Reuben T Durrett

Siege of Bryan's Station and the Battle of Blue Licks: Warfare on the Kentucky Frontier Between Settlers and the British & Their Loyalist, Indian & Re Reuben T Durrett

A bloody episode of the Kentucky border

By 1782 the American War of Independence was all but coming to its close and with it the birth of a new nation and the loss of an important colony for the British. The frontier settlements of Kentucky lay at the farthest reaches of European expansion, far away from the principal towns and cities of the established states, on the eastern seaboard of the continent. This was the frontier of its day where isolated farms, stockades, forts and villages were constantly in peril of attack by Indian tribes, their white allies and the British. Bryan's Station (sometimes called Bryant's Station) was a fortified settlement of forty cabins founded in 1775 on the Elkhorn Creek. It withstood attack on several occasions but in 1782, ten months after Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, it came under siege by Canadian British forces under Caldwell, the renegade Simon Girty and 300 Shawnee Indians. The event was notable for an outstanding feat of bravery by the women of the settlement-which is of course recounted here in detail. When the besiegers discovered that relief was on its way in the form of the local militia they withdrew. After a pursuit of some 60 miles the British and their allies turned and lay in ambush. The combat that followed, known as the Battle of Blue Licks was disastrous for the Americans who lost 83 killed or captured for negligible loss among their enemy. Despite warnings from the veteran frontiersman Daniel Boone, who was with them, the militia blundered into the ambush losing nearly half their number including Boone's son, Israel, and the expedition's commanders, Todd and Trigg. Boone barely escaped on horseback, abandoning the body of his son who was mortally wounded in the neck. The engagement, the worse defeat suffered by Kentuckians during the war effectively ended the conflict in the east.
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