[pg 172] In case of attack, the settlers near gathered at the “station.” The owner, of course, assumed command and exercised all the rights of proprietor. Thus by consent he was designated as Colonel Boone, or Colonel Morgan, or Colonel Gibson, or Colonel Cresap; which title he retained, as is the way of such adventurers, though his “station” frequently degenerated into a joint for the sale of rum or brandy and a resort for the dissolute or criminal of those early days.
Thus the title “Colonel” was applied to any one temporarily in authority; and in Kentucky might be said to have a local meaning. Not all “Kentucky Colonels” have seen military service or are holders of commissions designating them as such; though the secretaries of Kentucky’s recent governors, spend much of their time issuing such commissions.
The writer has known instances where Kentuckians holding a commission as lieutenant or captain during actual service; as they grew in importance locally, or became a celebrity because the owner of a great race horse, or in appearance venerable, have been raised by the courtesy of their neighbors to the rank of “General.”
Emigrants from Virginia to the District of Kentucky had the choice of the river route down the Ohio, or overland by way of the Old Wilderness Road.
Those coming by river had first to travel caravan style to the head of navigation of the Allegheny, Monongahela, or Kanawha river or to Pittsburgh. There they loaded their cattle into flat boats, or batteaux, or on rafts of poplar logs and floated down the Ohio; carefully keeping to the center of the stream, out of range from the shore. Reaching their destination, usually Limestone (Maysville) or Louisville, they sold their boat or raft [pg 173] and took to pack horse or wagon, completing their journey as they traveled on the first stage of it.
In 1787, M. St. John de Crevecoeur, a native of Normandy published in a Paris journal an account of his river trip from Pittsburgh to Louisville. Considering the date, the narrative seems somewhat overdrawn.
In part he said:
“After having waited twenty-two days at Pittsburgh I took advantage of the first boat which started for Louisville. It was 55 feet long, 12 wide and 6 deep, drawing 3 feet of water. On its deck had been built a low cabin, but very neat, divided into several compartments, and on the forecastle the cattle and horses were kept in a stable. It was loaded with bricks, boards, planks, bars of iron, coal, instruments of husbandry, dismounted wagons, anvils, bellows, dry goods, brandy, flour, biscuit, lard, salt meat, etc. These articles came in part from the country in the vicinity of Pittsburgh and from Indiana. (The Indiana here referred to was a section of Virginia lying east of the Alleghanies.) I observed the larger part of the passengers were young men who came from nearly all of the middle (coast) states; pleasant, contented, full of buoyant hopes; having with them money coming from the sale of their old farms, or from the share received from their parents. They were going to Kentucky to engage in business, to work at their trades and to acquire and establish new homes. What a singular but happy restlessness, that which is constantly urging us all to become better off than we are and which drives us from one end of a continent to the other. In the evening after laying up, the more skillful hunters would go to the land to shoot wild turkeys, which you are aware wait for the last rays of the sun to fade away before going to roost in the tops of the highest trees.”
[pg 174] When the settler fixed upon his location he appropriated a four hundred acre boundary, the settler’s allowance; and taking possession, held it by what was then known as the “Tomahawk Claim;” that is, he blazed his boundary lines with a tomahawk and hacked his initials on the corner trees. He then built a log cabin and felled a few trees to give notice to the world that the blazed boundary was appropriated. His appropriation was usually respected, mainly from custom and sentiment; though the right, if questioned, was usually defended by the rifle.
In the mid-summer of 1787 the Campbells with Mrs. McDonald, the Clarks, and the Fairfaxes, having sold their plantations, emigrated overland by the Wilderness Trail to Kentucky.