Kentucky County!

 From The Kentuckians by Janet Holt Giles:

"I went on over to Jim's cabin, thinking to have a word with him before heading back to the stockade.  Ad I was glad I did, for he had news.  Billy Bush was through yesterday, he said, from the Holston.  He brought word of Cap'n Clark and Jack."

"Boys, Virginia has claimed title to the new country and has set it up as a new county.  Kentucky County! [news from Billy Bush]  What about the colonel...He's lost clean out.  Oh, he fought to the last ditch, but when they voted, that ruined him.  Well, nobody cared about the colonel now.  The big thing was we'd got shut of him and his company in Kentucky.  What Virginia decided to do about him was their business.  Billy was fumbling with his pouch.  I don't reckon, he said, pulling out some papers, it'll hurt to show you these.  

I got the militia commissions here.  David Robinson was named the county lieutenant...that was the highest militia office in a county.  John Bowman was named colonel; Anthony Bledsoe was the lieutenant colonel; George Rogers Clark, major; John Todd, Benjamin Logan, Daniel Boone and James Harrod, captains.  I felt just a little disappointed.  Not over me not being named.  Lord, no.  But because they'd put Virginians in the highest offices.  We didn't even know David Robinson or John Bowman, and Anthony Bledsoe ran an ordinary over on the Long Island of the Holston.  Those were the appointments made by the Assembly.  But David Robinson didn't accept, and Bledsoe ain't going to.  He's got too good a business where he is to give it up, he says."

The Kentucky Land Grants

The Kentucky Land Grants

 With literally thousands of rugged people pushing their domestic caravans over the Wilderness Trail into Kentucky in search of lands for homesteads or for speculation, the struggle for possession became intense. The richest and best situated land, topographically, was surveyed and entered upon again and again. While squatters, strong of mind and purpose, frequently held some land without title; others like Daniel Boone failed to meet certain legal requirements and though undoubtedly rightfully entitled to the land lost it because of technicalities. 

Up to 1775 land in Kentucky had been surveyed principally for veterans of the French and Indian War in accordance with the laws of Virginia. At this time Henderson began his broad system of surveys in central Kentucky. He was beset at every turn by homesteading pioneers who, without surveys or purchase title, stubbornly held to the land they had settled upon and improved. To meet this distant and difficult situation, the Colony of Virginia issued a resolution in favor of these pioneers. This was enacted into a law shortly thereafter which declared that all who were possessed of land in Kentucky prior to June, 1776, should be allowed 400 acres of homestead.

Sarah B. Campbell's Parents

Campbell etc families:

Pennsylvania Was The Gateway

Source

Pennsylvania was the gateway and first resting place and the source of Scotch-Irish adventure and enterprise as they moved west and south. The wave of emigration striking the eastern border of Pennsylvania, in a measure deflected southward through Maryland. Virginia, the Carolinas, reaching and crossing the Savannah river... . 

Annals Of Tazewell County

Annals Of Tazewell County:

Source

Page 204 and Page 206

Acklin, Cr.

Revolutionary Soldiers

Page 213
William Hinds

2nd Regiment Artillery

Reverend Samuel Doak

 

Always an eager and skillful questioner, Mrs. McCormick undoubtedly brought out the highlights of Tusculum's history: how the Rev. Samuel Doak, a Presbyterian clergyman and a Princeton scholar, had penetrated into this lovely valley in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, built a log cabin to house the modest beginnings of Martin Academy, which by 1795 had become Washington College; how after preaching and teaching the classics there for twenty-three years, he had come fourteen miles farther along the valley to set up another academy, which in time became Tusculum College. Again the combination church and school was a log cabin. 

The buildings stood on a hill commanding a beautiful mountain view and overlooking town, valley, two rivers — the Watauga and the Doe. 

Whoever wrote to Mrs. McCormick of this fair region always mentioned the historic sycamore near the fords of the Watauga, where the Reverend Samuel Doak had prayed for the doughty mountaineers who were to turn the tide of the Revolution at King's Mountain. [Source]

History of Monongalia County

History

Indian Creek was part of the Eastern Trail (Native American) page 25

Page 68, Thomas Pindall

Page 81, Lochrey

Safer After The Point Pleasant Campaign

FLOWERING of the CUMBERLAND:

The land that was to be Kentucky and Tennessee grew somewhat safer after the Point Pleasant Campaign of 1774...

...that marked the end of Dunmore’s War and the defeat of the Shawnee.

Harrodsburg, Kentucky, was founded in that year. Also came the surveyors, locating boundaries for the land warrants Virginia ...

Source

...had used to pay her soldiers in the French and Indian War. Some of these, including several hundred acres for George Rogers Clark,...

...were located on the Middle Cumberland in the neighborhood of French Lick, for at this time most thought all the Cumberland was due west of Virginia instead of North Carolina.

The 10th Wisconsin In Alabama

From the diary of Miss Priscilla Larkin...:

"The 10th Wisconsin Regiment are at last stationed, in our little village, We received intelligence to day of a glorious victory at Richmond...".

Source - Map of middle and east Tennessee and parts of Alabama and Georgia

The 10th Wisconsin Infantry History:

"...the Tenth Regiment as rear guard, brought through the last trains from Huntsville to Stevenson.
We find the following in the table of casualties prepared by Adjutant General Gaylord:

Killed.—At Mud Creek, Ala., August 22.— Company J—Privates Thos. Denlan, G. W. Hancock and Henry Reed.  At Larkinsville, Ala.—Company F— Private Theo. Helgus.

At Stevenson, the rebels attempted to prevent the leaving of the trains; the Tenth Regiment bringing up the rear, secured the final departure of the troops, and arrived at Nashville on the 5th September.

Captain Andrews Born On The 4th Of July

Source

Captain Andrews' entry at Wikitree.

The River

Chesapeake by James A. Michener:

"The Susquehannocks...felt intuitively that they should be on the warpath, proving their manhood."  "...an old warrior predicted...when the day comes that we are afraid to fight, we lose the river."

Pentaquad, the first main character encountered, was an outcast of the Susquehannocks.  He paddled down the river towards the legendary Chesapeake Bay, where he found wading birds and plentiful flora and fauna.

Somewhat Safer After Point Pleasant

Monument At Point Pleasant, West Virginia

From the FLOWERING of the CUMBERLAND by Harriette Simpson Arnow:

"The land that was to be Kentucky and Tennessee grew somewhat safer after the Point Pleasant Campaign of 1774 that marked the end of Dunmore’s War and the defeat of the Shawnee. Harrodsburg, Kentucky, was founded in that year. Also came the surveyors, locating boundaries for the land warrants Virginia had used to pay her soldiers in the French and Indian War. Some of these, including several hundred acres for George Rogers Clark, were located on the Middle Cumberland in the neighborhood of French Lick, for at this time most thought all the Cumberland was due west of Virginia instead of North Carolina."

Cabin Near Shelbyville, Kentucky

Tavern Between Abingdon And Knoxville

Source

"...my [Davy Crockett's] father again removed, and this time settled in Jefferson county, now in the state of Tennessee; where he opened a tavern on the road from Abbingdon to Knoxville. His tavern was on a small scale, as he was poor; and the principal accommodations which he kept, were for the waggoners who travelled the road. [Davy Crockett book].

Lieutent-Colonel's Commission

Portrait @ The Karl C. Harrison Museum Of George Washington

Journal of Colonel George Washington: Commanding a Detachment of Virginia Troops, Sent by Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-governor of Virginia, Across the Alleghany Mountains, in 1754, to Build Forts at the Head of the Ohio:

The Monitor And The Merrimac On A Map

Monitor And Merrimac On Map At Fortress Monroe Museum

"[Fortress Monroe] is the grim Cerberus guarding the approach by water to our National Capital. It has witnessed...the Merrimac [and its] brief raid upon our fleet in Hampton Roads--the raid so notably checked by Captain Worden in his little Monitor." [Source]

Source

Surveying Expedition Of Washington And Fairfax

Source

"One spring morning, early in the month of March, 1747, eight years before the French and Indian war,  two young men might have been seen standing at the gates of 'Old Belvoir' the elegant home of the Hon. Wm. Fairfax on the Virginia shore of the Potomac river, two miles below Mount Vernon...".

The Doctor Who Wrote The Prison Life Of Jefferson Davis

Marker At Fort Monroe, Virginia

Prison Life of Jefferson Davis: Embracing Details and Incidents in His ..., By John Joseph Craven

Remains Of John Lewis

Source

John Lewis is buried at Bellefonte, Augusta, Virginia

Captain William Trent

From The Plains of Abraham by Brian Connell:

"As a stop-gap, Dinwiddie persuaded a frontiersman, Captain William Trent, to recruit a hundred men from among his fellow Indian traders. ..they were packed off post-haste to start constructing a fort on the neck of land between the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers."

Source

"In August, 1753, he (Trent) was directed by Governor Dinwiddie, to examine the site selected by the commissioners, in 1752, for a fort on the Ohio. This was at the forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburg now stands. In a letter from John Frazier to an Indian trader named Young, dated "Forks, August 27, 1753," we find the following reference to Trent: "There is hardly any Indians now here at all, for yesterday there set off along with Captain Trent...".

Early in January, 1754, Governor Dinwiddie commissioned Trent to raise one hundred men for immediate service on the frontier. By the last of the month this force was raised, and immediately

marched to the mouth of Redstone creek, where a temporary store house was erected for the Ohio company, in which to place articles and supplies, to be carried from thence to the mouth of the Monongahela. While at Redstone, the Captain received instructions from Governor Dinwiddie to build a fort at the forks of the Monongahela and Ohio... .

Fort Pitt and Redstone On Map (Source) (Also seen here)

On the 17th the fort was given up, but not until highly honorable terms were obtained from the enemy. At this time, a Virginia regiment under Col. Fry, with George Washington as lieutenant colonel, was at Wills creek, Maryland, on its way to the forks. 

...the French enlarged and completed the fort, and named it Fort Du Quesne, in honor of the governor of Canada. 

Daniel Bedinger, Revolutionary War POW

Project Gutenberg's American Prisoners of the Revolution, by Danske Dandridge:

To The Memory of my Grandfather, Lieutenant Daniel Bedinger, of Bedford, Virginia

 Daniel's father was born in Alsace, and he himself had been brought up in a family where German was the familiar language of the household. It seems that, in some way, probably by using his mother tongue, he had touched the heart of one of the Hessian guards.

In some way Daniel was conveyed to Philadelphia, where he completely collapsed, and was taken to one of the military hospitals.

Here, about the first of January, 1777, his devoted brother, George Michael Bedinger, found him. Major Bedinger's son, Dr. B. F. Bedinger, wrote an account of the meeting of these two brothers for Mrs. H. B. Lee, one of Daniel's daughters, which tells the rest of the story. He said:

"My father went to the hospital in search of his brother, but did not recognize him. On inquiry if there were any (that had been) prisoners there a feeble voice responded, from a little pile of straw and rags in a corner, 'Yes, Michael, there is one.'

"He placed his suffering and beloved charge in the chair...and carried him some miles into the country, where he found a friendly asylum for him in the house of some good Quakers. There he nursed him, and by the aid of the kind owners, who were farmers, gave him nourishing food, until he partially recovered strength.

After Daniel Bedinger returned home he had a relapse...however, recovered, and re-entered the service, where the first duty assigned him was that of acting as one of the guards over the prisoners near Winchester. He afterwards fought with Morgan in the southern campaigns, was in the battle of the Cowpens, and several other engagements, serving until the army was disbanded. He was a Knight of the Order of the Cincinnati.

Lieutenant Bedinger...died in 1818 at his home near Shepherdstown, of a malady which troubled him ever after his confinement as a prisoner in New York. He hated the British with a bitter hatred, which is not to be wondered at.

Daniel Bedinger's entry at Wikitree.

See a YouTube video of Bedinger's experiences by one of his descendants.