Here's an excerpt from my latest column on Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, born in Kentucky in 1780, about his surviving of the Siege of Bryan's Station by Simon Girty and his Native American mercenaries in 1782:
Richard Mentor Johnson, for whom counties would be named in five states, was born in 1780 (or ’81 by other accounts) on the frontier of what was then Kentucky County, Va., at a settlement called Beargrass, near modern day Louisville. Johnson’s family soon moved to Fayette County, where they were caught up in Simon Girty’s Raid on Bryan’s Station, a fort that gives its name to modern day Bryan Station Pike.
Girty was a Scots-Irish mercenary, leading a band of Native Americans fighting for the British during the Revolutionary War. In August of 1782, they surrounded Bryan’s Station. The settlers had no water, and Jemimah Johnson, Richard’s mother, decided that the women of the fort should pretend that they didn’t know the Indians were there, go to the nearby spring, fill their buckets, and bring them back to the fort.
The plan assumed that Girty’s forces would not attack the women, and open themselves to fire from the fort. The plan worked beautifully, and the water was brought in to the fort. Girty’s forces tried to set the fort on fire with burning arrows. One of those arrows landed in the straw-filled crib containing the infant Richard Mentor Johnson. However, with the water fetched by Mrs. Johnson and the other women, the settlers were able to put out not only that arrow, but the fires set by all the rest, and hold off the attackers until help arrived. Johnson and his family escaped the battle unscathed. A historic marker commemorates the event on Bryan Station Pike today.
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