Boone: A Biography (29 page)

“
You are called and assembled
at this time,” Henderson said, “for a noble and honorable purpose—a purpose, however ridiculous and idle it may appear at first to superficial minds . . .

“You are placing the first cornerstone of an edifice, the height and magnificence of whose superstructure are now in the womb of futurity, and can only become great and glorious, in proportion to the excellence of its foundation . . .

“If any doubt remain against you with respect to the force and efficacy of whatever laws you now or hereafter make, be pleased to consider that all power is originally in the people; make it their interest, therefore, by impartial and beneficial laws, and you may be sure of their inclinations to see them enforced.”

Henderson, as he presided over the opening of the convention under the great elm tree that spread its shade more than a hundred feet wide, outlined the kind of laws he thought should be passed for safety and to protect property. Henderson showed his training and sophistication as a lawyer and judge, stressing the importance of courts and justice, countering charges made by royal officials that his colony would be a refuge “
for debtors and other persons
of desperate circumstance.” He outlined the necessity of organizing a militia and suggested laws against “the wanton destruction of our game.” Clearly the scarcity of game around the settlement was already recognized as a serious concern only seven weeks after Boone and his men had arrived. Henderson also promised that in the new colony there would be complete religious freedom.

Because his enterprise later failed, and because of the grandiosity of his schemes, Henderson has had few defenders over the years. After his name was tainted with defeat, few could find virtue in his methods or ambitions. But his statement about power originating with the people has a surprisingly modern ring. He was speaking in a world of monarchy and colonial governments. His language is that of a lawyer of the time. He intended to impress his listeners with his authority over the English language, as he had done in court many times. But whatever his talents and accomplishments, they were doomed to be seen in the context of his later failure.

Under the elm tree, John Todd of St. Asaph’s Station gave a formal
response to President Henderson’s address, promising that the convention would consider all the important points placed before them. The discussion began under strict parliamentary rules of procedure. There is a slightly surreal air to this scene of the delegates meeting under a tree, surrounded by wilderness, observing such courtesy and decorum. Perhaps there was a desire to counter the informality of their facilities with careful etiquette. A thousand ironies hover around the proceedings. The settlements have been established against the orders of the colonial governments and the Crown, yet they observe the best standards of English parliamentary rules. They are seated under a tree in the middle of a wilderness, vulnerable to attack at any moment. The Shawnees, who had a greater claim to the land than the Cherokees because they had hunted there more frequently, had never been consulted, and they would not forget the snub. And for all his talk about power originating with the people, Henderson planned to rule his colony as a private fiefdom.

However formally the convention began, things turned rougher as the discussion continued. As soon as Robert McAfee was appointed sergeant-at-arms, Richard Callaway, who always seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, demanded that John Gass be brought before the convention “
to answer for an insult offered
Col. Richard Callaway.” John Gass was duly hauled in and reprimanded. In almost every detail in the history of Boonesborough, Richard Callaway comes off as ill-tempered, defensive, jealous, and eager to accuse and punish. At the same time he was recognized as brave and dependable. He seemed to have always had a grudge against Boone. In modern times Callaway would probably have been diagnosed as paranoid. But there was no way to get rid of him, and Boone’s daughter Jemima married Callaway’s nephew, Flanders Callaway.

The minutes of the convention show that Boone proposed “
a bill for preserving the game
, and a committee was appointed for that purpose,” and also “a bill for improving the breed of horses.” Most historians have noted Boone’s practicality and prescience. He already saw that the very
game that had drawn him to Kentucky six years before might soon be gone, and his second motion suggests that he already understood the importance of breeding fine horseflesh for the future of Kentucky.

One feature adding to the almost surreal air of this convention was the “Livery of Seizin” ceremony, which Henderson organized. It shows his feudal sense of his role and his colony, and it also reveals his love of the theatrical. To complete the transfer of Kentucky to his company he had a lawyer named John Farrar, who represented the Cherokees, hand him the deed along with a piece of turf, symbolizing the twenty million acres of the purchase. Ranck writes, “
The session closed with
the execution of its most important feature, the signing of the compact between the Proprietors and the People, which, crude as it is, takes historical precedence as the constitution of the first representative government ever attempted west of the Allegheny Mountains.”

Henderson and the others had already decided
as early as January 6, 1775, that the new colony would be called Transylvania, and Henderson and his partners would be known as the Transylvania Company. Henderson has been accused of lack of foresight, delusions of grandeur, greed, and worse, but the convention under the elm suggests there was more to the man than his detractors concede. Had circumstances been different, his company might well have prospered. As it turned out, events far from the banks of the Kentucky River were overtaking his efforts and making his struggles and eloquence irrelevant.

Since John Floyd represented Col. William Preston, who represented the government of the colony of Virginia in the western region, Henderson saw how important it was to incorporate Floyd into his enterprise. As the scholar Stephen Aron puts it, “
Realizing that it was ‘most advisable
to secure’ Floyd ‘to our interests,’ Henderson promised him land and gave him a lucrative job as surveyor for the Transylvania Company. Through the rest of 1775, Floyd, and by extension Preston, did not meddle with the Transylvania claims.” John Floyd was not only an excellent surveyor, he was also a wise and judicious leader. Though only in his midtwen-ties, his intelligence and authority were generally recognized. His letters
written to Col. William Preston provide much of the knowledge we have of Boonesborough and Kentucky at this period.

But there was one official Henderson had not included in his enterprise. Patrick Henry had intimated to Henderson the year before that he would like to be a part of the Louisa Company. Thomas Jefferson had also hinted he wanted to be included in the Transylvania venture. But Richard Henderson had not invited either of them, fearing they would dominate his company. Of all his mistakes this may have been the most serious.
Smarting from the snub, Henry
and his associates became powerful enemies of the Transylvania Company. Yet even Henry had originally conceded that the Transylvania purchase might be valid. As Neal O. Hammon tells us, “[William]
Christian told Floyd that
his brother-in-law, Patrick Henry, believed the purchase to be legal, and based on existing English law.”

As J
UNE
1775 slid into July, Henderson’s problems multiplied and compounded. When the food supply brought over the mountains was exhausted, more settlers gave up their attempts to claim land in the wilderness and headed back over Boone’s Trace to the settlements. The fort was especially low on salt needed to preserve meat and cure deer hides as well as flavor food. Sweating day after day in the hot sun, men grew weak if they did not replace the salt lost through perspiration. Many of those who had come with Henderson knew nothing of hunting or farming or salt boiling. The salt springs of Kentucky would later provide an ample supply of the mineral, when the settlers had the equipment, which consisted of large iron pots, and men willing to chop the wood to keep the fires under the pots blazing for days.

After the memorable convention under the Divine Elm, nothing seemed to go right for Henderson and the Transylvania Company. He lived better than the rest because he was rich and had brought more supplies, and his servant Dan milked the cows, caught catfish from the river, raised a garden. Luckily the catfish in the Kentucky River were plentiful and large. The English traveler Nicholas Cresswell noted in
his diary on May 30, “
In our absence those at the Camp
caught a large Catfish which measured six inches between the eyes. We supposed it would weigh 40 pounds.” Filson would later report that in Kentucky there were
catfish that weighed more than a hundred
pounds. But the business of running Boonesborough seemed to overwhelm Henderson. He could not force the men to finish building the stockade; he could not force them to stay in Kentucky. In fact, he found he could not force them to do much of anything.

From the very beginning there were disputes about land claims. Because of haste, carelessness, and ignorance of surveying skills and methods, many boundaries were uncertain and claims overlapped. At first, because there was so much land available, these issues did not seem so important. But as time passed, the boundary conflicts became ever more serious and complicated. The problems were general all over Kentucky and the frontier, but nowhere were they worse than around Boonesborough. The rush to measure and stake new land led to a great deal of dishonesty, aggravated by incompetence. Disputes, litigation, duels, and bitterness would characterize the land business in Kentucky for decades to come. Overlapping claims were said to be “shingled,” and many of the tracts registered in 1775 were already “shingled.” In some instances the same ground was included in three or four overlapping surveys. The laws of Virginia described the procedure for officially acquiring title to land: “
The statutes prescribed four steps
to be completed in sequence: 1) obtaining a warrant; 2) making an entry; 3) surveying the land; and 4) returning the survey and entry to the land office. Afterwards the land office issued a patent which, according to the statute, carried ‘absolute verity.’” Capt. William Bailey Smith surveyed a thousand-acre tract for Boone that summer on Tate’s Creek. This was, presumably, partial payment to Boone for his services to the Transylvania Company.

From the extensive diaries he kept at Boonesborough, it is obvious Henderson felt alienated and mystified by most of those he dealt with. He had brought many luxuries, including his library, with him, and
reports suggest that he spent most of his time indoors. And however bad things were at Boonesborough, they were worse for the Transylvania Company back east. The governments of both North Carolina and Virginia had denounced Henderson and his partners. Josiah Martin, governor of North Carolina, called Henderson and his associates “
an infamous Company of land Pyrates
” and issued an official proclamation against the company on February 10, 1775. Facing only hostility from the colonial officials, Henderson and his partners turned to the new Continental Congress for support of their claim to the large tract in Kentucky, but the Transylvania Company found little support there either. Some representatives, including Thomas Jefferson, labeled Henderson’s quitrent system a continuation of feudalism. Henderson’s associate James Hogg wrote, “
Quit rents, they say, is a mark
of vassalage, and hope they shall not be established in Transylvania.” Others, including John Adams, said it was a matter for the newly formed state governments to decide. Henderson knew it was unlikely either North Carolina or Virginia would recognize the purchase he had made with the Cherokees. It was all a muddle and a mess, as so much business of that time and place was.

Many already in Kentucky
, including some who had come with him, doubted the validity of Henderson’s claim and suspected that he would not be able to protect them against Indians. Nicholas Cresswell recorded in his diary the skepticism settlers in the region expressed about Henderson’s colony: “
Sunday, June 11th, 1775
. . . Found Captn. Hancock Lee camped at Elkhorn, surveying land. This is a new settlement by some Carolina Gentleman, who pretends to have purchased the Land from the Indians, but with what truth I cannot pretend to say as the Indians affirm they never sold these lands.”

D
ANIEL
B
OONE
left Boonesborough on June 13 to return to the Clinch River for his family, accompanied by several young settlers who were returning to Martin’s Station for the badly needed salt. He also
traveled with Richard Callaway, who was on his way to Virginia to recruit new settlers for Boonesborough.

That summer, while Rebecca waited for the birth of their ninth child, Boone traveled around the region persuading others to join the venture on the Kentucky River. In this he was successful, as he always seemed to be at gathering a party to follow him. Rebecca was now in her late thirties, an advanced age for childbearing in those days. It was a troubled pregnancy and difficult birth. After the baby, named William, was born in late July and died soon afterward, she was exhausted, in no condition to journey over the mountains to Boones-borough. Boone suggested to the men he had recruited that they go on ahead, but without their leader they would not budge. And since Boone would not return without his wife and family, things were at a standstill.

The history of the frontier as written has been mostly the story of men who went there. But recently scholars have been more willing to consider the role of women, and the conditions the women struggled with in settling the frontier. Kentucky had been described by Boone and others as “a good poor man’s country,” but as Stephen Aron says, “
Rebecca Boone and her pioneer sisters
. . . understood that a good poor man’s country was not the same as a good poor woman’s country; indeed the former was often antithetical to the latter.” Others would point out that the prime Bluegrass section of Kentucky
would prove inhospitable even to poor
men
.