Footnotes for Chapter 8
Chief among the fomenters of disorder were the renegades Simon Girty, Matthew Elliott, and Alexander McKee. The dastardly deeds of this trio are fully set forth in Butterfield’s History of the Girtys, an important work to all students of the annals of the West during the Revolutionary War.––R. G. T.
James Harrod’s father emigrated from England to Virginia, about 1734, and was one of the first settlers on the Shenandoah, in the Valley of Virginia. One of his sons, Samuel, accompanied Michael Stoner on his famous Western hunting and exploring trip, in 1767; another, William, born at the new family seat, at Big Cove, in what is now Bedford County, Pa., served with distinction under George Rogers Clark. James, born in 1742, was twelve years old when his father died, leaving a large family on an exposed frontier, at the opening of the French and Indian War. In November, 1755, a raid was made on the Big Cove settlement, by the Delaware chief Shingiss (p. 45, note), but the Harrods were among the few families who escaped unharmed to Fort Littleton. When James was sixteen years of age he served with his brother William on Forbes’s campaign, and very likely saw further service during that war. In 1772, when he had attained wide celebrity on the border as an adept in woodcraft, he helped William settle on Ten Mile Creek, a tributary of the Monongahela; and in 1773 he and several other explored Kentucky, returning home by way of Greenbrier River. We have seen (p. 152, note) that he was surveying the site of Harrodsburg in 1774, when warned by Boone and Stoner. Retiring with his men to the Holston, he and they joined Col. Christian’s regiment, but arrived at Point Pleasant a few hours after the battle of October 10. Returning to his abandoned Kentucky settlement March 18, 1775, a fortnight before Boonesborough was founded, he was chosen a delegate to the Transylvania convention, and became a man of great prominence in the Kentucky colony. In 1779 he commanded a company on Bowman’s campaign, and the year following was a captain on Clark’s Indian campaign; declining a majorship, he served as a private on Clark’s campaign of 1782. He was a member of the Kentucky convention (at Danville) of December, 1784, and at one time represented Kentucky in the Virginia legislature. In February, 1792, having made his will, he set out from Washington, Ky., with two men, in search of a silver mine reported to be at the Three Forks of the Kentucky. No more was heard of him or his companions, and it is still the belief of the family that the latter murdered him. He was survived by his wife and a daughter, and left a large landed estate. Harrod, although unlettered, was a man of fine presence and many sterling qualities, and made a strong impress on his generation. He is still remembered in Kentucky as one of the worthiest pioneers of that state.––R. G. T.
The company––successively called The Louisa Company, Henderson & Co., and The Transylvania Company––was composed of Col. Richard Henderson, Col. John Williams, Thomas Hart, Col. David Hart, Capt. Nathaniel Hart, Col. John Luttsell, James Hogg, William Johnston, and Leonard Henley Bullock.
Henderson’s paternal great-grandfather was a Scottish immigrant, and one of his grandmothers was Welsh. The family settled in Hanover County, Va., where Richard, son of Samuel Henderson, was born April 20, 1735. Samuel moved with his family to North Carolina, in 1745, and became sheriff of Granville County. Richard had the education of a rural youth of good station, and became a lawyer. In 1767 he was appointed one of the two associate justices of the superior court of the colony, and served with great credit for six years, when the court was abolished. During professional visits to Salisbury, Henderson heard frequently––chiefly through the brothers Hart––of the exploits of Boone, and the latter’s glowing reports of the beauty and fertility of Kentucky. Relying implicitly on Boone’s statements, these four men energetically resolved to settle the country. In the autumn of 1774, Henderson and Nathaniel Hart visited the Cherokees to ascertain if they would sell their claims to Kentucky, and receiving a favorable reply agreed to meet the Indians in treaty council at the Sycamore Shoals, on Watauga River. On their return home, they were accompanied by a wise old Indian (Little Carpenter), and a young buck and his squaw, delegates to see that proper goods were purchased for the proposed barter. These goods were bought in December at Cross Creek, now Fayetteville, N. C., and forwarded by wagons to Watauga.
Boone was then sent out to collect the Indians, and when the council opened (March 14, 1775) had twelve hundred assembled at the Sycamore Shoals––half of them warriors. The council proceeded slowly, with much characteristic vacillating on the part of the Indians; but on the third day (March 17) the deed of sale was signed to what came to be known as “the great grant:” The tract from the mouth of the Kentucky (or Louisa) River to the head spring of its most northerly fork; thence northeasterly to the top of Powell’s Mountain; thence westerly and then northwesterly to the head spring of the most southerly branch of the Cumberland; thence down that stream, including all its waters, to the Ohio, and thence up the Ohio to the mouth of the Kentucky. The Indians were conscious that they had sold what did not belong to them; and Dragging Canoe and other chiefs were outspoken in their opinion that the whites would have difficulty in settling the tract. The Indians were much dissatisfied with the division of the goods. These “filled a house” and cost £10,000 sterling, yet when distributed among so many greedy savages each had but a small share. One warrior, who received but a shirt for his portion, said he “could have shot more game in one day on the land ceded, than would pay for so slight a garment.”
Governors Martin, of North Carolina, and Dunmore, of Virginia, issued proclamations against the purchase, as contrary to the royal proclamation of 1763. But those who were present at the treaty––among them such prominent borderers as Daniel Boone, James Robertson, John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, Felix Walker, the Bledsoes, Richard Callaway, William Twitty, William Cocke, and Nathaniel Henderson––were heedless of such proclamations, and eager to become settlers under the company’s liberal offer made to them on the spot: for each man who assisted in the first settlement, and went out and raised a crop of corn that year, a grant of 500 acres for £5 sterling, clear of all charges.