Boone's Wilderness Road

by Archer Butler Hulbert

tuesday 25th in the eavening we git us a plaise at the mouth of the creek & begin clearing.

Wednesday 26th We Begin Building us a house & a plaise of Defense to Keep the indians off this day we Begin to live without Bread.

thursday 27th Raney all Day But We Still keep about our house.

Satterday 29th—We git our house kivered with Bark & move our things into it at Night and Begin houskeeping Eanock Smith Robert Whitledge & my Self.

May, Monday first I go out to look for my mair and saw 4 bufelos the Being the first that I Saw & I shot one of them but did not git him when I caim Home Eanock & Robin had found the mair & was gone out a hunting & did Not come in for—Days and kild only one Deer.

tuesday 2d I went out in the morning & kild a turkey and come in & got some on for my breakfast and then went & Sot in to clearing for Corn.”[7]

The personal statement of Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas is of interest in this connection. She was one of Col. Calloway’s company that followed Henderson in September 1775. This statement is preserved in the library of the Wisconsin Historical Society and reads:

“I was born in Virginia on the 4^th day of Sept 1764 In Rockbridge county near the Natural Bridge my father moved on the North Fork of Holston within 4 or 5 miles of Abbingdon & remained there two or three years and in March 1775 we moved down Holstien near the Big Island, [Long Island] where we remained until Sept 1775 when Col Calloway and his company came along going to Kentucky, when my father William Pogue packed up and came with him with our family, Col Boone and with his wife and family and Col Hugh Mcgary, Thomas Denton and Richard Hogan were on the road before us and when we arrived at Boonesborough the latter part of September There was only fur [four] or six cabbins built along on the Bank of the Kentucky river but not picketted in being open on two sides.”[8]

This was the great pathway of early pioneers to Kentucky, and the course of the marvelous floodtide of immigration which swept over the mountains in the last three decades of the eighteenth century.