At Loudon when they heard the news,
They scarcely knew which way to choose,
For blind rage and discontent;
At length some soldiers they sent out,
With guides for to conduct the route,
And seized some men that were travelling there
And hurried them into Loudon, where
They laid them fast with one consent.
But men of resolution thought
Too much to see their neighbors caught
For no crime but false surmise;
Forthwith they join’d a warlike band,
And march’d to Loudon out of hand,
And kept the jailors pris’ners there,
Until our friends enlarged were,
Without fraud or any disguise.
Let mankind censure or commend,
This rash performance in the end,
Then both sides will find their account.
’Tis true no law can justify
To burn our neighbors property,
But when this property is design’d
To serve the enemies of mankind,
Its high treason in the amount.
The following extract from the Pennsylvania Gazette of November 2d, 1769, details the circumstances of this transaction.
“James Smith, his brother and brother in law, were going out to survey and improve their land, on the waters of the Youghogany.––Expecting to be gone some time, they took with them their arms, and horses loaded with necessaries; and as Smith’s brother in law was an artist in surveying, he had also with him the instruments for that business. Travelling on their way and within nine miles of Bedford, they overtook and joined in company with one Johnson and Moorhead, who had likewise horses packed with liquor and seed wheat––their intentions being also to make improvements on their lands. Arrived at the parting of the road near Bedford, they separated, one party going through town for the purpose of having a horse shod; these were apprehended and put under confinement.––James Smith, Johnson and Moorhead taking the other road, met John Holmes of Bedford, to whom Smith spoke in a friendly manner but received no answer. Smith and his companions proceeded to where the two roads again united; and waited there the arrival of the others.
“At this time a number of men came riding up, and asked Smith his name. On his telling them who he was, they immediately presented their pistols, and commanded him to surrender or he was a dead man. Smith stepped back and asking if they were highwaymen, charged them to keep off; when immediately Robert George (one of the assailants) snapped a pistol at Smith’s head; and that (as George acknowledged under oath) before Smith had offered to [87] shoot. Smith then presented his gun at another of the assailants, who was holding Johnson with one hand, while with the other he held a pistol, which he was preparing to discharge. Two shots were fired, one by Smith’s gun, the other by the pistol, so quick as to be just distinguishable, and Johnson fell. Smith was then taken and carried to Bedford, where John Holmes (who had met him on the road, and hastened to Bedford with the intelligence) held an inquest over the dead body of Johnson. One of the assailants being the only witness examined, it was found that “Johnson had been murdered by Smith,” who was thereupon committed for trial. But jealousy arising in the breasts of many, that the inquest was not so fair as it should have been, William Deny, (the coroner of Bedford county) thought proper to re-examine the matter; and summoning a jury of unexceptionable men, out of three townships––men whose candour, probity, and honesty are unquestionable, and having raised the corpse, held a solemn inquest over it for three days.
“In the course of their scrutiny, they found the shirt of Johnson, around the bullet hole, blackened by the powder of the charge with which he had been killed. One of the assailants being examined, swore to the respective spots of ground on which they stood at the time of firing, which being measured, was found to be 28 feet distance from each other. The experiment was then made of shooting at the shirt an equal distance both with and against the wind, to ascertain if the powder produced the stain; but it did not. Upon the whole the jury, after the most accurate examination and mature deliberation, brought in their verdict that one of the assailants must necessarily have done the murder.”
Captain Smith was a brave and enterprising man. In 1766, he, in company with Joshua Horton, Uriah Stone, William Baker and James Smith, by the way of Holstein, explored the country south of Kentucky at a time when it was entirely uninhabited; and the country between the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, to their entrance into the Ohio. Stone’s river, a branch of the Cumberland and emptying into it not far above Nashville, was named by them in this expedition.
After his acquittal from the charge of having murdered Johnson, he was elected and served as one of the board of commissioners, for regulating taxes and laying the county levy, in the county of Bedford. [88] He was for several years a delegate from the county of Westmoreland, to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania; and in the war of the revolution was an officer of merit and distinction. In 1781 he removed to Kentucky and settled in Bourbon county not far from Paris; was a member of the convention which set at Danville, to confer about a separation from the state of Virginia, in 1788, from which time until 1799, with the exception of two years, he was either a delegate of the convention or of the General Assembly of Kentucky.