Ohio History Journal

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BOWMAN'S EXPEDITION AGAINST CHILLICOTHE

BOWMAN'S EXPEDITION AGAINST CHILLICOTHE.

May-June, 1779.

Draper MSS., Border Forays, 5 D. chap. 27, pp. 1-20.

[The following account of Captain Bowman's expedition against

Chillicothe on the Little Miami, in 1779, is from the original manuscript

of the Draper collection in the archive department of the Wisconsin

Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin. During the past summer (1910).

through the courtesy of Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites, Secretary of the

Wisconsin Historical Society, we were permitted to examine the exten-

sive and valuable collection of the Draper Manuscripts and select there-

from certain ones for publication in this Quarterly.-Editor.]

In the month of October, 1776, the Commonwealth of

Virginia passed an act dividing the county of Fincastle-then

the most westerly of any in its jurisdiction-into three distinct

counties, to one of which they gave the name of Kentucky,

being, substantially, the present State so-called. The act took

effect on the last day of the year.1    On the twenty-first of

December, John Bowman was appointed by Patrick Henry, jr.,

then Governor, to the office of Colonel of its militia.2 In the

Summer following, he arrived out, reaching Harrodsburgh on

the second of September, when he took upon himself the duties

of his office.3 The Colonel was made Lieutenant of the county,

in 1778, receiving his commission from Thomas Jefferson who

had become Governor.4 By virtue of his office, he had the

general direction of military affairs, at that date, in that dis-

tant region.

By the terms of the treaty made by Lord Dunmore with

the Shawanese in the Autumn of 1774, on the banks of the

Scioto, that nation was to give up all the prisoners ever taken

 

1Hening's Stat's at Large, IX, 257.

2R. H. Collins' Hist. Ky., Vol. I, p. 10.

3Diary of George Rogers Clark, from Dec. 25, 1776, to 22d of Nov.

1777: MS. This Diary has been published-first in Morehead's Ad-

dress-1840.

4Collins' Hist. Ky., I, p. 10.

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