr. Jarboe was enabled to return,
and in the same year, at the same house, he also closed his earthly
pilgrimage. His acquaintances remember his arrival--a feeble old man,
sadly emaciated, coming, as he said, to lay his bones by the side of
her who was the companion of his youth. After a life of many sorrows
they sleep in a quiet spot within sight of the Mad River and Lake Erie
Railroad, near their last home on earth.
Their daughter Elizabeth was a young woman of rare attractions of
person and manner, and as it may be supposed, had numerous admirers.
Among these a Mr. Reuben Clark had found favor in her eyes, and it
was expected that she would marry him. But the sagacious pioneer and
hero of Indian encounters had seen and loved her, and moreover had
lost none of his early aversion to a rival. He gave young Clark some
employment which took him to Virginia, and would oblige him to be
absent a considerable length of time. Having removed him from the scene
of action, he laid siege presently to the heart of the fair lady, and
brought the citadel, ere long, to terms of capitulation. They were
married in the year 1798, at Kenton’s Station, the Rev. William Wood
of the Baptist Church officiating; nor did the wife ever again see her
former lover.
A few months after the marriage, General and Mrs. Kenton removed to
Cincinnati, where they resided six or eight months, and removed in the
spring of 1799, to what was then called the Mad River country. Their
first residence was near a trading house kept by a Frenchman named De
Baw, about four miles north of Springfield. The whole region, at that
period, was an almost unbroken wilderness, traversed continually by
parties of Indians, who, though not openly hostile, were exceedingly
troublesome. Often when intoxicated they would visit the cabins of the
settlers, and finding the men absent, by threats extort provisions
and whiskey from the women. On one occasion, when there were no men
on the premises, and all was quiet in Mrs. Kenton’s cabin, the door
was suddenly burst open, and a drunken Indian, entirely naked, came in
and demanded whiskey, threatening to kill her, with furious gestures,
in case of refusal. When he found his menaces were likely to be of
no avail, he snatched up the child, her eldest daughter, out of the
cradle, and made for the camp of the savages as fast as his feet could
carry him. The feelings of the terrified mother cannot easily be
described; but her agony of suspense was soon over; the rest of the
party immediately brought back the child, and called upon Mrs. Kenton
to say what punishment should be inflicted on the delinquent. She
required nothing, however, but to be protected against such outrages in
future.
The home of the forest warrior consisted of two roughly constructed log
cabins, with the usual accompaniment of puncheon floors, mud chimneys,
clapboard doors, etc. Here were established Kenton’s family, composed
of himself and wife with five children, and his two mothers-in-law
with their families, besides some black people. Their experiences of
privation and suffering during the earliest years of the settlement
may be understood in some measure by those already described; but
there were circumstances which added much to the trials that fell to
the lot of Mrs. Kenton. The General, it will be remembered, being one
of the earliest pioneers of Kentucky, besides defending the first
settlers against their Indian foes, had located their pre-emptions,
traversing with them the rugged mountains and rich valleys in search
of the best lands. The latch-string of Kenton’s cabin always hung
outside the door, and a welcome was ready for all who sought his
hospitality. His generosity and habitual kindness to strangers had
contributed as much as that of any other man in Kentucky to stamp the
character for liberal hospitality, since proverbially attached to the
State. He was extensively known, and had the reputation of wealth;
his wealth, however, consisted wholly in Kentucky land claims, which
were totally unproductive, while his cabin was the resort of every
shelterless emigrant, land hunter, or soldier, and even the wandering
Indian had liberty at any time to claim the supply of his wants. The
readers of Gen. Kenton’s life will recollect the incident of an Indian
at old Chilicothe seizing an axe and breaking his arm with it. The
name of this savage was Boner, and it was afterwards his custom to
come frequently to his house, and after eating and drinking, amuse the
company by acting out a pantomime representing his own outbreak of
fury, and the terror and grief of Mrs. Kenton on that occasion.
With this continual influx of visitors, for whom provision was
necessary as well as for the wants of a large family, with means of
procuring none of the luxuries and but few of the comforts of life,
and without congenial society, the first ten years of Mrs. Kenton’s
residence in Ohio were passed in incessant toil and privation, relieved
by little of the quiet so necessary to one like her, and so ardently
desired. But she was a seeker of “a better country,” and the firm
faith of a Christian sustained her in every difficulty. In 1808 she
became a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1810, Gen. Kenton
removed to Urbana, in Champaign County, where the family lived eight
years. Here their privations were less, but Mrs. Kenton suffered from
incessant mental anxiety caused by the injustice done her husband,
and the loss he sustained in endeavoring to recover something of his
extensive land claims in Kentucky. Being wholly uneducated, he was
obliged to entrust the management of his business to agents who proved
dishonest, and involved him in inextricable lawsuits in which he was
mulcted in heavy costs. Nay more, truth compels the record which is
a stain upon the national honor--the barbarous laws then in force,
sanctioning these wrongs, permitted the imprisonment of the brave
pioneer, and his confinement within “prison bounds,” for several of the
best years of his life. Thus was he reduced from a supposed condition
of opulence to abject poverty, and even pursued like a felon, his free
spirit harassed by more than the deprivation of liberty to the limbs,
the sense of cruel injustice and oppression.
Mrs. Kenton possessed a disposition peculiarly sensitive, and these
wrongs and sorrows embittered what should have been the happiest
years of her life. In 1818, having procured a small portion of wild
land in what is now Logan County, they took up their residence
upon it, obtaining from it a meagre living, far from those who had
thronged around them in the days of their prosperity. In 1836, after
enduring much suffering, Gen. Kenton departed this life, rejoicing
in the prospect of one where his portion could not be taken from
him. His faithful wife attended him in his painful illness with the
assiduous tenderness and care bestowed by a mother on her child. Her
spirits, already weighed down by calamity, were broken, and her strong
constitution impaired by the exertions necessary in this labor of
love, and after her husband’s death she never recovered her health or
cheerfulness. In the same year she removed to Indiana. Her strength
gradually declined until the autumn of 1842, when she became almost
helpless. Having long looked on approaching death with calmness and
Christian hope, she quietly made a disposition of her remaining
effects, leaving to each of her children and grand-children a small
bequest, in token of affectionate remembrance. To the sons of her
eldest daughter, Mrs. Parkison, she left quilts on which she had
wrought their names with her own hand. Her faculties were retained
perfectly to the last, though she spoke not for some hours before the
final moment. Her sufferings terminated at the residence of J. G.
Parkison, her son-in-law, in Jasper County, Indiana, Nov. 27th, 1842.
Mrs. Kenton was rather tall, and had a very graceful figure; her
complexion was extremely fair, and she had blue eyes and dark hair.
Her daughter, Mrs. Parkison, describes her appearance on one occasion,
on returning from Dayton, thirty miles distant, where she had been to
acknowledge a deed. She wore a dark calico dress made in the fashion
then called a habit; long-waisted, and the skirt plaited full all
around; over this a “joseph,” or short riding dress of brown cassimere,
with green spots, and a green silk or satin bonnet differing little
from the late fashion, without a cap.
This lady remembers, among the visitors at her father’s house, old
Isaac Zane, who had an Indian wife. He brought his half-breed daughter
to be instructed by Mrs. Kenton in the knowledge and manners of the
white ladies. Ebenezer Zane, his son, was also a frequent visitor,
and told Miss Kenton he had named his little daughter--Matilda--after
her. The child received the customary present, and some twenty year’s
afterwards Mrs. Parkison was surprised at being shown a piece of the
new dress given her little namesake by the General. Mrs. Parkison still
resides in Indiana.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] For an account of this expedition, and the planting of the
settlement, see the memoir of Sarah Buchanan,--_Women of the American
Revolution_. Vol. iii. p. 310.
[2] Valentine Zavier (the original family name), the father of John
Sevier, was a descendant from an ancient family in France, but born in
London; emigrated to America; settled on the Shenandoah, Va.; removed
thence to Watauga, N. C.; and finally settled on the Nola Chucka, at
Plum Grove.
[3] The private orderly, or memorandum-book of Col. De Poister, on whom
the command devolved after Ferguson was killed on King’s Mountain,
and who ordered the surrender, was, with other papers, handed to Col.
Sevier. This book was presented to the writer of this memoir by Mrs.
Gen. Sevier and her son, G. W. S., after the writer’s marriage into the
family.
[4] See Wheeler’s North Carolina.
[5] When the paper currency of North Carolina was so depreciated that
a $100 bill would rarely buy “a pone of corn-bread and slice of ham,”
and many persons would not take it at all in exchange for provisions
or other property, the _soldier_ could always purchase an ample supply
at a fair estimate at Plum Grove, and thus by sales of lands, personal
property, and perhaps in satisfaction for his military and public
services, did the “old Continental currency” accumulate in the desk of
Gen. Sevier to sums of between $200,000 and $300,000, which, with his
papers, were left in the hands of his son, the late Col. G. W. S., of
Tennessee.
[6] See Butler’s History of Kentucky. Some of the biographies of Boone
state that he went alone on the expedition. Flint gives a beautiful
romance which unfortunately has been contradicted on reliable authority.
[7] McClung’s Sketches of Western Adventure.
[8] Butler’s Kentucky.
[9] Haywood.
[10] Copied from MS. letter in the Historical Collection at Nashville.
[11] MS. Letter.
[12] Burnet’s Notes.
[13] Haywood gives the date of the taking of the fort as the 10th
September, but in his appendix the 15th.
[14] For the incidents connected with the attack on Buchanan’s Station,
see _Women of the American Revolution_, vol. iii., Memoir of SARAH
BUCHANAN, which should be read in connection with the Tennessee
Sketches in this volume. In it the Shawanee chief is represented as
performing the heroic part really performed by Kiachatalee.
[15] Mrs. Shelby.
[16] Flint--Indian Wars of the West.
[17] See De Hass for this and following anecdotes.
[18] This memoir is taken from “Sketches of Virginia, Historical and
Biographical,” by Rev. William Henry Foote, D.D., portions being
abridged. The authentic materials were obtained by him from Rev. James
Morrison the son-in-law and successor to Rev. Samuel Brown.
[19] American Pioneer, vol. II.
[20] Doddridge’s Notes.
[21] American Pioneer.
[22] Memoir of Jane Gaston, Vol. III. page 229
[23] A description of this battle, communicated by a southern
gentleman, has been rendered superfluous by the very full and graphic
account contained in Mr. Wheeler’s excellent _History of North
Carolina_, recently published.
[24] See sketch of Elizabeth Zane. “_Women of the American
Revolution._” Vol. II.
[25] Her husband commanded a company at Crawford’s defeat. He was a
large, noble looking man, and a bold and intrepid warrior. He was in
the bloody Moravian campaign, and took his share in the tragedy, by
shedding the first blood on that occasion, when he shot, tomahawked and
scalped Shebosh, a Moravian chief. But retributive justice was meted
to him. After being taken prisoner, the Indians inquired his name.
“Charles Builderback,” replied he, after some little pause. At this
revelation, the Indians stared at each other with malignant triumph.
“Ha!” said they, “you kill many Indians--you big captain--you kill
Moravians.” From that moment, probably, his death was decreed.
[26] Historica. Collections of Ohio.
[27] The foregoing memoir is much shortened from the original one by
Dr. Hildreth.
[28] This account is abridged from one prepared by Gen. Lewis Newsom,
one of the early residents of Gallipolis. He has also favored me with
notices of Mrs. Bailey’s life.
[29] Historical Collections of Ohio.
[30] MSS. in possession of John Barr, Esq., of Cleveland.
[31] Moses Cleveland, the Director of survey commenced by the
Connecticut Land Company.
[32] MS. of J. Barr, Esq.
[33] Gen. John E. Hunt, of Maumee City, Ohio.
[34] I have availed myself throughout this sketch, of a narrative of
the massacre printed at Chicago in 1844; said to be written by an
accomplished lady residing in that city.
[35] A trading establishment--now Ypsilanti.
[36] The spot now called _Bertrand_, then known by the name of _Parc
aux Vaches_, from its having been a pasture-ground belonging to an old
French fort in that neighborhood.
[37] Col. Johnson says that Capt. Wells seeing all was lost, and not
wishing to fall into the hands of the Indians, wetted powder and
blacked his face in token of defiance, provoking the Indians, in the
heat of the action, by taunts and jeers, to despatch him at once,
instead of attempting to take him prisoner.
[38] “Colonel Snelling joined the army in early youth. In the battle
of Tippecanoe, he was distinguished for gallantry and good conduct.
Subsequently and during the whole of the late war with Great Britain,
from the battle of Brownstown to the termination of the contest, he was
actively employed in the field, with credit to himself and honor to
his country.--_Letter written by order of Major-General Macomb, dated
August 21st, 1828._
[39] Lanman’s History.
[40] The papers relating to Mrs. Kenton were received after the volume
was stereotyped, which accident causes the appearance of the memoir
thus out of its proper place. It should be read next to that of Rebecca
Boone. I am indebted to the kindness of B. Henkle, Esq., of Rensselaer,
Indiana, to whom the materials were furnished by the daughter of Gen.
Kenton.
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.