Note 7 — CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE (continued 4)

Boone set out from Boonesborough, June 13, 1775. He left the settlement in a state approaching anarchy; there were several good men in the district, but the majority were shiftless wanderers who would brook no exercise of authority. The buffalo were fast moving westward, and all game was now getting scarce––“hunt or starve” was the motto of the hour. A diarist (Capt. Floyd) estimated that there were then a total of 300 people in all the Kentucky settlements––not reckoning “a great many land-jobbers from towards Pittsburg, who go about on the north side of Kentucky, in companies, and build forty or fifty cabins a piece on lands where no surveying has yet been done.” Among the best of the numerous arrivals, were George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, Benjamin Logan, and Whitley, who came to be very prominent characters in Kentucky history. Boone, with his wife and daughters, and twenty-one men, arrived at Boonesborough September 6 or 7. “My wife and daughters,” writes Boone, “were the first women that ever stood on the banks of Kentucky river.” Mrs. McGary, Mrs. Hogan, and Mrs. Denton arrived at Harrodsburg the 8th of September, and were the first white women in that settlement. With the arrival of these families, and fresh fighting men, the Kentucky colony began to take on a permanent air, and thenceforward there was better order.––R. G. T.