Posted on: MAUPIN Biographies Reply Here: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/surnames/m/a/MAUPIN/biographies/13 Surname: CORNWALLIS, KENTON, MAUPIN, WASHINGTON ------------------------- A FORGOTTEN HERO OF THE REVOLUTION "TOUGH DANIEL MAUPIN" On the Big Hill Road, three or four miles out of Richmond, Kentucky, there is a little, neglected and forgotten cemetery wherein lies the ashes of two Revolutionary soldiers - the two Daniel Maupins, father and son. The little plot is now a pasture and the sod has covered many of the stones and markers at the graves of the long neglected dead. Some graves are still distinguishable, others have sunken to the same level from which they were rounded up over a hundred years ago. Time levels all things and even so it has leveled the grave and the monument of "Tough Daniel Maupin," Revolutionary hero. Back in the years when our nation was making a desperate struggle for existence, the two Daniels played their part. The father, too old for active service, shouldered the rifle he had carried in the Indian wars and went out to protect his Albemarle home and to help drive Cornwallis out of Virginia. The son gave the very best he had to enable Washington to hold an army together at dreary Valley Forge. We still remember Valley Forge and those despondent days of the Revolution but we have forgotten the man who was Washington's courier in those dreadful days and who carried message after message for his commander, over winter roads, through drifted snow and the British lines that the army might keep in touch with its friends throughout the colonies. Many the time he left bloody tracks on the frozen ground and flinty snow when the rags which bound his feet wore away. And often he spent foodless days and freezing nights that our country might survive. Thus he helped erect one monument that time has not yet leveled - the great United States. After the war, he made his way into the Kentucky wilderness and helped carve out of that same wilderness one of the great states of the union. A neighbor and a friend of Simeon Kenton, the scout, they stood shoulder to shoulder in the struggles with the savage inhabitants of that "Dark and Bloody Ground." Together they cleared the forests and exterminated the prowling beasts and finally found their last resting place in the state they had helped to make. No doubt Daniel Maupin rests in peace. No doubt he is satisfied with the monuments he helped erect - a nation and a state. While he lived, his life was not filled with ease or glory and perhaps he neither asked nor expected more than a lonely, unmarked grave. Other families are proud to honor their heroic dead with monuments and with praise. Our family has been content to let "Tough Daniel Maupin" lie neglected and forgotten. >From THE STORY OF GABRIEL AND MARIE MAUPIN, pages 247 - 248