Who could have laid out such an intricate road over high mountains and through deep valleys, unless a military force, is hard to imagine, even if for some strange reason it was never written into “history.”
After the Revolutionary War there was naturally an unsettled state of affairs, and many farmers and adventurers turned their thought to the country west of the Allegheny Mountains and River, as the land of opportunity, consequently there was much desultory travel over the Boone Road. Unemployment prevailed everywhere, and hordes of penniless ex-soldiers, turned adrift by their victorious new nation, traveled backwards and forwards along all the known highways and trails, picking up a day’s work as best they could, their precarious mode of living giving them the name of “cider tramps.” A few more reckless and blood thirsty than their fellows, claimed that the country which they had freed owed them a living; if there was no work and no pensions, and they could not get it by hook they would take it by crook. In other words, certain ex-service men, became strong-arm men, road agents, or highwaymen, whichever name seems most suitable.
The Boone Road, in a remote wilderness of gloomy, untrodden forests, made an ideal haunt for footpads, and when not robbing travelers, they took their toll from the wild game, elks, deer, bears, grouse and wild pigeons which infested the region. Law and order had not penetrated into such forgotten and forbidding realms, and obscure victims could report outrages and protest to a deaf and dumb government. How long it was before these robbers were curbed is hard to say.
One story which the backwoods people about Hamesley’s Fork used to tell dates back to five years after the close of the Revolution, about 1788. Jenkin Doane, possibly a member of the same family that produced the Doane outlaws in the Welsh Mountains, was one of the notorious characters along the Boone Road. Like others, he was an ex-soldier, a hero of Brandywine and Paoli, but his plight was worse, for just before peace was declared, when a premature rumor to that effect had reached his company, lying at Fort Washington, he had assaulted and beaten up an aristocratic and brutal officer who was the terror of the line. For this he had been sentenced to death, but later his sentence was commuted, and finally, because there were no satisfactory jails for military prisoners, he was quietly released, sans h. d. and the ability to make a livelihood.
He finally became a wagoner and hired out with a party of emigrants going to Lake Erie, who traveled over the Boone Road. He saw them safely to their destination, but on his return journey tarried in the mountains, hunting and fishing, until his supplies were gone, when he turned “road agent.” He evidently had a low grade of morals at that time, for he robbed old as well as young, women as readily as men. He was fairly successful, considering the comparative lightness of travel and the poor class of victims financially.
In an up-and-down country, where feed and shelter were scarce, he kept no horse, but traveled afoot. He had no opportunity to test his heels, as he never ran away, all his attacks being followed by speedy capitulation. If a trained force of bailiffs had been sent out to apprehend him, doubtless he could have been caught, as he had his favorite retreats, where he lingered, waiting for his prey.
There were not many such places in the depths of the seemingly endless forests of giant and gloomy hemlocks and pines, places where the sun could shine and the air radiated dryness and warmth. One of his best-liked haunts was known as the Indian Garden, situated in an open glade among the mountains which divide the country of Kettle Creek from that of Drury’s Run.
“Art.” Vallon, one of the oldest hunters on Kettle Creek, who died recently, once described the spot as follows: “More than sixty years ago my father on a hunting trip showed me a clearing of perhaps half an acre, which he told me was called ‘The Indian Garden.’ I visited it many times afterwards on my trapping excursions. It impressed me as very unusual, being entirely free from undergrowth, except the furze grass one sees on poor, worked-out land.
“It[“It] was a perfect square of about half an acre, and was surrounded by the deep, primeval forest. There was a fine spring not very far away.”
It was there that Jenkin Doane and two other reckless characters who had served with Simon Girty and acted as his henchmen lolled for hours in the sun, waiting for victims. It was there that he usually maintained his “camp fire” and at night slept on the ground in a sleeping bag of buffalo hides.