Hi All, Received two additional installments on this subject while on vacation. Here's the first. --------- On a visit in western North Carolina, Stoner was caught up in forces leading to the Battle of King's Mountain, which took place on October 12, 1780. That was where the British lost their paramount weapons researcher, Major Patrick Ferguson. He was commander of the loyalist troops trapped on King's Mountain and virtually annihilated by an American force composed almost entirely of Virginia and Carolina frontiersmen. 400 of the original 1200 loyalists lived to surrender after a sniper cut Major Ferguson down. An ironic footnote to this incident was that Ferguson, an extraordinary marksman himself as well as the inventor of the first breech-loading flintlock rifle used in England, had specifically been assigned to kill George Washington at the battle of Germantown, by sniping him across the battlefield. Ferguson found Washington and had him in his sights, but, not being able to believe that a general officer would dress so casually, he concluded that his target could not! be Washington and held his fire. Later, in 1782, Stoner was wounded in the Battle of Blue Licks, in present day central Kentucky. This battle is often cited as the last engagement of the Revolutionary War. It was the end of the last British campaign in the West. It involved a force of 600 from north of the Ohio, including fifty British Regulars under Captain Wm. Caldwell. The rest of the army consisted of Indians from the various Ohio Nations. Among their leaders was the notorious Simon Girty. The invaders crossed the Ohio in late August or early September and proceeded without being detected to The Blue Licks (a salt spring or seep long used by both humans and animals as a salt source) on the Licking River in Kentucky. There, about 350 of the force set itself up in camp while the remaining 250, including the 50 Redcoats, proceeded further inland and attacked Bryan's Station. Various militia groups, totaling some 180 or so men assembled in Lexington and came to reinforce the Station only to find the be! siegers gone. Convinced by the British presence that they were chasing the entire invading force, the Kentuckians went in pursuit, following them back to their main camp at The Blue Licks. Charging across the Licking River into what they thought to be the camp of a force approximately the same size as theirs, The Kentuckians ran into an ambush that dealt them their most severe defeat in their long Border War with the Ohio Indian Nations. Seventy two of the Kentuckians were killed in that battle. The Indians, for it was largely and Indian action, lost only three, and four others were slightly wounded. The remaining Kentuckians fled back across the Licking River in panic. Stoner was wounded early on in the fight and fell from his horse. He hid in the bushes until the day after the battle, when he was rescued by militia reinforcements under Col. Benjamin Logan. Logan arrived a day too late to help the Kentuckians; they knew he was coming with several hundred men, but, instead of waiting for him, they resorted to their usual tactic of a head-on charge into the fray immediately after first contact with the enemy. Stoner later participated in various campaigns up into the Ohio country that were part of the Indian wars that raged across the eastern United States following the Revolutionary War. These conflicts have traditionally been granted only a few paragraphs in most general American History books. Reexamination of these times shows them to be part of a pivotal era in American history. This was when national policies and attitudes developed that have directed every aspect of United States' expansion, even to the present day. Specifically, Stoner campaigned with Capt. Wm. Hardin, and Colonel Logan in 1786 on a successful raid against the Shawnees made possible by the diversion of George Rogers Clark's campaign against the Miami. It is also thought that he went out with his uncle, now Colonel Wm. Bush, on Harmar's fruitless campaign against the Miamis led by Little Turtle in September, 1790. Harmar and his force of more than fourteen hundred men were ambushed and soundly defeated near the ruins of the magnificent Indian town of Kekionga, which had been at the headwaters of the Maumee River in what is now northeastern Indiana. In around 1786, Stoner was married to Frances Tribble, born in 1769, daughter of Reverend Andrew Tribble and his wife, Sarah Ann Burris. Stoner was 38 years old; his wife was 17. After the marriage, the Stoners settled in what is now Clark County, Kentucky five miles southeast of the town of Winchester. Their first child, George Washington Stoner, was born there. In 1797, they moved to the Cumberland River area in Pulaski County, and later to Wayne County, near Monticello, Kentucky. Stoner's Fork of the Licking River was named after him because of his making pre-emption and settlement on that stream at a place about five miles south of present Paris, Kentucky. ------------- Larry -- Larry DeFrance, Helena Montana USA Caretaker: The DeFrance Family Home Page - http://www.helenet.com/~larry/fam_home.html The DeFrance Mailing List - [email protected], The Susquehanna River Mailing List - [email protected] Co-Caretaker: The Boone Mailing list - [email protected]