ad been broken
up, and at the end of the year there remained only four--Boonsborough,
Harrodstown, Logan's station at St. Asaphs, and McGarry's, at the
Shawnee Springs. They contained in all some five or six hundred
permanent settlers, nearly half of them being able-bodied riflemen.
[Footnote: The McAfee MSS. give these four stations; Boon says there
were but three. He was writing from memory, however, and was probably
mistaken; thus he says there were at that time settlers at the Falls, an
evident mistake, as there were none there till the following year.
Collins, following Marshall, says there were at the end of the year only
one hundred and two men in Kentucky,--sixty-five at Harrodstown,
twenty-two at Boonsborough, fifteen at Logan's. This is a mistake based
on a hasty reading of Boon's narrative, which gives this number for
July, and particularly adds that after that data they began to
strengthen. In the McAfee MSS. is a census of Harrodstown for the fall
of 1777, which sums up: Men in service, 81; men not in service, 4;
women, 24; children above ten, 12; children under ten, 58; slaves above
ten, 12; slaves under ten, 7; total, 198. In October Clark in his diary
records meeting fifty men with their families, (therefore permanent
settlers), on their way to Boon, and thirty-eight men on their way to
Logan's. At the end of the year, therefore, Boonsborough and Harrodstown
must have held about two hundred souls apiece; Logan's and McGarry's
were considerably smaller. The large proportion of young children
testifies to the prolific nature of the Kentucky women, and also shows
the permanent nature of the settlements. Two years previously, in 1775,
there had been, perhaps, three hundred people in Kentucky, but very many
of them were not permanent residents.]

Boon Captured.

Early in 1778 a severe calamity befell the settlements. In January Boon
went, with twenty-nine other men, to the Blue Licks to make salt for the
different garrisons--for hitherto this necessary of life had been
brought in, at great trouble and expense, from the settlements.
[Footnote: See Clark's Diary, entry for October 25, 1777.] The following
month, having sent three men back with loads of salt, he and all the
others were surprised and captured by a party of eighty or ninety
Miamis, led by two Frenchmen, named Baubin and Lorimer. [Footnote:
Haldimand MSS. B., 122, p. 35. Hamilton to Carleton, April 25, 1778. He
says four-score Miamis.] When s