KENTUCKY GRANDFATHERS

About the Book

This book is about five ancestors who were active in the earlysettlement and development of Kentucky. These were exciting decades at the end of the 18th Century. While Americans in the original thirteen colonies were absorbed in fighting the British “redcoats” in the Revolutionary War, other Americans were busy fighting Indian “redskins” on the Kentucky frontier. The indians were being armed by the British and often were fighting directly under the leadership of British officers. This account is an effort to tell the story through brief biographies of these five men - their families and origins and their experiences on the Kentucky frontier. Each chapter begins with a brief life story of one of the Grandfathers and ends with a short fictional vignette to illustrate one facet of the lives of the women on the frontier. The first permanent settlement on the Kentucky frontier was established by Danial Boone with a group of forty some settlers from the Carolinas in the spring of 1775. On the trail just a few days behind them came our first Grandfather, Benjamin Logan, in a group from the Virginia frontier under the leadeship of a surveyor. These along with the group with James Harrod who were busy trying to complete the station they had begun the year before were the entire settler population for the first few years. These chapters attempt to detail the tools, equipment, the hard work and needed skill that was required of both men and women during these early years. It was four years before the second grandfather, James Allen, arrived with his family. Effort has been made here to describe some of the social and economic factors which impacted this rugged frontier society. History also was catching up to the Kentucky settlement, and historical events - both in the Revolutionary War, and in Kentucky helped shape the frontier by the time John Hawkins, our third grandfather, arrived with his family from Virginia. With the completion of the Revolutionary War and the establishment of the new nation the stage was set for the last two, youngest Grandfathers, Percival Butler and John Coburn, both Pennsylvania veternans, to arrive in Lexington, Kentucky. These young men did not bring their families with them, but within the first years after their arrivel they both met and courted their wives, married and started large broods of children. In the decade following the arrival of the last of our grandfathers amazing things took place in Kentucky while the political and social shape of the state developed. Our Grandfathers participated in every phase and in the loud and continuous debates which culminated in Kentucky becoming the fifteenth state of the United States of Ameica. After statehood the Grandfathers each moved out to follow his own star and Kentucky developed an economic boom. The final descriptions of the book details the series of marriage unions that resulted in these ancestors being Grandfathers to our whole family.

About the Author

Jane Butler Samuels was born in 1915 so it is here at the beginning of her tenth decade she is just now completing this long task undertaken as a gift for three great grandchildren. Now she lives alone in a pleasant apartment in Key West, Florida, where she enjoys frequent visits from her children and grandchildren.