Living in a War-Torn America

The Westerfield Massacre.

The predations and complications of moving around and settling America during the Revolutionary War were immense but commerce and life continued throughout. This passage of the text I've been working through suggests those difficulties.
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In 1780 the Revolutionary War was being fought. Charlestown, South Carolina, had fallen to the British in 1779. The French entered the war in 1780 on the side the revolution. American rebels defeated loyalist forces and natives who had been terrorizing settlers near Elmira in south-central New York, and retaliated by destroying over thirty native villages. The Battle of Charlestown in South Carolina was lost for the revolutionaries in January, while the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina was won in October. In 1780 Pennsylvania freed children of slaves.

Fig. 19. Low Dutch Station  marker. The station was one of six 

forts established on Beargrass Creek in 1780, now part of 

Louisviille.

As the Colonial wars intervened, the native conflict with settlers was co-opted first by the French and then by the English. The deadly attacks on colonists often came from natives who were guided, supported and rewarded by French handlers before 1765 through the French and Indian War. By 1770 or so, natives again were exploited as surrogate guerillas and raiders, this time by British handlers throughout the Revolutionary War. The natives themselves were from northern British or French-controlled areas beyond the treaty line and in Canada. Kentucky, in fact, was not residential territory for any organized native population in the late eighteenth century, though there were hunting ground claims.

The saga of a native attack on the Westervelt families travelling to safety is remarkable. The “Westerfield Massacre” occurred about twenty miles south of Louisville. On June 27, 1780, at 3:00 AM, a travelling party of settlers was trying to reach safer ground when they were attacked by natives, several were slaughtered, and two women were taken to French Canada and sold as servants/slaves. The group included several ancestral family members, including grandparents of Cornelius Westefield.

The British army was advancing into Kentucky by May, 1880, supported by Indian raids. The. English Captain Henry Bird and his 8^th Regiment of Foot moved down from Detroit with 150 white troops and a thousand natives spreading annihilation along their path.

12. Jacobus Westervelt purchased four hundred acres near Harrod’s Town, and by the summer in 1780 the Westerfields and other families were moving on to safer territory, ninety miles farther south and east. The caravan set out on June 26, 1780, and included forty-one settlers from ten families, led by Jacobus Westervelt. At 3:00 AM on June 27th they were attacked by natives in service to the British. Ten of the seventeen settlers who died were Westerfield family members.[1]

Testimony of survivors was taken in depositions and appears in court records and legislative hearing documents. Those accounts substantiate the horrifying summary by Hiram Stafford in his 1865 testimony to his knowledge of the attack seventy-five years earlier. Hiram was a grandson of James Westerfield, Sr., son of Leah Westerfield who escaped during the attack. His account pulls together the substance of the testimony of several witnesses whose depositions were taken at the time. The return of Mary from British Canada and some minor sequences of events vary slightly with contemporary accounts, but there appears to have been relatively little embellishment:

Fig. 20. Mural in the Missouri State Capitol marking the 1780 

native attacks on St. Louis, the same year as the British-sup-

ported native raid on the Westerfields in Kentucky.

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…My Grandfather, James Westerfield [James Westervelt, Sr.] was a large man weighing 333 pounds, himself and family left Berkeley County, Virginia, about 1780 and emigrated to Kentucky by way of Pittsburgh to Louisville intending to go to Harrod’s Station in now Mercer Co. Ky.[2] Him and company (of) about thirty persons started from Louisville to the station. (They) camped for the night on the waters of bargrass [Beargrass Creek] about twelve miles out and sometime in the night was attacked by a party of Indians while asleep, and but few escaped death.

The old man [James Westervelt, Sr.] and two of his daughters (were) among the number killed. The old lady [Maria Demarest Westervelt] saved three children [Catharine, Leah or another child, and Rebecca, a baby] by hiding in a sinkhole. One child (was) in her arms and two (were) under her clothes to keep them from crying. My Mother [Leah, then age 13] then single also escaped to a fort not far off…

Those that were prisoners was separated a little way from each other until they could find out which was capable to travel and those unfit to travel was tomahawked and scalped. One woman (was) sitting by and seeing all of her children one after another slain…they went to her to take her infant out of her arms, her fortitude gave way…(She) held on to the child screaming for its safety (and she ) was killed on the spot by the hatchet and scalped. (The indians) then took the infant by the heels and beat out its brains against a tree. They then took each of the others as they intended to take with them and ripped open the beds scattering the feathers gathered their plunder and left. After killing the old man [Jacobus Westervelt, Sr.] they seemed to think they had killed a giant, three buttoned themselves in his big coat and danced.

Deborah Westerfield and her cousin Polley (were) taken off prisoners to Detroit, then sold to the French as servants, (They) was badly treated…(and later) sold into another family. They remained (with them) until exchanged and finally got home…(two years later).

While (the girls were) in captivity…the old lady [Mrs. Westervelt] was taken (by Indians) on her return from a friend’s house (in Shelby County.) (She) had her horse shot (out from) under her and (was) taken not far from Ketcham’s Station in now Shelby Co. Ky. (She was) Taken a few miles off secreted for the night, until they could steal horses for their journey [They] came back before day with the horses, (and) gave (her) choice (of horses to ride). She took a favorite one which she knew well… (She) put on her saddle...mounted and off was taken to Detroit in great hope of meeting with her daughter and cousin, (Polley – Mary Westerfield) but to her disappointment they…(had been) released and (had) gone home around Easter. She remained there about one year and finally got back
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[1782-83].( H.R. Stafford, Carroll County, Mar 28th, 1865).^[3]

The Westerfields did settle in the Bardstown area, a few miles south of the massacre site, and in nearby Mercer County communities, about thirty miles southwest of Lexington. Several Westerfield family members later moved back and forth between Mercer County and Platte Co., Missouri, about six hundred miles apart by land, or about three weeks wagon or carriage travel, but perhaps ten days to two weeks by steamboat, before the 1870s when rail travel became popular.

Jacobus (1755) and Phoebe Westerfield had not joined the 1780 party to Kentucky, but had remained in northern Virginia near Winchester, before returning to York Co., Pennsylvania, and later moving to Kentucky. Cornelius Westerfield, the ancestor of interest, was born at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in February, 1782.[4]

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[1] (West , indiv rec Westerfield, Cornelius)

[2] This route differs slightly from the one outlined here.

[3] (Draper Manuscripts, Boone Papers Series C, Vol. 24, pp145, 145-1, 145-2, 28 March 1865)

[4] (Belcher 30-37)
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Arthur Dirks
24 August 2015