“After laying part of four days in their towns, and finding all attempts to bring them to a general action fruitless, we retired, as the season was far advanced and the weather threatening. I could not learn by the prisoners that they had the least idea of General Irvin’s design of penetrating into their country. Should he have given them another stroke at Sandusky, it will more than double the advantages already gained.
“We might probably have got many more scalps and prisoners––could we have known in time whether or not we were discovered, which we took for granted until getting within three miles when some circumstances occurred that gave us reason to think otherwise, though uncertain.––Col. Floyd, with 300 men, was ordered to advance and bring on an action or attack the town, Major Wells with a party of horse being previously detached by a different route as a party of observation: although Col. Floyd’s motion was so quick as to get to the town but a few minutes later than those who discovered his approach, the inhabitants had sufficient notice to effect their escape to the woods by the alarm cry being given, and which was repeated by all that heard it; of course our party only fell in with the rear of the enemy.
“I must beg leave to recommend the militia of Kentucky whose behaviour on the occasion does them honour, particularly their desire of saving prisoners.”
The document is here given as found in Almon’s Remembrancer, xvi., pp. 93, 94; but it has of course been edited, after the fashion of that day, for Clark’s original letters abound in misspellings.––R. G. T.
[264] This heroine had but recently returned from Philadelphia, where she had received her education, and was totally unused to such scenes as were daily exhibiting on the frontier. She afterwards became the wife of Mr. McGlanlin; and he dying, she married a Mr. Clarke, and is yet living in Ohio.
See p. 224, note 1, for reference to confusion between the two sieges of Wheeling, and the over-statement of early border historians.––R. G. T.
Footnotes for Chapter 16