We are producing a piece for our Mother's Day episode of Kentucky Life on the Siege of Bryan Station
and the resulting Battle of Blue Licks. I was wondering if you might be willing to give a brief interview to
help tell the story of the heroic women of Bryan Station and their place in Kentucky history?
A station is a defensible residential site - generally smaller than forts but living conditions more pleasant.
Stations were privately held and controlled usually by families related by blood, marriage or friendship.
The communal labor for clearing a family head's pre-emption right supported the station which was not
only for defense during skirmishes but also to keep their horses and cattle from being carried off in the
night by raiders. Families would move out when issues of sanitation, crowding or conflicts over moral
values (religion, politics) arose.
Over 150 stations documented in the 12 counties of the Inner Bluegrass region where settlement was
earliest and most intense - but only a few have been verified by archaeological excavation. 75 of those
we know about were established during the short 6 years of what archeologists call the “Revolutionary
Period” of settlement: 1776-1782. Bryan's Station grew to the size of a fort but continued to be called a
station. Bryan's Station was on North Elkhorn Creek in Fayette county about five miles northeast of the
fort in Lexington. The site is now on Bryan Station Road, but at the time it was established it was on the
path from Lexington to Limestone that became the Lexington-Maysville Pike. It was established in 1779
by the Bryan brothers (William, Morgan, James and Joseph) from North Carolina and William Grant who like Wm Bryan - had married a sister of Daniel Boone. While traveling through the Cumberland Gap,
they were joined by two land jobbers, Cave Johnson and William Tomlinson from Virginia. These were
second generation settlers, and few of the white families were poor or working-class in those early days
since these women could not afford the expensive trip to the west. While the women of the
Pennsylvania, Carolina or western Virginia frontiers had long experienced management of a household
economy for their families’ sustenance, during the early 1800s their importance as production level
workers for their families’ economic success waned. The popular literature of the day showed that the
ideal white woman was to serve as a “republican mother” as of the ancient Greek city-states and be the
moral compass for their sons who would grow up to be citizens of the New Republic in the agrarian
West.
Women who helped build the frontier villages and cities of Kentucky however did not always remain
tied to a domestic role as prescribed and valorized in the ideal of the republican mother. Records
include stories of women evidence military valor during their lives of constant warfare. Most women
had to take on the role of frontier warriors but preferred to remain anonymous in the process, and a
more acceptable role was publicly to shame men not adequate in their roles in the defense of the
community. Women retained the responsibility then for turning the frontier into the civilization of
domesticity they once knew or wanted to emulate. Mostly of the middle-class and married (since poor
or working-class women could not often afford the expensive trip to the west), they brought with them
or ordered from relatives or favorite stores back East the respectable white doilies, elegant china and
plated silver for their tables. While Kentucky frontier women kept having babies, working in the fields to
clothe and feed their families, they also started up schools when forted and made sure that preachers
held church services when they could. Daniel Trabue remembered some women traveling from Forts
Harrod and Logan went on a shooting spree but transformed into “Ladys” when they celebrated in fancy
dress at George Roger Clark’s new Fort Nelson at the Falls of the Ohio in 1779.
In the 1780s the frontierswomen of Strode’s Station (nearby today’s Winchester in Clark County) worked
together to produce thirty yards of hemp linen for an old widower.1 Pioneer families often planted flax
and hemp right away for domestic production of clothing, cordage, bagging and paper for family
consumption or for barter. Women traditionally managed the textile production in the rural home.
However, early in Kentucky history, women lost their place in this profitable industry. The richer the
pioneer, the more hemp could be grown, manufactured and sold for a hefty profit – and women took
advantage of this opportunity in the new frontier. Tax lists for the 1780s and 90s show a surprising
number of early pioneer women as well as men owned slaves or had indentured servants who could do
the back-breaking work in the hemp and flax fields.
By 1780 many of the North Carolinians who started Bryan Station left due to confusion about the land
ownership, but soon others from Virginia joined the few who had remained. By 1782 this was the largest
station in the state. Like most pioneer stations the population was transient and settlers moved on to
their own separate farms as conditions permitted. It probably had a peak population of a few hundred.
The fort was described as having 44 log cabins (with clapboard roofs that sloped inwardly) and a twostory blockhouse connected in a 200 yard-by-50 yard parallelogram for defense, with a 12-foot high
stockade. One of the cabins was built just to hold a large quantity of dried meat for one of George
Rogers Clark’s campaigns – later it was used as a school. Two entrances were guarded by big folding
gates that swung on wooden hinges - one on the southeastern side nearest a buffalo trace which
developed into the Bryan Station turnpike, and the other on the northeastern side facing the woods and
offering a path down the hill to a spring near the North Elkhorn creek. A heavy growth of hemp as well
as a hundred acres of corn combined with a vegetable garden to prove the settlers' rights to the land.
Baptist pastor Ambrose Dudley held services at Bryan Station, and likely his pastoral care was supported
primarily by women and blacks who heard his message of salvation in new ways that helped create
America’s Second Great Awakening. Many outhouses surrounded the station for communal uses:
tanning vats, rope walks and other industrial purposes.
The site of the station is occupied by the 1794 Joseph Rogers house. (Names of the women on the DAR
monument: http://genealogytrails.com/ken/bryanstation.html
Jemima Suggett
Johnson
Polly Hawkins
Fanny Sanders Lea
Betsy Craig
Betsy Sunders
Betsy Johnson
Sally Craig
Nancy Craig
Lucy Hawkins
Elizabeth Johnson
Mary Herndon
Ficklin
Polly Craig
Elizabeth Craig Cave
Polly Sunders
Harriet Morgan
Nelson
Frankey Craig
Polly Cave
Lydia Sunders
Sally Johnson
Hannah Cave
Sara Pace Craig
Sally Hawkins
Sara Clement
Hammone
Jain Craig Sunders
Mildred Davis
Suggett
Sarah Boone Brooks
Lucien Beckner, ed., “Reverend John Dabney Shane’s Interview with Peioneer William Clinkenbeard,”
The Filson Club History Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 3 (April 1928) p. 119.
1
March 1782 Wyandot Shawnee struck Strode's Station capturing several African-Americans. Benjamin
Logan dispatched 15 men to join Capt James Estill and Lt John South at Estill's Station near Richmond they trailed the Indians to a field on the banks of Hinkston Creek near Mt Sterling and lost 8 men
including the 2 officers.A preemptive strike on June 4-5 by Col William Crawford against Delawares and
Wyandots on the Sandusky was also a defeat. British officers Caldwell and Alexander McKee of the
British Indian Department at Fort Pitt (who had originally owned 2000 acres of land on South Elkhorn
which had been confiscated as part of the grant from Virginia to the Transylvania Seminary) with his
interpreter-intermediary Simon Girty and 300 British mercenaries and Indian allies (Shawnees,
Wyandots, Delawares, Mingoes, Pottawatamis, Ottawas, Miamis and Ojibwas) decided to strike KY
settlements in response to the aggressive actions by Kentucky militia and land jobbers.
Bryan's Station (5 m north of Lex) took the first blow on August 16th. They arrived on the evening of
August 15th and dployed into small group -one group hid in the brush near the spring. The raiders
allowed the few settlers outside the fort to continue their business so as not to expose how large a
company they were. James McBride killed one of the Indians who was attempting to find out how many
men were stationed there - and during the ruckus James Morgan who lived in a cabin nearby strapped
his baby to his back, hid his wife under a slab of the cabin floor and ran to the fort. Two men on horses,
Thomas Bell and Nicholas Tomlinson, slipped out of the station from the main gate on the souteastern
side of the stockade onto the buffalo trace to Lexington to raise the alarm for reinforcements under Col.
John Todd. In the morning of the 16th, a plan was devised to send out the women to gather water at
the spring on the northern side that faced the cane fields, just like they did every morning. The Indians
would not attack because they didn't want to expose themselves by attacking the women. Led by
Jemima Suggett Johnson, the mother of an infant son who later grew up to become the ninth Vice
President of the United States, Richard Mentor Johnson, 12 women and 16 girls gathered their pails,
piggins, noggins and gourds and walked down the hill to the spring, under the watchful eye of the
would-be attackers. It took over an hour to fill all the pails and then make the return journey of about
60 yards up the hill and back into the fort with enough water to last several days.
After they safely returned to the fort, everyone celebrated, and according to Walter Homan Ficklin, John
Craig then assigned them to battle stations. Once everyone was in position with rifles aimed through
tiny slit openings in the wall. The raiders sent a small group to fire on the opposite side of the fort,
hoping to lure the men out. The settlers understood the ruse and sent several men out to pretend to go
after the small band, but as soon as shots were fired, they turned around and quickly ran back inside.
Thinking they were catching the settlers off guard they attempted to scale the walls, at which point
Craig gave orders to the settlers within the walls, including women and children, to open fire, which they
did from their assigned positions. The Indians scattered and ran back to the woods. A few reached the
still open gates of the fort, however, and set fire to five of the cabins. The settlers raced to put the fires
out and a providential wind came that blew the smoking embers away from the fort. Although the battle
continued steadily all day long, the fort was spared the destruction that would have followed a surprise
attack.
In the afternoon, reinforcements arrived. 30 militia from Lexington and 10 from Boone's Station came to
rescue the settlers, but only the 17 on horses succeeded in entering the fort - the rest retreated back to
Lexington. Meanwhile Caldwell and the Indians destroyed cabins, livestock and crops of surrounding
settlers, trying unsuccessfully to burn the fort down. According to the British account, 300 hogs and 150
head of cattle were killed, the few sheep found were killed and every horse outside the stockade was
appropriated. On the morning of August 17th they withdrew. The settlers went out and ate the leftovers
of the meat cooked the night before and left behind, and buried their dead - four killed and three
wounded according to Boone. The bodies of the 30 of the British forces killed were buried in a mass
grave not far from the area used as the burial place for "the negroes of the station" according to Ranck
in his 1896 address.
On the morning of August 18th Colonel Stephen Trigg arrived at Bryan's Station with 130 Lincoln County
militia, joined by Col Daniel Boone, Major Levi Todd, Lieutenant Col John Todd and other militia from
Fayette County. They pursued the British/Indian soldiers to the Lower Blue Licks at a horseshoe bend in
the Licking River: a death trap. Benj Logan with his 154 men from St. Asaphs did not get there in time to
engage with the enemy, but on August 23th went with 470 men to the battlefield where they buried in a
common grave 43 stripped and mutilated bodies - none of whom could be positively identified. This was
the worst defeat on the western frontier during the American Revolution - but it was also the last major
Indian invasion into Kentucky. Clark then joined in with Logan, Floyd and Boone to gather an army of
1050 men to plunder and destroy the abandoned Shawnee town of New Chillicothe.
August 1896 Lexington Chapter of the DAR commemoration with historian George Ranck giving address
- motto "For Home and Country,' have sounded a note of civilization and inspiration for the better
preservation of our historic places and for the payment of the debts of gratitude we owe to the
departed men and women who did so much to make us what we are.... And this memorial, may it
continue to designate the spot made glorious by the women of Bryan's Station.... and be as everlasting
as the hill where the fated Red Men and the indomitable Anglo-Saxons battled for the possession of a
garden of the gods. And so enduring, may generations yet to come, mindful of the glorious deed that
has consecrated the spot, stand with uncovered heads before this memorial and still be able to trace
this inscription which the gratitude and patriotism of women have caused to be graven upon its sides: In
Honor of the Women of Bryan's Station, who, on the 16th of August, 1982, faced a savage host in
ambush, and with a heroic courage and a sublime self-sacrifice that will remain forever illustrious,
obtained from this spring the water that made possible the successful defense of that station. This
memorial was erected by the Lexington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, August
16th, 1896. The Women of ancient Sparta pointed out the Heroic Way -- the Women of Pioneer
Kentucky trod it." composed by Ranck
http://google.com/books?id=dY6HrmHwbEcC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
In helping to memorialize this part of Kentucky history, Ranck differed from other Progressive historians
such as Frederick Jackson Turner, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. or Charles Beard in that they rarely if ever
found any place for race or gender in their analysis of American history. But he is clearly in keeping with
Turner’s famous 1893 address, “The Significance of the Frontier” which characterizes America’s
exceptionalism as the story of strong, motivated, self-reliant settlers taking advantage of the frontier’s
seemingly unlimited resources compared to the misery and overcrowded conditions in the East. The
historians of this time period were critical to what many now know was a kind of “myth-making” to help
assure white Americans of this critical time period of violence and segregation that it was all worth it:
Manifest Destiny, Social Darwinism, a national character based on a “frontier psychology” and anyone
else, especially those inhabitants in these areas who were of color, became invisible if not recreated as
“savages” in the way of the “civilizers”. Black participants in the frontier stories are nameless or ignored,
people of mixed race (and there were many by this time) were picked out as villains because of their
innate bad characters deriving from their “bad blood.”
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bryant%27s_station.jpg
1851 Print by Nagel & Weingartner