The Battle of Bryan's Station, 1782

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.

Richard Mentor Johnson, Kentucky's First Vice President, Larger than Life

In my column on KyForward.com this week, I begin a three part series on Kentucky's three Vice Presidents, Richard Mentor Johnson, John Cabell Breckenridge, and Alben W. Barkley.

This week's column is about Kentucky's first Vice President, Richard Mentor Johnson, a man who survived an Indian attack as an infant, killed the famous Indian chief Tecumseh in battle, and was elected Vice President by the United States Senate, after the Electoral College could not produce a victor.

Johnson was a larger than life figure even in an age full of them.

Enjoy!

Dead Heat in the Travers Stakes! No, the one in 1874 . . .

My column on KyForward.com this week tells the story of the dead heat in the Travers Stakes. No, not this year's dead heat, the one in 1874!

Unlike the dead heat of 2012, this one was immediately resolved by the parties with a do-over! How would that go over today???

Here's a vintage 1930 Travers Stakes program:

The Last Colonel

Here's a link to today's column on KyForward.com, in which I give the curious story of Col. Phil T. Chinn, the last of the Kentucky colonels of racing!

Enjoy!

Was 1892 the Kentucky Derby's Lowest Point?

What was the lowest point of the Kentucky Derby? The year 1892 gets my vote: It had only three entries, two of which were owned by the same owner and the winning jockey was only fifteen years old!

Here's a view of what Churchill Downs looked like a few years later, in 1901:

Here's a link to my column on it in KyForward.com!

Abby Marlatt's Peace Leaflet: Kentucky History Photo of the Week

This is the pamphlet that Abby Marlatt handed out in Lexington fifty years ago this week. It cost Dr. Marlatt her career. It looks almost innocent, compared to political polemics today.

Abby Marlatt: Still a Hero Fifty Years Later

Fifty years ago this week, Abby Marlatt, a white professor of home economics at the University of Kentucky, who had descended from Kansas abolitionists, handed out leaflets urging peace and nuclear disarmament. In my February 24 column about her, I described the incident as follows:

"On August 5, 1962, the day before the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Dr. Marlatt, along with a fellow faculty member, passed out leaflets which pointed out the fact tha

t the Cold War was then in full swing, and that the nuclear weapons in existence in 1962 were far more powerful than those used on Japan. The leaflet, prepared by a peace group in Cincinnati, encouraged students to withhold payment of income taxes as a protest, to refuse to work in war plants, or to register for the draft, or as the pamphlet put it, to return their draft cards if they had registered for the draft already. I suppose in those innocent days, no one thought of burning a draft card."

Because Dr. Marlatt had urged students to resist the draft, and to withhold taxes, she was attacked by some in the University of Kentucky's administration, who sought to have her removed from her position. Ultimately she was removed from her position as head of the home economics department at UK, but through the intervention of Bert Combs, Kentucky's progressive governor, she retained her position, and taught at UK through her retirement.

In this column, I share why she is one of my personal heroes of the civil rights movement. I don't imagine you'll read about this anniversary anywhere else. I will see if I can post a picture of the leaflet she handed out: It is almost innocent by today's standards, but it was enough in 1962 to ruin a career.

http://www.kyforward.com/2012/02/robert-treadway-abby-marlatt-protester-ignited-a-firestorm-that-changed-a-university/