Contents ▼▲
Front Matter At Boonesborough Beginning of the Story Boone on the Yadkin Boone Moves his Family Ready for the Journey What we Wore Driving Cattle and Sheep Camping at Nightfall The Long Halt Jimmy Boone Goes to Clinch Murder of Jimmy Boone A Time of Mourning The Faint-hearted Return A New Home Making Moccasins Tanning Leather Governor Dunmore Our Home on the Clinch Household Duties Attacked by a Wildcat Fighting the Wildcat Boone and Father Return The Wilderness Road Building the Forts Boonesborough Gathering Salt Boonesborough Precautions Our Home in the Fort Ready for Cooking Furnishing the House The Hominy Block The Supply of Water Sports Inside the Fort Wrestling and Running Religion of the Indians Indian Babies Colonel Callaway Arives News from Eastern Colonies Venturing Outside the Fort Dividing the Land Who Owned Kentucky? Ready to Build a Home Billy's Hard Lot Preparing Flax Spinning and Soap Making Broom Making More Indian Murders Indian "Signs" Woodcraft and Hunting Pelts Used as Money Petition of the Settlers Making Sugar Building Fences Capture of the Girls My Willful Thoughts Finding the Trail The Pursuit The Story Told by Jemima Elizabeth's Heroism Rescuing the Girls Alarm Among the Settlers Indians on the Warpath The First Wedding The Wedding Festivities The Brides Home The Housewarming Attacks by the Indians Besieged by the Savages In the Midst of the Fight The Assault by the Indians Failure of the Assault Watchfulness of the Indians The Sortie My Father Wounded Our Wounded

Hannah of Kentucky - James Otis




The Petition of the Settlers

"And, as we are anxious to concur in every respect with our brethren of the United Colonies, for our just rights and privileges, as far as our infant settlement and remote situation will admit of, we humbly expect and implore to be taken under the protection of the honorable Convention of the Colony of Virginia, of which we can-not help thinking ourselves still a part, and request your kind interposition in our behalf, that we may not suffer under the rigorous demands and impositions of the gentlemen styling themselves Proprietors, who, the better to eject their oppressive designs, have given them the color of a law, enacted by a score of men, artfully picked from the few adventurers who went to see the country last summer, overawed by the presence of Mr. Henderson."

I distinctly remember that part of it because Jemima used to laugh over the idea of calling ourselves an “infant” settlement. She said that if the people of Virginia could see some of our dandy rufflers standing on a stump crowing like a cock because of having beaten another at wrestling or leaping, they would think we were indeed healthy infants.

Father believes that some of the language in the petition was too strong, because Colonel Boone and Mr. Harrod were among those "artfully picked"; but neither of the men seemed to think there was any-thing disrespectful in such words, and actually signed the petition.

During stormy winter days father and Billy with axes dug out troughs from buckeye logs, which we might use for collecting sap as soon as the time came for sugar

[Illustration] from Hannah of Kentucky by James Otis
making. How we children watched for a change in the weather which should tell that the day was near at hand when we might revel in sweets! Elizabeth Callaway gave me a spoonful of sugar shortly after her family came into the fort, and from that time I had not tasted anything in the way of sweetness. Now, however, we promised ourselves that plenty of sugar should be made as soon as the sap began to run, and Billy announced that he expected to get plenty of wild honey during the summer, no matter how many Indians might be skulking around.