John Gess, III

http://gesswhoto.com/olden-daze/index20.html

There are several interesting stories concerning John Gess. It is said he participated in the hunt for Daniel Boone's daughter, Jemima, and her friends Elizabeth and Frances Callaway were captured by Indians.

When it was discovered back in Boonesborough that the girls were gone, there was great excitement. John Gess swam across the river under the immediate danger of being fired upon by Indians in ambush and rescued the canoe. Daniel Boone took to the woods barefooted. When the cry went up that Jemima Boone and the Callaway girls had been captured, the gallant Samuel Henderson was shaving. He had one side of his face and was about to begin on the other, but he had no time to finish. The other men of the fort were dressed in their 'Sunday' homespun clothes, and they did not take time to change.

Across the Kentucky, Boone was able to pick up the trail of the savages and the girls Quickly he mapped out a plan of stradegy. One party was sent directly to the fording place at the Blue Licks on the Licking, and a second followed closely upon the heels of the kidnapers. Night came before the searching party got far on the trail. Again the courageous John Gess volunteered his services, and a pair of moccasins for the barefooted leader.

Time was of the essence - in fact, it might already be too late if the Indians could beat their white pursuers to the Ohio River. They might have done so had the unruly girls not created so many delays by complaining and sulking. Never had three Kentucky girls been pursued by such illustrious company. Besides Boone, who had the advantage of having twice been prisoner of the Shawnees and now demonstrated his expert woodsmanship there were William Bailey Smith, John Holder, Samuel Henderson, John Floyd, Nathaniel and David Hart, John Martin, John McMillan, William Bush, John and David Gess, and Flanders Callaway. Three miles below the Blue Licks the Indians stopped for the night, and here they were surprised and shot, and the tattered girls escorted home as Kentucky's first heroines."

John Gess also contributed to the history of Fort Harrod, Kentucky's first white settlement. On January 30, 1777, Capt. George Rogers Clark arrived at Fort Harrod with his company of Kentucky militia, including John Gess. An Indian attack was expected at any moment and Clark's company was sent to strengthen the garrison. According to Lewis Collins- History of Kentucky, the fort was besieged from March 6th through March 28th, 1777.

"John. Gess with a number of others went outside of the fort to give the Indiana battle. Gess was struck by a ball on one side of his chin, cutting the skin along his jaw-bone but not breaking the bone, and knocking him over on his back. The Indian who fired the shot, supposing he had killed him, ran up to scalp him - but when very near, Gess took aim as he lay on his back, shot the Indian dead, and made his escape into the fort."

The American Revolution was now under way and the Kentucky settlements were a hotbed of revolutionary sentiment. In January 1778, George Rogers Clark, now a colonel, organized the largest and most complex unit raised by Virginia during the war specifically for the defense of the "Western Department" [Kentucky]. Clark was authorized to attack the British outpost of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River and establish a post an "the falls of the Ohio," the site of Louisville, Kentucky. On April 10, 1779, "John Guess" transferred to Capt. John Williams' Company of Clark's command, officially known an Clark's Illinois Regiment of Virginia State Militia. Private John Ges fought with Clark against the British and Indians at Kaskaskia in 1778 and at Vincennes[ Indiana] in 1779, and successfully delayed British plans for a major offensive against Kentucky. He later participated in a campaign against pro- British Indians in Ohio and in numerous border raids in 1781.

Although the British formally surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1782, the warfare in the west continued unabated. In March of that year Wyandot warriors struck Strode's Station about twenty miles from Boonesborough, killing two settlers and wounding another. The war party was pursued by Captain James Estill and a party of twenty-five men including John Gess. On March 22nd Estill's men caught up with the Indians at Little Mountain, near the future site of Mt. Sterling. Almost evenly matched, according to Lowell Harrison's A Now History of Kentucky, "the opponents fought one of the most vicious battles in the history of Kentucky's Indian warfare." Estill was killed and thirteen of his men were killed or seriously wounded. The Wyandot Indians had equally heavy losses, but they remained in control of the battle field, and the engagement was considered to be an Indian victory. The white survivors fled back to Estill's Station, a distance of some twenty-five miles, carrying the wounded through dense forests and rough terrain.

John Gess continued to serve at least until July 30, 1784.