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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Simon Kenton Biography KENTON, Simon (1755–1836). An American pioneer and Indian fighter, born in Fauquier Co., Va., of Scotch-Irish parentage. He received a scanty education and in 1771, after having, as he supposed, killed a companion in a fight, crossed the Alleghanies to the headwaters of the Ohio, where he assumed for a time the name of Simon Butler and became an Indian trader. Here he was associated with Simon Girty (q.v.), the renegade. During Lord Dunmore’s War (q.v.) he served as a scout. Later in the frontier warfare that raged throughout the States of Ohio and Kentucky during the Revolution, Kenton served with great distinction under Boone and Clark, his fame as a frontier hero being second only to that of Boone himself. In 1778 he joined Clark at the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville) and went with him on his expedition to Kaskaskia. Later he was taken prisoner by the Indians, suffered indescribable tortures, and was twice saved from the stake by the intercessions of his old companion, Girty, and of Logan, the Mingo chief. Handed over finally to the British at Detroit, he escaped from there and made his way southward, where he continued active in the border warfare until the end of the war. After the battle of Blue Licks he settled at Maysville, Ky., served again in Wayne's campaign in 1793–94, and, after living in retirement for some years, he emerged for a short interval in 1813 to take part with the Kentucky volunteers in the Canadian campaign and was present at the British defeat on the Thames. His last years were spent in poverty in Kentucky. Consult McDonald, Biographical Sketches of General Nathaniel Massie . . . and General Simon Kenton (Dayton, Ohio, 1852), and C. H. L. Johnston, Famous Scouts (Boston, 1910), in popular narrative style. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 175. |