Jonathan Hanks

Tiny Limestone in present-day Mason County was one of the most important early ports on the Ohio River. From 1786 to 1788, more than twelve thousand people landed there during the flood of settlement that followed the Revolutionary War. One of those immigrants was John Hanks - frontiersman, pioneer, Indian fighter, farmer and hunter. Born November 29, 1767, in Loudoun County, Virginia, Hanks migrated west with his family, stopping along the way in western Pennsylvania, the panhandle of West Virginia, and finally in Kentucky. In the following interview with the Reverend John Dabney Shane (Draper Manuscript, 12 CC 138-44), Hanks describes a number of his adventures on the American frontier. These include the siege of Wheeling, West Virginia, by the Shawnee during the Revolutionary War; the capture of war chief Blue Jacket near Maysville, Kentucky; the building of the first settlement attempted in eastern Kentucky, Vancouver’s station; and the escape of Jenny Wiley from the Indians. Hanks is one of the few first-hand accounts of these historic events. In addition, he knew Daniel Boone and relates a story about Boone lending him his rifle. Reading these accounts, one gets a glimpse of frontier life and times, as well as a sampling of Hanks’s trials, his language, and his humor.

John’s father, Peter Hanks, was born in Maryland in 1737, moved to Virginia, and married Elizabeth Wyatt of Loudoun County. He was in the frontier militia during the Revolutionary War, serving in Captain John Miller’s company of Washington County, Pennsylvania. The Hanks children included Peter, John, William, and probably others. The oldest brother, Peter, had gone to North Carolina before the family left Virginia. He joined the Hankses in Kentucky for a short time before moving on to Indiana, where he was killed in 1811 in the battle of Tippecanoe. Brother William settled in Kentucky and appears several times in the Shane papers. The Hanks historian, Adin Baber, relates a "family tradition" that Peter and Elizabeth had a daughter Nancy, who married Thomas Lincoln. Baber notes, however, that he found eight Nancy Hankses born in the 1780s and many differing family traditions. The ancestry of Abraham Lincoln’s mother remains a mystery. John Hanks and his wife Barbara settled in Montgomery County, where they lived for nearly forty years and raised a family of eight children. He died there about 1840.

The Reverend Mr. Shane traveled extensively throughout central Kentucky visiting aging pioneers and collecting their diaries, papers, manuscripts, clippings and recollections. John Hanks was interviewed at his home on the Spruce Fork of Slate Creek in Montgomery County sometime between 1838 and 1840. Old and blind at the time of the interview, Hanks gave a very credible account of frontier times, especially considering the fact that the events of which he spoke had occurred more than fifty years earlier. The dates and events he described are corroborated by other sources (many footnoted herein), including other Shane interviews.

The striking element in the Hanks interview is the large number of graphic incidents involving Indians. Indians are mentioned sixty-six times in Shane’s seven page manuscript. This characteristic is seen in other pioneer interviews and in much of the historical writing on the period. Life on the frontier was hard and dangerous at best, yet the hazards of the wilderness did not compare with the hazards from Indians. The pioneers’ whole way of life was designed to cope with this threat and, years later, the Indian troubles they endured formed their strongest memories. This preoccupation with Indians can also be seen in their language. As an example, the term Indian summer came into use at that time. To us, that warm period following the first frost of autumn is a pleasant, desirable experience. For the pioneers it had a different meaning. Winter always meant an end to Indian hostilities for the year, so the coming of cold weather was a time to look forward to four or five peaceful months. If there was a warm spell before the snows came - Indian summer - the Indians might return for more raids on white settlements.

The following Shane interview is John Hanks’s recollection of selected or memorable events that occurred on his "travels." While some editing was essential in transcribing this manuscript, Hanks’s words have been carefully preserved.

[ To Redstone Old Fort]

When [I was] about seven years old, we came to Monongahela, near Redstone old fort. From there to Wheeling it is only sixty miles across, but one hundred and seventy miles around. We were not forted there.

Eight Indians, that had been at our house, went from there to one Presser’s, a Dutchman, where they got rum and, getting drunk, took the Dutchman’s bed, throwed out the feathers and took the ticks [ticking], horses, and whatever else they wanted and went off. Their squaws and papooses were in company. Swearingen raised some men and went after them, getting [back] the articles they sought, without injury to either party.

[Moves to Wheeling]

From the Monongahela we moved to within five miles of Wheeling, remaining there till the Indians compelled us to move into Wheeling fort. Before we moved in, one McBride was killed out on the waters of Wheeling. Old Ben Decker came round and told us the neighborhood was full of Indians. He made it a great deal worse than it was. We went out and round by ...... Silas Zane’s, about a mile from us, my father being at that time over the Ohio [with the militia] after Indians.

From Zane’s we went to the fort. While we were there, one morning Jacob Coles, John Mills, and Dr. McMahon were out looking for McMahon’s heifer. McMahon was intending to move out of the fort. I was out at the spring when the firing was heard. About twenty men seized their guns and ran out. Jacob Coles and John Mills were killed and Dr. McMahon wounded …..Letters were found on the trail, left by the Indians, inviting the pursuers to come over and join them, that if they would bring a flag they shouldn’t be hurt and should have fine quarters at Detroit. Dreading some evil consequences from these letters. All the members of the party were mutually sworn not to divulge the secret for the next six months. As might be expected, this having a secret and sworn to it made a great rumpus in the fort for a time.

[Siege of Wheeling]

The supplies came out in [a] company of twenty-five to Wheeling to help guard the station. On the approach of the company… they met some men [that were] just at the station going out to gig fish in Wheeling Creek. One of the company turned and went with them without ever being in the fort. They had been at the creek but a few minutes when the Indians fired. This man [was] the only one of the number [who] was killed. I heard their guns rattle. The man’s shoes were swung over his shoulder, the [same] manner in which he had traveled, and a ball had gone through one of the shoes.

Dr. McMahon sent an Irishman and his black man, London, out one morning to get the oxen. When they got out, the Indians were in ambush and took after them. The Irishman was overtaken and tomahawked, but the Negro, who was too swift for them, rushed into the fort and cried, "Indians, Indians." The men in the fort snatched up their guns and ran, some without their hats. A high mountain puts in just by Wheeling there. The Indians drew the pursuing party to follow them around this mountain, having others prepared to follow them in the rear, till they closed in on both sides and the whole party, but two, cut off. These were Samuel Mason, a captain, and one Caldwell, who did not get started so soon as the others and so was not surrounded. Mason and his sergeant encountered two Indians. Mason called on the sergeant to shoot. Both shoot on both sides. The sergeant named Stull and both the Indians were killed and Mason wounded. He now crept down under the banks of Wheeling Creek, where he lay till night and then got on [back] to Shepherd’s fort, about six miles…

John McCullough, Major Samuel McCullough and Samuel Atchison with Peter Hanks were going from Hawkins to Wheeling and did not perceive the Indians till they got most to the fort. They dismounted and fired. The Indians, being at their breakfast, had not yet seen them, but returned fire and killed Samuel Atchison. The rest got in.

The Wheat girls almost kept the fort. They were Nanse, Bets, Hannah and Lovy….. My father’s house that had been [burned] was the farthest out of those outside the fort. The back of the chimney had been burnt through. Hannah Wheat was watching in the bast end [bastion] and saw an Indian come around the corner and slip his gun in through this hole into the house and then, afraid to stay there long enough to creep in himself, go round the chimney again. Hannah called to an old man named Walker and told him what she had seen. Walker asked her to let him have her place and shoot the Indian when he came [back] round. Hannah Wheat, with an oath, said she had seen him first and she d----d if she didn’t mean to have the shoot. And [she] took him lengthways as he went to go in……My father had moved up to Hawkins but a few weeks before this…..

[Further Events at Wheeling]

On another time at Wheeling, Thomas Ryan, his son, and one Richardson went out to plant corn on Ryan’s place. The Indians were concealed behind the fence, waiting till their hoeing and dropping should bring them to the end at which they lay concealed. As Thomas Ryan was a large man and the others small or young, their plan was to shoot him and catch them. Accordingly, Ryan, the father, was shot and the son taken, while another Indian pursued Richardson across the field. As the Indian was gaining on him and not leaving him time, he just fell over the fence with what haste he could to make his escape. As he jumped the fence his pistol dropped out of his belt and the Indian, mistaking Richardson’s efforts to recover the pistol for a design to attack him, gave a whoop and turned back…..

On another occasion, a party from the fort went out on a scout and returning by an orchard, stopped in to get some peaches. While there, one of the party discovered something unusually bright and, on looking round, found a party of Indians had been drawn in on the same errand with themselves and, seeing them approach, [the Indians] had concealed themselves in the grass. Carefully notifying his companions, they arranged themselves and dispersed the Indians. This man shot the Indian whose looking glass he had seen reflecting the light as it lay on his breast. He brought the scalp to the fort and shook it in at our door as he passed.

[Other Moves]

We stayed a week or ten days at William Hawkins’ station. There was a family of the name of Grist living in the neighborhood, who were all killed except one girl. She was tomahawked and scalped. I saw them as they were taking her out. She was put on the back of a bed. It laying over astraddle of a horse. The doctors raised the fractured portion of her skull and put a piece of silver in it. I saw her also afterwards, when she was well.

We went on to Waller’s station and not ten days after leaving Hawkins’ station, all of Hawkins family was killed except one daughter, Kizzy, red-headed, who was taken on to Detroit. There [she] was bought by a merchant in Detroit named Butler who, reports says, afterwards married her. Hawkins was a great hunter. Always had Indian paint in his house. The Indians tied him up to a peach tree and scalped him alive and then killed him, leaving him there tied. A young man, in the house when they came, got up into the loft. The Indians told him to come down. He wouldn’t. They said they would bring him down, if they had to burn down the house. He came down and, I believe, the second night got away from them.

Waller was about three miles from Hawkins. Had a good station, or fort. From Waller’s, we went on to Edgarson’s, where we were at the time of point battle. From there we went into the settlements [Wheeling] again.

The Indians made peace when Cornwallis was taken [October 1781] and continued it for five or six years. Abraham Zane was the principal owner of the land at Wheeling. Silas Zane and George Green went to Detroit driving cattle and made out great, bringing back a pile of money with them. They went a second time. My mother made some cappo-coats [capotes] for them to take along and sell among the Indians. Made them of blue broadcloth with a cap or hood to draw over the head, otherwise like a matchcoat. I recollect I sewed on them some myself. The Indians killed them at the crossing of the Big Muskingum as they came back. Isaac Zane, Silas’ brother, at that time was living and had married among the Indians. He made his threat to have revenge for the death of his brother and had to flee from among the Indians.

[Moves to Kentucky]

In May 1786 we came to Kentucky. Colonel Boone had a little store at Limestone then. We went out a hunting, and Boone lent me his rifle in place of taking my own and saying, as I carried it on my shoulder, if I saw any buffaloes it would twist round towards them. In 1789 he had a little store at the mouth of the Kanawa.

We landed in Maysville on May 1786. The first night after we had landed, a company went down to the mouth of Eagle to watch a [salt] lick. While setting at the lick, they heard a bell open and immediately shut again. They immediately rushed off [in] their canoes and returned to Limestone, where a company volunteered – in which I joined – and got back to Eagle again by sunrise. We saw but one Indian…. coming along with his saddle on his back, about to catch a horse. When he saw us, he dropped the saddle and cleared out. We got five horses, which were sold when we got to Maysville. Abraham Dale, my brother [William] and myself took each a barrel of flour for our pay.

[Capture of Chief Blue Jacket]

Ezekiel Sudduth was killed near Hood’s station in 1787. We pursued to [the] Licking, which was out of its banks, so that [we] could go no farther.

In 1787 or 1789, March or April, a company pursued some Indians down on to Cabin Creek, who had been up to Stroud’s stealing horses. Jim McIntyre, John McIntyre, [and] Big Bill Whiteside, scouts after Indians from Stroud’s station, and myself were on foot in the advance, keeping the trail. They stopped back at a little branch to drink. I had gotten about twenty yards on, when I saw two Indians round a stump on fire. The rain had sort of ceased, and the wind risen. Blue Jacket and another Indian had been left behind to watch the back track and were standing round the stump, which they had kindled to get themselves dry. I beckoned to the men to come ahead. Jim McIntyre and me were just going to shoot, when they saw the horseman coming over the hill. Jim fired, the only gun that was shot, the rest having got theirs wet and being unable to get them off. The two [Indians] jumped down on the high bank of the creek and we were after them. Bob McMullen, coming up, saw the common [same] Indians hid under the creek bank. Bob had his boots on so that he couldn’t run. Wasn’t very swift at any time. His gun snapped and he raised a halloo, but the Indians got off. The horseman [Andrew Hood] crossed the creek above the steep bank and came down just in the directions we were hallooing and the Indians running. Blue Jacket turned back when he met them. I was just about to shoot him when Hood, who had rode to the bank and jumped down, knock my gun up saying, "You will kill some of our men." And Blue Jacket ran right into my arms, having first thrown away his weapons. One James Baize, who had formerly been a prisoner among the Indians, came up and hit him with the britch of his gun over the eye, so that it raised a great lump as big as your fist. They knocked six rings out of his ears, which I picked up and kept. Blue Jacket begged, said he didn’t want to kill anybody, he only wanted to steal a horse.

There was a little Irishman in [the] company named Jim Wilson, who was the only man in the company that would kill a prisoner. And the company were willing to his being shot. I went up to Jim McIntyre and said it looked like murder to kill that man. He turned round and said to Jim Wilson, "Don’t shoot him." I knew I had touched his feelings. Instead of killing him there, after eating our mess he was set on a horse and piloted us to Maysville that night. If we gave him anything at the mess, he would always take it and say Colonel Boone had given him such meat or tobacco. Boone’s son and he had gone out over the Ohio from Limestone often the summer before to hunt deer. I stayed in another house that night, but I went out in the night and saw Frank Jones of the Cross Plains, who was half drunk and had Blue Jacket on his knee.

Next second or third night, we stopped at Sconce’s station up on Hinkston. That night we were all drinking. Steven Biles was placed [on] sentry. A log chain had been put on Blue Jacket, but Biles, who too had been drinking, got to nodding and Blue Jacket discovering it, slipped the log chain and made his escape. Biles that let the Indian go, lived between Stroud’s and McGee’s six miles apart, and was the only person living between the two stations. James Baize and Big Bill Whiteside had both been prisoners among the Indians, taken from Riddle’s station, and could talk Indian.

Blue Jacket had a scar on his neck. In attempting to break into a house on Nolachuky or Clinch, a woman had put a load of shot into it. His mare and gun were put up at auction for the benefit of the company. Jim Wilson bought them, but never paid for them, nor have I ever heard from him since, to this day. I got Blue Jacket’s arm bands and rings. All the stolen horses were recovered, but none of the other Indians were seen.

The Indians had been at Stroud’s station twice before this and stolen horses. Indians were killed both times, but I was not along. The Indians were also at Tom Burrows on Twomile, waters of [the] Kentucky, and Major Hubanks killed one riding along, not guarding his back track.

[Settlement of Vancouver’s Station]

In February 1789, Charles Vancouver and ten of us that he had hired for the purpose, went up to spend a year with him, or for him, at a station to be formed on the Big Sandy at the forks. The names of the company were Joe Blackburn, Thomas Jones and James Jones, men of families; Daniel Irvine, Bill Wyatt, Angus Ross, James McMullin, Looman Gibbs, myself and Jim Jacobs, who deserted. Our wages were to have been a barrel of corn apiece, two bushels of salt for the ten, and a deed or title to each for fifty acres of lands.

We got there in February. Pine trees occupied all that bottom, where now the town of Lawrence [Louisa] is. In that bottom, I hunted and killed wild turkeys. We put cabins right in the forks of Sandy……..Vancouver had never been there before.

In March our horses were all stolen. I discovered a rope made of twisted bark as we went out. I told Vancouver the Indians had gotten them, and he asked what the "young man" knew about Indians. We were in search of the horses, and to convince him……..that the Indians had been there and gotten them, I asked him……..if he had ever seen a rope made of bark.

Looman Gibbs, Thomas Jones and myself brought Vancouver down to the mouth of the Sandy to go on to Philadelphia. He gave us a half joe apiece when we parted from him. When we got to the mouth of the Sandy, we noticed Vancouver walking all around a big elm tree that stood there. We asked him what he was doing. He said he was looking at a corner tree. It had the letters "G.W’s." for Washington’s military company. The land of John Savage and his company started there. Vancouver went to Philadelphia after his horses were stolen. It was his object in going there to lay in a store of goods with which to trade on the Big Sandy. These were brought down from Pittsburgh on a keel boat. There were setting about there a great many store articles, perfectly useless, such as a barrel of coffee mills, which he allowed to be a mark to shoot at one day, for a time, and then directed them to be put away and taken care of.

[Jenny Wiley’s Escape]

During this period, the story of Jenny Wiley was acted out. Jenny Wiley was a woman that had been kept a prisoner by the Indians nearly three years. There were only six of them, and they had never taken her across the Ohio. She was pregnant when the Indians got her and when her time came, the Indians left her in a cave and went and stayed away five days. When they returned, they removed the child and she never heard of it more. She had been taken off Clinch and kept during all this time on [what is] now Jenny’s Creek, I suppose, for Jenny’s Creek took its name from her.

One day we were going up Big Sandy on a hunting spree by the water, some twenty or thirty miles. The Indians were out in a very thick bushy place. On hearing our guns, they returned to their encampment and endeavored to make the alarm known to the other Indians and yet conceal it from this woman. She judged, however, from their motion that there were white men in the neighborhood along the river. When they left and went away, she determined to leave, too. Following Jenny’s Creek to Big Paint, and that down to the Sandy, she came opposite where one Harmer had built a cabin that spring after we had come. Harmer was a great old hunter. He had at this time taken his canoe and gone down to Vancouver’s to drink whiskey. When Jenny Wiley called [out], a young man came and set her over on a raft and then went down to Vancouver’s by land after Harmer. Angus Ross, one of our men, went back in the canoe with them. Vancouver sent her up dresses, as she hadn’t when she came a speck of woman stuff on her.

She was at Phillip Hammond’s at Jeffersonville and at my place here some twenty five or thirty years ago. She inquired for me, but I was not home at the time, and don’t now recollect what I heard of her.

[Once] while at the mouth of the Big Sandy, we pushed to our canoe. [We] saw a little fire off at a distance. The others laid down to sleep near to the canoe. I considered it hazardous, but the others ruled to stop. I took my blanket and went way off to a distance and laid down by myself. Here I fell into a sound sleep until Vancouver came and waked me. One of the company snored exceedingly loud……[Vancouver] saw an Indian, we suppose, pick up a brand and start in the direction in which we were. He had no doubt heard the snoring and, as we had landed quietly in the night, he was coming unsuspecting to see. I was the last to get into the canoe and push off.

Vancouver’s station was broken up in March 1790. We brought down the keel boat to Washington [in Mason County] but with only some eight barrels of meat in it, which Vancouver had packed down. Those that remained [behind] to take charge of the store goods were Looman Gibbs and Daniel Irvine, with the two other men that had come down with Vancouver on the keel boat from Pittsburgh. One day as the first two were going up the river in a canoe, Indians poured a heavy fire on them from both banks, but without effect…..[And] they made their escape. The store was then entirely forsaken. All the other things…… including liquor and rum…..were [left] there unprotected.

Vancouver ran for the legislature when he got to Washington [Ky.]. Got in easy. He would have himself dressed and his hair powdered at the fort every Sunday morning regularly, as prim as in a court. And there was nobody there but us men. His permanent home was in Holland. I spent eleven days in May 1800 with him at the three forks of the Kentucky assisting him to find his lands. He had married in Holland and brought his wife over with him. He paid four hundred dollars for taxes that had been due and that would accrue in the three years to come on ten thousand acres of land on Red River. His business being settled, he set out on his return to Holland, but was taken sick between Marietta and Pittsburgh and between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, died. We regarded his land so poor, none of us ever thought of asking him for it. Latterly, I had determined to enter suit in court for my fifty acres, but understood that the clerk of the court had sold out all the town lots to satisfy claims which came against Vancouver, and that there was nothing to be gotten. And, of course, it was dropped.

Angus Ross came from Scotland and is now living on Big Sandy. James McMullin was no Kentucky McMullin; he died on the Dry Ridge coming [home] from Harmer’s campaign. Daniel Irvine was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun as he was carrying home some game on a pole in Ohio. The other man had one end of the pole, and was carrying his gun with the britch thrown back over his shoulder. When the brushing of the lock against the bushes caused it to discharge, the load entered Irvine. He lived long enough……to say it was a d____d careless trick.

A signed statement by John Hanks is used as a source of reference and is included in this historical book:

"I was employed by Charles Vancouver in the month of February, 1789, along with several other men, to go to the forks of the Big Sandy River, for the purpose of settling, clearing and improving the Vancouver tract, situated on the point formed by the junction of the Tug and Levisa Forks, and near where the town of Louisa now stands. In March, 1789, shortly after Vancouver and his men settled on said point, the Indians stole all their horses but one, which they killed. We all, about ten in number, except three or four of Vancouver's men, remained there during the year, and left the next March, except three or four to hold possession. But they were driven off in April, 1790, by the Indians. Vancouver went east in May, 1789, for a stock of goods, and returned in the fall of the same year. We had to go to the mouth of the Kanawha River, a distance of eighty seven miles, for corn, and no one was settled near us, probably the nearest was a fort about thirty or forty miles away, and was built maybe early in 1790. The fort we built consisted of three cabins and some pens made of logs, like corn cribs, and reached from one cabin to the other.

"We raised some vegetables and deadened several acres of ground, say about eighteen, on the point, but the horses being stolen, we were unable to raise a crop.

"(Signed) John Hanks."

AMERICAN MILITIA IN THE FRONTIER WARS 1790-1796: Private John Hanks is listed in the Muster Roll of a company of Mounted Spies and Guides under the command of Captain Joshua Baker, Major Notley Conn's Battalion, in the service of the United States, Commanded by Major General Charles Scott, from July 10 to October 21, 1794.

• **John Hanks is recorded as having marked a boundary tree on October 26, 1789.

John Hanks is taxed in 1800 on 100 acres Slate Creek, Montgomery County, KY.

1810 Census Montgomery Co, Ky--John Hanks lives with his wife, a son and seven daughters.

Noted Hanks Historian, Adin Baber also noted that John had 7 daughters.

1830 Census Montgomery Co, KY--John Hanks' household:

Males: 1 15-20 yrs, 1 20-30 yrs, 1 60-70 yrs.

Females: 1 15-20yrs, 1 20-30 yrs, 1 50-60yrs.

• Updated from MyHeritage Family Trees via sister Nancy Elizabeth Holmes (born Hanks) by SmartCopy: May 5 2015, 14:24:31 UTC