On February 10, 2013, I posted an article about Stephen
Stateler, which was copied from The Hartford Herald published on December 2, 1891. That
article was based on recollections of Mr. Stateler’s daughter. Recently, thanks
to Helen McKeown, I found a longer article about Mr. Stateler that had been
first published in a Louisville newspaper in 1860, with greater detail about
his life. The 1860 article was republished in the Hartford Herald in 1907, in
three parts. This is a wonderful look at pioneer life in early Ohio County.
Part One of Three. The
following article was taken from the Hartford Herald, published October 23,
1907.
THRILLING ACCOUNT
OF EARLY TIMES IN THIS
SECTION OF COUNTY
________________________
HARTFORD IN THE
LONG AGO
________________________________
Graphic Narrative
of Dangerous
Travel and
Encounters
With Indians
Mr. John H.
McHenry, Jr., had the following account, published in the old Louisville
Journal, dated the first of April, 1860, of early times in Ohio County and
adjoining region:
Sometime in
the year 1856 there died in Ohio county, Kentucky, at his residence, six miles
north of Hartford, Mr. Stephen Stateler, aged about 86 years. He was at the
time of his death the oldest resident of the county, having first gone there
the spring of 1790. He was a man of
extraordinary constitution, and the writer of this remembers distinctly to have
seem him in the harvest field on the 4th of July previous to his
death, handling a scythe with the alertness of a young man. He was from Pennsylvania and of German
parentage. His original name was
Stradler which, for the sake of euphony, was changed to Stateler.
The
following account of his early trials and tribulations will no doubt be read
with great interest by those persons who were acquainted with Mr. Stateler or
other persons whose names are mentioned in the narrative.
In
“Collins’ History of Kentucky” there is mention made of several incidents
concerning which I have often heard this old gentlemen speak, and from whom, no
doubt, that interesting information was obtained.
Some years
before his death he gave an account of his adventures to a friend who wrote
them out for publication. His statement,
for the truth of which it is scarcely necessary to vouch, is as follows:
MR. STATELER’S
ACCOUNT
In the winter of 1789 a gentleman by the name of Kendall,
who lived in Virginia, had contracted with a man to furnish him with part of a
boat load of buffalo meat, and Kendall was to bring barrels and salt down the
Kanawha river and take in the meat at the mouth of the river. I was at the point at which the boat was to
start, and, desiring to go down to the mouth of the river, went on board the
boat and came down, intending at that time only to the mouth, and, if the
buffalo meat had been furnished according to contract, I should not have gone
any farther; but, as the meat was not forthcoming, Mr. Kendall was driven to
the necessity of proceeding down the river with what load he had, and hired
several persons, among others myself, to accompany him, and kill game enough,
as we journeyed along, to complete his load.
As we were floating down we discovered buffalo signs and several of us
left the boat in a large pirogue to hunt on shore. We met with ut little success, however, and
reached Mr. Kendall in a few days at Louisville. It was thought by some that buffalo could be
killed below Louisville and Mr. Kendall accordingly concluded to pursue his
journey and complete his load with buffalo meat and skins below the falls, if
possible; so we launched out on the broad bosom of the Ohio on our way to New
Orleans.
On March 17th,
1790, Levi Whitsell, Samuel Davis and myself left the boat a short distance
below “red Banks” – where the city of Henderson now stands – and went on shore
on the Indiana side, for the purpose of killing bear and buffalo, expecting the
boat to await our return. We started
into the forest, which had scarcely ever before been trodden by a white man,
but we had not proceeded far when we discovered “blazes,” which Whitsell said
were Indian signs, and insisted on our returning to the boat. We objected and Whitsell left us. Davis and
I, in a short time found buffalo, wounded a fine bull, and in pursuing it were
led several miles from the river. We
were very successful in our hunt and did not return to the river until the
evening of the third day. Imagine our
horror when we discovered that the boat had left us.
I
afterwards learned that Whitsell had returned to the boat the same evening and
reported that we had been killed by the Indians. Mr. Kendall waited for us until the next
morning and, as we did not return, believed us dead, and proceeded on the
journey.
We
determined to make raft of logs and follow the boat as far as Diamond Island,
hoping to catch up with them at that point.
We commenced early the next morning and, constructing the raft, placed
our guns upon it and launched out on our frail, unsteady float into the stream,
which, at this time, was very high and turbulent. A few rods below us was a large sawyer,
swaying to and fro, and rising up and down in the river. We discussed the probability of coming into
contact with this formidable enemy before we shoved out and thought we could
avoid it, and used our utmost endeavors to do so. But if we had pulled directly
for it with all our might we could not have struck it more directly, or with
more disastrous consequences than we did.
The force of the current carried us to it, in spite of all our efforts
to the contrary.
As soon as
we struck the sawyer, seizing my gun, I leaped from the raft upon it, in order
to avoid falling into the river. The
raft floated around and moved down the river.
I called to Davis to land and help me off, but it was impossible for him
to do so, and he replied that he “could not to save both our lives.” In a few moments his raft swept around the
bend of the river, I watching him with beating heart. He waved his hat to me as he passed out of
sight and I never saw him again.
My
condition then was indeed fearful. There
was no human habitation that I knew of within a hundred miles of me and I had
no hopes of assistance from any one.
Thinking, possibly, some one might be within my hearing, I endeavored to
fire off my gun, but the powder was wet and it would not strike. My next effort, of course, was to reach the
shore, and at the same time to secure my gun.
I was some five or six rods from the bank, but I was afraid I could not
reach it with my gun in my hand, so I twisted some twigs and branches of the
trees within my reach, through the guard of the gun and around the small of the
stock, and having secured it in the best manner that I could, I plunged into
the river and swam to the shore. After
reaching the shore my next object was to get possession of my gun. To do this I made a raft of such logs as I could
get together in the river, lashing them together by grapevines. I then cut me a long vine and tying one end
of it to the shore and the other to the raft, I shoved out into the river,
holding on to the vine, thinking the current would drift me down to the sawyer,
and having discovered my gun, I could pull back to the shore by the vine, but
unfortunately the vine was not quite long enough for the raft to strike the
sawyer. I reached forward and caught the
branches and pulled, in order to reach my gun, which was within a few feet of
my hand, but the current was so strong it sunk my raft, so that I was compelled
to let go. Holding on to the vine the
current of the river swung myself and the raft slowly to the shore. I could get no more vines to lengthen the one
I already had, so I tried the second time to reach my gun in the same way, but
with the same success. A third and
fourth time did I float around with the hope of reaching it, but I was each
time disappointed; still my gun was swinging by the twigs.
By this
time it was growing dark and I determined to camp for the night and renew my
efforts in the morning to obtain possession of my gun, for it seemed to me that
my “stay in life” depended upon the recovery of this faithful companion that
hung so tantalizingly before my eyes, and yet not within my reach.
I struck
fire and made my camp between two rocks, and here I spent the night – a very
small portion of it, however, in sleep.
During a portion of the night I was engaged in drying my powder. This I did by holding the horn to the fire
until it became warm, and then shaking the powder about until it became cool,
and I continued this process until my powder was dry. I then laid down to rest but my sleep was disturbed
by desperate visionary attempts to get my gun.
One, indeed, I succeeded in reaching it, and my joy was so great that I
was awakened and beheld by the moonlight my gun still hanging by the branches
of the tree on the sawyer. Slowly and
heavily passed the weary hours of that night after the moon had sunk and I
could no longer see my gun. Morning came
at last and as daylight was stealing through the trees and clearing the mist
from the river, I was revolving in my mind the different plans which had suggested
themselves during the night for the recovery of my gun; but when it was light
enough for me to see the sawyer I almost sank to the ground when the appalling
truth flashed across my mind that the twigs and branches with which I had tied
my gun had released their hold, and it had fallen off the sawyer and sunk to
the bottom of the river.
(Continued
in next week’s Herald, which gives an account of encounters with Indians and
scenes around Hartford, Ky. in the long ago.
Save it for your scrap book.)
