ON THE NIGHT OF JULY 17, 1789, while Richard Chenoweth and his family were lingering around the supper table in
their log home near Middletown, Kentucky, a party of sixteen Indians warriors suddenly burst open the cabin door
and rushed into the room, yelling with the utmost fury. At the supper table with the Chenoweths were also a man
named Bayless, and a friend and neighbor, John Rose.
As the door swung back, John Rose jumped behind it, and in the dreadful confusion which followed he slipped out
undiscovered, and, escaping, hurried for help. James, the youngest Chenoweth boy, then 12 years old, was sitting
asleep in a chair, tilted back against the wall, near the door. He was thrown to the floor when the savages rushed
in and as he scrambled to his feet he received a terrible blow from a tomahawk. Making his way outside, he hid
in a large pile of firewood, crawling as far back into the heap as possible. Stunned by the blow from the tomahawk,
he did not know when the Indians left.
Mildred, the eldest Chenoweth daughter, was wounded in the first rush of the Indians into the cabin, as was also
the father, Richard. Mildred was wounded in one arm, but she and her father in some way managed to get out of the
cabin and into the woods.
Naomi, then the baby of the family, was asleep in bed when the Indians burst in. She was rolled up in the bedclothes
and was left unnoticed and unhurt. Jane, another of the Chenoweth girls, escaped into the forest and finally reached
a neighbor's cabin. Thomas, the other son, was then a captive among the Indians.
Mrs. Chenoweth, who was Margaret (Peggy) McCarthy of Virginia, dashed from the cabin and sped for help as the Indians
surged in. She was shot in the back with an arrow as she fled, and fell some distance from the cabin, in the direction
of the stone springhouse described in the preceding chapter.
An account of the terrible fate of this remarkable woman, Margaret McCarthy Chenoweth, is contained in an unfinished
manuscript written by Governor Charles Anderson, who founded and resided in the town of Kuttwa, Kentucky. Her terrible
situation was discovered when rescuers arrived at the Chenoweth place in the early morning of July 18, 1789.
Jimmy Chenoweth, the boy who took refuge in the wood pile, hid out all night, lying in his place of concealment
in a stunned condition. The tomahawk had made a wound from his hair-line down to his cheek. About daylight he came
to himself, and, wounded as he was, started on foot for the fort. The Indians had left, taking with them all the
horses. Jimmy supposed he was the only one left living of the family. He had gone but a short distance when he
met an armed company hurrying to the scene of the massacre. The party was under command of Colonel Richard Clough
Anderson, a brother-in-law of General George Rogers Clark.
John Rose, the neighbor who was at Chenoweth's and who escaped when the Indians broke in, had hurried to Colonel
Anderson's to report the massacre and summon help. Colonel Anderson, according to Governor Anderson's account,
a little after midnight heard moccasins approaching his door. Thinking it was Indians, he took his rifle from its
rack at the head of the bed and demanded, "Who's there?" The instant reply was, "John Rose."
The Colonel recognized Rose's voice but was fearful he might be in the hands of Indians who were intimidating him
into gaining free access for themselves. On his guard, he started cross-questioning his friend when Rose ended
all doubts by exclaiming, "For God's sake, Colonel, let me in. I am just from Chenoweth's Station where the
Indians have massacred every living soul."
A rescue party was raised and within a few hours was on the march to the expected scene of carnage. It was this
party that was encountered by Jimmy Chenoweth when he started to the fort for help.
Arriving at Chenoweth's Station, the rescuers found that the Indians had taken all the horses, killed the cow,
robbed the chicken roost, and had left, as they thought, not a living thing on the place. Fire had been set to
the house but had failed to kindle, fortunately for little Naomi, the baby, who had been left in the house, rolled
in the bedclothes and undiscovered by the Indians.
When Colonel Anderson stepped into the room in which the Chenoweths had been having supper when surprised by the
Indians, he discovered Naomi sitting in front of the fireplace, her kitten in her lap. She was unhurt. Milly and
her father were found in the woods, Milly with a bad gash in one arm, Richard (the father) dazed by a tomahawk
wound. Jane, it was found, had fled to a neighbor's for shelter.
A search for the mother was ordered by Colonel Anderson. At the stone spring-house she was found, almost dead.
She had been shot with an arrow, tomahawked and scalped.
Governor Anderson's unfinished manuscript thus describes the plight of the mother: "After some searching they
found poor Mrs. Chenoweth lying more dead than alive, in the upper story of a little spring-house. She had been
shot as she ran, with an arrow between her shoulder blades, and stumbling, fell. The Indian, probably supposing
her killed, drew out his arrow and, placing his foot upon her, began his triumphant work of the scalping, and as
her full head of jet black hair composed a grand trophy, he cut from her that entire crown of woman's glory and,
as she told it, that savage surgery was executed by the very dullest and jagged knife. Doubtless she was made to
regret that the benevolent British-Indian traders had not supplied the Indians with whetstones along with their
scalping knives of better metal."
Continuing his account of this fiendish crime, as Mrs. Chenoweth afterward described it to him, Governor Anderson,
wrote: "At last (after the scalping knife had severed the scalp just above her ears), taking his bloody blade
between his teeth, he (the Indian warrior) leaned his entire weight upon the foot upon the arrow wound in her back
and by main force of both hands intertwined in her ‘glory locks,' he tore off and stripped away the entire scalp
from her naked skull. He then struck it twice with the butt of his tomahawk, and all this time of her flight, wounding,
fall and scalping, this woman was more than perfectly - she was vividly conscious of every movement, and she feared
and suffered throughout all without a shriek or murmur to suggest to her foe that she was living."
Says Alfred Pirtle, Louisville (Kentucky) historian, in his account of the Chenoweth family massacre:
"When the Indians broke in, Mrs. Chenoweth had started towards the spring-house, when she was shot between
the shoulder blades with an arrow, stumbled and fell on her face. The Indian followed her, and probably supposing
her dead, drew the arrow out, putting his foot on her back as he did so, then scalped her. She was conscious all
this time, suffering agonies beyond description, without a shriek, groan or murmur. She wanted so much to live
for such of her family as might have escaped, so she pretended to be dead, and lay in this place until the Indians
left."
Thus we find two historians of the so-called "Chenoweth family massacre" giving practically the same
account of what happened at Chenoweth Station, in Kentucky, on the night of July 17, 1789.
Following the discovery of Mrs. Chenoweth in the spring-house in the early morning following the Indian raid, Colonel
Anderson dressed her wounds as best he could, attending also to the wounds of the boy Jimmie (the James Chenoweth
of Alfred Pirtle's story). The Colonel and his rescue party then set out in pursuit of the murdering Indians but
they had escaped into the Indian country beyond the Ohio.
The sufferers at Chenoweth Station were removed to "Soldiers' Retreat," at Colonel Anderson's, where
they were given surgical aid and the best of care. Mrs. Chenoweth was placed in her own saddle, and a man rode
on each side of her to keep her from falling. She stood the march like a soldier. Mrs. Anderson, who was a sister
of General George Rogers Clark, tenderly cared for her and the rest of the wounded Chenoweths. The family remained
at Colonel Anderson's home until their own house could be re-established.
While they were at Colonel Anderson's people came from far and near to hear about the massacre, and neighbors did
everything they could in helping them get established again.
The wound in Jimmie Chenoweth's hip, made by an iron-headed Indian arrow a few years before, had always given him
trouble. They finally had a doctor examine him. The doctor proceeded to operate on the hip. In those days there
was nothing used to relieve or deaden pain. Jimmie lay on a bench without flinching while the doctor cut out a
piece of iron arrowhead.
The lives of the Chenoweth family were henceforth quiet and undisturbed. Richard, head of the family, a carpenter,
had all the work he could do. Most of it was building plain cabins for the settlers. Now and then some gentleman
from Virginia or Pennsylvania would have a fine house erected. It was at a house-raising in 1796, not far from
his home, that Richard Chenoweth was crushed to death by a falling log. His death was entered on the records of
Jefferson county, Kentucky in 1803. The family did not long remain at the scene of the massacre after the father's
death. They moved to a place about five miles east of Shelbyville, Kentucky, called Big Spring.
The Shelby branch of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad later passed very near the stone spring-house so celebrated
in the history of the Chenoweth family, in which Mrs. Chenoweth was found after the Indian attack. The fourteenth
mile post from Louisville was right opposite the old Chenoweth house.
At Big Spring, Mrs. Chenoweth, victim of the awful scalping, lived to be more than 80 years old. Under the surgical
ministrations she received at Colonel Anderson's, she was restored to health and vigor, but went through life with
a naked skull instead of her former glory of hair, a deformity she was able to conceal by the dexterous use of
a cap, which she always wore. She lies in Kentucky soil.
Naomi, the baby of the family at the time of the Indian attack, married Richard Kalfus, after which she disappears
from the family records. The records show that another daughter, called Tabitha, was born after the massacre. Of
her, also, there is no further record and whether or not she lived is unknown.
Mildred, the eldest daughter, wounded in the Indian attack, had been born in Virginia and was with her parents
during their trip down the Ohio in 1778. She married Harmon Nash in Kentucky in 1793. Their children were Naomi,
Elizabeth, Thomas, Richard, Fanny and Polly. Mildred Chenoweth Nash died in 1835.
James Chenoweth, the "Jimmie" of the Indian raid, born in 1777, married Margaret Smith, a granddaughter
of Colonel Harrod of Harrodsburg, Kentucky. James was also the young son who was wounded by the Indian arrow in
1787. James Chenoweth's children were John S., Jane, Thomas H., Alexander, William, Mary, Frances, Gideon, James,
Jr. and Ross. James, after the death of his wife, made his home with his oldest son, John S., in Cincinnati. There
he died January 10, 1852. His children, all well-to-do, lived in Kentucky and Ohio.
Jane Chenoweth, daughter of Richard, married a Miller. Nothing more is recorded of her. One record indicates that
another daughter, Ann, was born to Richard and his wife subsequent to the birth of Tabitha. Ann was born in Kentucky
in 1790. She married a man named Bonderant, and had two children, Joseph and Benjamin.
In Hurlburt's "The Ohio River, a Course of Empire," the Chenoweth family story is confirmed. The historian
says: "Louisville was founded by a few families that accompanied George Rogers Clark to the falls of the Ohio
on May 27, 1778. Of these first citizens of Louisville who boldly erected their cabins on Corn Island, we have
the names of five: James Patton, Richard Chenoweth, William Faith, John Tewell and John McManness."
"The Chenoweth Family Massacre," by Alfred Pirtle, was read at Louisville at the meeting of the Historical
Society on October 3, 1911. A number of Chenoweth descendants present on that occasion were gratified to hear the
historical account of what, to them, had been handed down as tradition.