Thompson

Chapter 143

Kentucky Adventures of Chenoweths; Thomas Captured by Indians


THE CHENOWETHS of Corn Island form a picturesque group in the early days of Kentucky settlement. Floating down the Ohio river under escort of Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark and his Virginia "Long Knives" in the spring of 1778, they reached, on May 27, that spring, an island in the river near the edge of the falls of the Ohio where now is Louisville. Here soon after their arrival they cleared ground and planted corn, which gave the island its name.

The names of only a few of the first families at Corn Island are known. There were about twenty families, according to one account, in the first settlement. Those known are the families of Richard Chenoweth, James Patton, John Tewell, William Faith and John McManness. It seems certain also that some of the family of William Chenoweth (Chennerworth) must have accompanied the Richard Chenoweth family on this memorable adventure. William was an elder brother of Richard and the father of Major William Chenoweth of the Revolution, who was the father of Abraham, James H. and Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth of pioneer Perry.

In the early 1780s, at a place near present Louisville, Jacob Vertrees, a son of Captain John, married Jane Chenoweth, a lady unaccounted for in Chenoweth family history, but who was probably a daughter of William Chenoweth (brother of Richard) by his second wife, Jane (family name unknown). William Chennerworth, in his will probated in Frederick county, Virginia, in 1772, mentions his wife, Jane, and refers also to the deceased mother of his daughter Mary, so we know that this William Chenoweth was twice married, his first wife being well established as Ruth Calvert, a descendant of the Lords Baltimore.

Jane Chenoweth, who married Jacob Vertrees, was therefore very likely a half sister of Major William Chenoweth of the Revolution who married Mrs. Mary (Van Meter) Henton, heroine of the old Indian days at Squire Boone's Station in Kentucky and mother of early Chenoweth settlers around Perry. She would also be a full sister of Samuel Chenoweth, who is known to have been a son of William Chenoweth by his second wife and who was a very early settler in the region north of present Griggsville. She would also be a half sister of Jonathan Chenoweth, early settler near Perry, who was a brother of Major William, being a son of the first William by his first wife, Ruth Calvert.

This Jacob Vertrees, who married Jane Chenoweth, seems to be confused in Vertrees family history with a younger Jacob, grandson of Captain John Vertrees and ancestor of the Nashville branch of the Vertrees family. Some of these southern Vertreeses suppose their ancestor, Jacob, to have been a son of Captain John, whereas the historian Haycraft makes it clear that this Jacob was a son of Dan Vertrees, who was a son of Captain John.

There is no record of Captain John Vertrees's son Jacob, and his wife, Jane Chenoweth, save that of their marriage in Kentucky county, Virginia. It appears certain that Jane was an original member of the Corn Island settlement in 1778. To this same settlement came Captain John Vertrees and his family in 1779.

Richard Chenoweth was rather prominent in the history of the falls of the Ohio, sometimes called Clarksville, and later Louisville. In a preceding chapter we have seen Richard Chenoweth building the early forts at this point, he being a skilled carpenter. His father, the second John Chenoweth, had left Richard his tools in his will. The early Chenoweths were "gentlemen blacksmiths."

Richard Chenoweth became sheriff of Kentucky county, Virginia, now the state of Kentucky, in the early 1780s. He was sheriff when George Rogers Clark headed an expedition from Kentucky that assembled at the mouth of the Licking river in the fall of 1782, following the awful defeat of the whites at the Blue Licks in August of that year, and which marched into the Indian retreats in Ohio and administered such crushing damage to the redskins that they never again invaded Kentucky with as large and as well organized a band of warriors as they had previously done, although for about ten years thereafter they kept up the horrors of a savage warfare.

Some time after the return of Clark's expedition from the Illinois country, Richard Chenoweth, about 1785, became part owner of a fine tract of land on one of the tributaries of Floyd's Fork, not far from Colonel Floyd's station or fort.

Chenoweth's lands were on a rolling country bordering a small stream, not over three miles from Middletown, Kentucky. Here he built a substantial and, for that time, a good-sized log cabin, erecting also a stone house over a spring near the cabin, making it a kind of fortress in the event of Indian attack, putting in rafters and making a loft, entered from below by a ladder or from the outside by a window, if one could scale the wall. Around these improvements he cleared considerable land and was raising crops in the summer of 1787.

Two more children were born to the Chenoweths after their migration from Virginia to Kentucky. They were Naomi and Tabitha Chenoweth. At the time of the migration the family comprised Mr. and Mrs. Chenoweth and four children, Mildred, Thomas, Jane and James. Naomi was born about the time of which we now write.

One morning in June, 1787, after a shower of rain, the Chenoweths discovered that their horses were not in the barn. Seeing plain tracks along the road, Richard Chenoweth and a near relative, Gideon (Gid) Chenoweth, started to follow them. James Chenoweth (Richard's youngest son), then ten years old, went along. They followed the tracks about a mile when they discovered the animals grazing at the junction of a corn field with a field of rye.

As the three approached the horses, walking leisurely, they were suddenly fired upon from a nearby sink hole. Jimmy Chenoweth, the 10-year-old boy, seeing the Indians spring from their hiding place in the sink hole, ran from home, the Indians pursuing, bent upon his capture. Jimmy outran the Indians, who then halted, drew their bows and let go their arrows at him. One of the arrows, carrying an iron head, buried itself in the little fellow's hip.

Pulling the arrow from his hip as he ran, Jimmy was met by his mother (who had heard the reports of the guns) with two loaded guns in her arms, speeding to meet her husband, Jimmy cried out to her: "They killed Dad and Gid, but they didn't catch me."

But Jimmy was mistaken about his father and Gid, who had hidden themselves in the rye field, evading the Indians. Jimmy, with a piece of the iron head of the arrow still in his hip, went back with his mother to the rye field, where they were joined by Richard and Gideon and all returned home together.

One day in 1788, the son Thomas, then 14 years old, started to the mill on an errand from which he was not to return for many years. Thomas it was who became the father of Katurrah Chenoweth, who married Robert Kinnear, whose son, James H. Kinnear, once resided at Perry, where his son, David J. Kinnear, was born in 1845.

As Thomas hastened along the trail to the mill, his horse was thrown by a grapevine trip-up of the Indians, and the boy was immediately surrounded and captured. He was carried a captive into the Indian country in Ohio, bound to his own horse. Years passed, and no news of him ever came back to the Chenoweth cabin. The boy who had started to mill was given up as dead.

In 1794 (we question this date, although it is the date given by Alfred Pirtle in his story of "James Chenoweth — The Story of One of the Earliest Boys of Louisville, Kentucky, and Where Louisville Started"), the Chenoweth family learned in some way that a young white chief, bearing a resemblance to the missing Thomas Chenoweth, was among the Indians on the Mad river in Ohio.

It was later learned for a certainty that the young chief was the Chenoweth boy who had started to mill and never returned. Captured and hurried into the Ohio country, Thomas had been taken into the family of a famous Indian chief, who had treated him as a son. Thomas by this time had grown into a man, and had become pretty much of an Indian, being arrayed in the full costume of a chief's son, painted and bedecked with feathers.

Thomas, while with the Indians, dwelt with them in many places towards the headwaters of the great rivers in the far northwest. In Montana there is a postoffice named Chenoweth, said to have been named for a white Indian chief who dwelt there in the long ago. In Chenoweth family history it is said that this postoffice is supposed by many to have been named for Thomas Chenoweth while he lived among the Indians.

Learning the identity of the young white chief, Richard Chenoweth took counsel with his old friend, Captain John Vertrees, who had taken a fancy to young Thomas in 1778, when the family came down the Ohio river to Kentucky under escort of Colonel Clark, in whose command Vertrees held a captaincy. Vertrees and the father then conferred with General Clark, a warm friend of both, with the result that Clark arranged with the British Governor at Detroit to exchange an Indian chief for Thomas.

Thomas, following this exchange, returned to his people in Kentucky, but he had become so much of an Indian that upon his arrival home he showed no sign of being glad to get back, asked no questions, and registered no surprise at anything that had occurred in his absence. By degrees he learned the customs of his people once more.

Thomas later married Nancy Collins and they had the following children: Katurrah, born 1798; James, born 1800; Ruhanna, born 1802; John, born 1803.

Katurrah married Robert Kinnear and their children were James H., Elizabeth, Nancy, John A., Edgar, Thomas R., Isabell and Ruhanna. Katurrah died at Leon, Iowa, August 11, 1875.

James H. Kinnear, son of Katurrah Chenoweth Kinnear and grandson of Thomas Chenoweth of the Indian capture, was born in 1818. He married and had children, Namely: Abraham, born 1832; Joseph G., born 1836, died young at South Haven, Kansas; Mary E., born 1837, married a Johnston, lived at Maysville, Missouri; James S., born 1839; Robert A., born 1841, resided at Lathrop, Missouri; Ruth C., born 1843, married a Turner, resided at Maysville, Missouri; David J., born 1845 at Perry, Illinois; Jacob V., born 1847 at Perry; Susanna, born 1849.