COLONEL BENJAMIN LOGAN:
THE INTREPID FIGHTER OF THE KENTUCKY FRONTIER
“MOTHER, I know that the law allows me to have all of the property which my father left, but I do not want it. You can have your share, and to my brothers and sisters I give the remainder. I, myself, will move further West, into the wilderness.”
The youth who spoke was about twenty-one years of age; tall, slender, and graceful. His face was open, frank, and expressive. As he ceased, he waved his hand towards the West and left the room in which his parent was sitting upon an old-fashioned horse-hair sofa. His name was Benjamin Logan.
Although the old English law of primogeniture prevailed in Virginia at this time, which gave the farm, horses, and farming utensils to young Logan (upon the death of his father) he refused to accept them. Instead of this, he nobly partitioned the estate between his mother, his three brothers, and two sisters, and removed to the Holston River. Then he began to farm a rough piece of ground, only part of which had been cleared of timber.
About this time the Indians upon the Ohio frontier became very troublesome, and Logan enlisted as a private in the army of Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia. Marching into the Indian country was a rough experience, but the youth enjoyed it, and when the red men signed articles of peace at Chillicothe, Ohio, the stout Virginian was among those who stood near the chiefs and saw them put their names to the agreement. Kentucky was now fairly peaceable. So the energetic young man moved his family to Harrodsburg, where a stockade had been erected called Logan’s Fort.
“You must look out for the redskins,” said a comrade to him. “Although they have signed an agreement to let us alone, my friends report that there are many of them in the vicinity, and they are all daubed up with paint, because they are upon the war-path.”
“I will be on my guard,” replied the young pioneer. “We must all run to the fort if there is danger of attack.” The test was to come sooner than he expected.
Upon a balmy day in May, when the women were milking their cows near the gate of Fort Logan, and a few men were standing by, in order to assist them, a small band of redskins appeared at the edge of a thicket. Crash, a volley woke the stillness, and one of the frontiersmen fell dead while two staggered behind the log breastwork, with mortal wounds. A third—a stout fellow called Harrison—was unable to reach the gate, and dragged himself along to the shelter of some bushes.