Ohio History Journal

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THE TORY PROPRIETORS OF KENTUCKY LANDS

THE TORY PROPRIETORS OF KENTUCKY LANDS.

 

BY WILBUR H. SIEBERT.

Professor of European History, Ohio State University.

From the days of its earliest settlement down through the

American Revolution, the Kentucky country was the scene of

proprietary projects or hostile activities by Loyalists, several of

whom were first connected with Fort Pitt and afterward with

the British post at Detroit. It is needless to say that the hostile

activities included more or less successful efforts at instigating

Indian depredations against the Kentucky pioneers, and contem-

plated almost from the beginning Tory leadership for tribal con-

tingents of sufficient size and bloodthirstiness to accomplish ef-

fectually the single but protracted task of freeing a favorite

hunting ground from occupation by alien intruders and settlers,

as viewed by the Indians, or of ridding the back country of

dangerous rebels, as viewed by the resentless partisans of the

crown. Such Tory leadership, we shall see further on, was to

be provided, with serious consequences and even graver dangers

for the colonists, after the flight of a group of Loyalist con-

spirators from Fort Pitt to Detroit in the spring of 1778.

The proprietary projects of these Loyalists began in July,

1773, with the survey of four thousand acres of land directly

opposite to the Falls of the Ohio by Captain Thomas Bullitt for

Dr. John Connolly, a resident near Fort Pitt, who had previously

been a surgeon's mate with the British forces, and was now in

a fair way to be rewarded for his past - and future - services

by this substantial grant. Connolly's object was to found a town

at the Falls, and to that end Captain Bullitt laid out a town plat

in August. On the tenth of the following December, Governor

Dunmore of Virginia issued a patent to Connolly for this land.1

1Proceedings, American Antiquarian Society, Oct., 1909, 5, 29;

R. T. Durrett, Filson Club Publications No. 8: The Centenary of Louis-

ville, (Louisville, Ky., 1893), 23, 24, 26, 27, 131-133.

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