KINCHELOE’s STATION
Then called Burnt Station 1781-1782Article from Historic Nelson County, Its Towns and People by Sarah B. Smith, 1983
Quotes from Saturday Gazette May 26,1855. "Here in Nelson County, probably from its interior situation, was less exposed to the continual ravages of the Indians than some others. The section exposed including the Falls of the Ohio, Harrodsburg, Boonesborough, and St. Aseph's or Logan's Station, having been the first points of settlement by the whites, were more particularly and frequently the objects of attack. The attack on Burnt Station was an exception. It was one of the most tragic scenes in the early settlement of our county."
The year in which the station was taken and burnt, is not ascertained. It must have been 1781 or 1782.
Isaac Davis said he was about six years of age when the station was burnt. He was taken prisoner. A hunter said he saw the Indians pass going toward Bullitts Lick.
A man by the name of Harrison, seeing no escape for his wife and a relative visiting them hid them under the floor. A man by the name of Osborne Bland was taken prisoner but his wife escaped. She was found in the woods after seven days. The husband returned after three years and they raised large family. The Indians collected their captives and set fire to the fort.
The two women, according to James Cox, then a youth of thirteen, took the trace to Bardstown. But according to the recollection of Elias Kincheloe, son of William Kincheloe, a settler of the station who had removed and settled some eight or nine miles distant, it was Mrs. Harrison and a relative who went to Cox's Station. It is agreed that the two women escaped. Also a Mrs. Davis with a boy Benjamin took the trace to Cox's Station. When they arrived they were met by a boy who was gathering wood. He saw them nearly naked and their distressed countenances appalled him. He rushed to the house and his mother gave them clothing. It is also told that the Indians being annoyed by the cries of Mrs. Ash's child, killed the child. The Indians tried to force her on, she resisted and she met with a frantic death.
The situation of Mrs. Polke as a prisoner was bad. She was pregnant and compelled to walk and keep pace with the Indians. She found herself unable to go any farther. They started to kill her but someone more humane intercepted and took her as his prisoner. She was then taken to Detroit, where the Indians sold the prisoners. There it was Mr. Polke's good fortune to meet with his wife.
After the battle of Blue Licks in August 1782, the Indian forces had scattered.
The night the stations were burnt it is told that the men returned from the defense of Bryan's Station, weary, and thinking that the Indians had been dispersed. They were not on guard that night.
It will be remembered at the Battle of the Blue Licks, when the pursuing force overtook the Indians on Licking Run, Boone, Todd, and Harrod urged that they should await the arrival of General Logan who was gathering the riflemen around Danville and Stanford, and would arrive within twenty-four hours. But the hot-heads and the reckless urged immediate battle, led by Major McGary, who rushed into the stream exclaiming, "All who are not cowards will follow me."
All followed and paid a fearful penalty for their rashness. Every settlement in the Blue Grass settlement mourned its dead.
Logan, as predicted by Boone, arrived the next morning; buried the dead as quietly as possible, and followed the Indians to the Ohio River. He believed they had all left Kentucky, but was mistaken. With the devilish cunning peculiar to the North American Indian, a band said to have numbered seventeen, slipped away from the main body leaving no trace of their movements, passed silently and stealthily, between the settlements, reached Nelson County, and encamped at Dugans Spring, some two miles east of Polke's Station. When the attack was made on Bryant's Station, Colonel Floyd, who commanded the riflemen in this section, was called on to assemble his men and march quickly to the relief of Bryant's. The men at Polke's and Kincheloe's Stations promptly responded to the call and marched with Col. Floyd to the relief of their brothers. When Col. Floyd reached Frankfort, he received news of the Battle of Blue Licks and that Logan was pursuing the Indians with horsemen. Col. Floyd thereupon dismissed his men, and they separated to return to their homes. The men from Polke's and Kincheloe's stations traveled together to where Bloomfield was later located, arriving some time between dark and midnight. The Kincheloes invited Polke and his men to go home with them and spend the night, but, being anxious to relieve the anxiety of their families in their own homes, Polke and his men declined, and took the road across the hills to their homes at the station. The Kincheloe men went down the creek to their homes, weary from the long march. They went to bed and to sleep, the deep sleep that only the very weary enjoy. As they believed all the Indians gone, they placed no sentinels on guard.
Meanwhile the Indians at Dugan's Spring were biding their time. When satisfied, as midnight approached, that all were asleep at Polke's and Kincheloe's stations, they silently approached, scaled the palisades, entered the cabins, and killed and scalped all of the men, women and children except Mrs. Polke and some four other women, who were led away captives. They set fire to the fort, which was completely destroyed.
The Indians then left, going down the creek to Kincheloe's Station. While the Indians were silently and stealthily moving down the creek to commit another butcher, Polke and his men were passing along the road not two miles away in joyous anticipation of soon embracing their loved ones, most of whom had crossed the beautiful, but unknown river.
No sentinel was on guard at Kincheloe's to sound the alarm, and the savages silently climbed over the palisades and slew the men in their beds. As at Polke's, men, women and children were killed and scalped, except a few of the women who were carried off with Mrs. Polke and the others to the town of Detroit.
These good women soon afterward were purchased from the Indians by the English Governor of Detroit, who restored them to their friends as soon as he could communicate with them.
Since in the past years there has been much discussion as to the location of Kincheloe Station, by the request of the Kentucky Historical Society, Messer’s F. Jewell, former County Judge of Spencer County, and J. Henry Greenwell, Mayor of Taylorsville, have established to their satisfaction the exact location of the Old Kincheloe Fort at which an Indian massacre took place in September, 1782. They have marked the location by driving down an iron stake to which is attached a metal tag marked "1782K.E."
This location is in Nelson County, one-half mile south of the Spencer County line, and one-half mile east of the Stark Mason farm on a farm now owned by George Dennis and situated between the east fork and the south fork of Simpson Creek, two and one-half miles downstream from Bloomfield.
After Messrs. Jewell and Greenwell had gathered all the information they could from several histories of Pioneer Kentucky and from an eye witness who had seen the last decayed remnants of the old fort, they, on September 21, 1933, accompanied by J. W. Crume, local attorney, G. Louis Hume, former county School Superintendent, and Columbus Shields visited the Dennis farm.
The exact location of the fort was identified by Mr. Shields who more than sixty years ago was shown the place by his grandmother. He is past three score years and ten. He was born on Simpson Creek and has spent all his life on that creek or near it. His grandmother who was Miss Downs before marriage was born in 1806 and lived to be 97 years old.
She told him at the time she showed him the ruins of the old fort that her father was there when the Indians made the attack and that he was one of the few who escaped.
These gentlemen who were looking for the site of the old fort said that it was a mastermind who made the selection for a fort as a defensive point.
Kincheloe Fort or stockade according to the information gathered was built in a bottom field of about ten acres, on a high spot near a spring and out of gunshot from the enemy on the adjoining hill, by which the valley was surrounded on three sides. From a point on one of these hills a sentinel could have plain view of the entire valley.
All might have gone well at the fort on that eventful night, we are told, if the pioneers had put out guards.
Collins History states "there were six or seven families and perhaps about thirty inhabitants occupying the forts at the time of the massacre."
It is also stated that all the inhabitants in one cabin were murdered. In two or more cabins, part was killed and part escaped. In one of the cabins, the wife, child, and a young woman were placed under the floor and the husband escaped in the darkness, and returned after all danger had passed to release them from their dungeon. They fled to another station.
In another cabin the door of which the Indians broke down, they numbered five to one against the whites, killed the wife and baby and in turn the man killed three Indians and wounded the other two, after which he escaped with the other child. Another young woman escaped from the Indians and was lost 16 days and was found naked and starved.
A statement by Mrs. C. W. Brown, Bloomfield, Kentucky, who was 95 in the year 1969, "Polke's and Kincheloe Station were two different stations. "Kincheloe Station is down Simpson's Creek from Bloomfield on the farm owned by George Dennis who put a marker at the site of the station." Polke's Station was purchased by her great- great grandfather, James Houston, who came to Kentucky from Pennsylvania. She states that she has heard her late grandfather, M. D. Houston, tell of the awful tragedies committed by the Indians.
When the Indians burned the stations they were called "The Burnt Stations."
History of Kentucky by Z. F. Smith has the following statement: "Capture of Kincheloe's Station: a detached body of Gertys Indians crossed the lower Kentucky River, and next appeared at Kincheloe's Station on Simpson's Creek, which they surprised and captured. There were but six or seven families here, and a weak defense of men. Nearly all were tomahawked and scalped or carried off in captivity. A number of the Indians were killed in the desperation of defense. Thomas Randolph sheltered his wife and two children, and killed and wounded a number of the savages in their assault upon them. At length his wife and an infant in her arms were murdered by his side. He instantly caught his living child under his arm, mounted to the loft, and thus escaped through the roof, cutting down two more Indians who barred his way. Some of these prisoners, women and children borne north- ward were liberated, returned home the next year, after the treaty of peace with England."
Also reference is made from an old newspaper "The Saturday Gazette" published in Bardstown and dated October 1, 1841, which contains an article entitled "A Memoirs of the Burnt Station." It was an article compiled by Major Thomas Speed, partly from tradition and partly from the recollection of men living at that time who were boys at the time of the massacre by the Indians. The article is a ghastly recital of Indian warfare. The article speaks of the tragedy being done in August or September of 1782.
Horrible atrocities were practiced by the savages - so gruesome that it is difficult to believe that they occurred in our own fair Nelson County and in dwelling on the details it is easy to understand why our state was referred to as the "dark and bloody ground."
On September 11, 1976 when the Highway Marker for Kincheloe, Polke (later called Burnt Station) was unveiled, two historians, Bob Watson and David Hall, came up with the following information about the site.
Direction Marker located on Highway 62 (900 yards, northeast of this marker, and east of Creek Branch.) Built in March-April 1780 and located on Powell's Trace between Harrodsburg and Bullitt's Lick. It was first called Kincheloe Station after one of the leaders who established it, Capt. William Kincheloe. The same station was later alternately called "Polke's Station" for Charles Polke, who claimed the land on which it stood. In August 1782 a party of Indians attacked under cover of darkness. Some of the men were away on militia duty - called out because of the Indians under Simon Girty and Capt. Caldwell and the siege of Bryan's Station. The surprise attack was successful, the station was captured and burned. At least 13 people were killed in the attack or captured. Many escaped in the darkness. William Kincheloe had moved to his land before the attack but Charles Polke's family was captured and taken to Detroit. The "Burnt Station" was never rebuilt. Several years after the attack only a few huts and a cluster of graves remained to mark the site of another pioneer tragedy.
History of Kentucky - School History of Kentucky, by Z. F. Smith, Page 104:
"A desperate fight - This took place from a flatboat passing from Louisville to the salt works, near Bullitt Lick, on Salt River. In 1788, the crew, twelve men and one woman under the leadership of Henry Crist and Chistian Crepps. A sound like the gobbling of turkeys lured them ashore. Soon they found a large body of Indians, and ran back to the boat, and sheltered behind the iron kettles with which the boat was loaded, and ranged on each side. The Indians, over one hundred in number, rushed on to the rifles of the crew, and many felt the deadly fire. The boat was chained to the shore and they fought for an hour, until freed, and able to float out into the Salt River. The Indians crossed over and fired from both sides. Crepps and most of the crew were killed. Crist and two or three others escaped, while the woman was made captive. Crepps left a widow and a son and a daughter. The latter afterward became the wife of Governor Chas. Wickliffe and the mother of Hon. J.Crepps Wickliffe, State Attorney for Kentucky under President Cleveland."
Other stations in adjoining counties helping to protect the little village of Salem and all other settlers in Nelson County were as follows: Brashear Station - Bullitt Lick - Bullitt County - Mouth of Floyds Fork; Capt, Wm. Hardin Station - Breckenridge County; Settlement at the Falls of the Ohio; Colonel Floyd's and Harrod's Settlements in Jefferson County, Boone's and Ballard - Shelby County; Settlement at Frankfort; Bryant's Station and another at Lexington and others.
When it is remembered that the Indians on their various and frequent invasions of Kentucky crossed the Ohio River between the mouths of the Miami and Sciotas Rivers it is readily seen how the outlying forts protected Salem and the county.
The three raids by the Indians that we know about are as follows: "One in the Chaplin Section - Seven Indians attacked the cabin of a settler named Merrill. All were slain but Mrs. Merrill and a Negro man. Merrill being absent at the time." (Refer to Collins History.) In 1781 or 1782 a small band of Indians attacked Roger's Station but meeting with stern resistance quickly decamped without loss to the garrison. In 1781 -The Burnt Station massacre.
In 1790 the Indians were threatening the pioneer's very doors. The government was informed at this time that more than 1500 people had been killed by the Indians - that 20,000 houses and $75,000 worth of property had been destroyed.