For my ancestors, crossing the Atlantic Ocean was not the end of their migrations. It did not take long before they left the East Coast for the trans-Appalachian frontier, enticed by promises of abundant land but often unaware of the dangers they faced as they encroached upon lands inhabited for thousands of years by Indigenous peoples. Tensions rose even higher during the American Revolution, when the British armed Native nations and encouraged attacks on frontier settlements.
The Conewago Colony of Pennsylvania, where my paternal Dutch/Huguenot ancestors lived, faced a difficult choice. Their families were growing, but farmland was not. Should they remain in a community increasingly surrounded by German and English settlers, dividing their farms into ever-smaller parcels until they became unsustainable, or should they move west? Some relocated to the Shepherdstown area of Berkeley County, Virginia (now in Jefferson County, West Virginia), but that only delayed the inevitable. Soon they heard of the abundant land in Kentucky and of the route south along the Great Wagon Road through the Shenandoah Valley and then west on the Wilderness Road. They had already migrated from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. Would this simply be the next step in their journey?
Because the decision was so consequential, one of the colony's patriarchs—my 5th-great-grandfather, fifty-six-year-old Samuel Duree (or Durie)—volunteered to join a scouting expedition to Fort Boonesborough and the surrounding Kentucky country. The party departed Shepherdstown on March 1, 1779, and arrived safely on April 7.
One interesting coincidence is that, only days before Samuel's party reached the fort, another group led by Joseph Starns, which included my maternal 6th-great-grandfather Frederick Starn, was ambushed by Shawnee warriors while returning to Virginia. Only Joseph's son, Jacob Starns, escaped. But that's another story for another day.
Samuel selected land near White Oak Spring Station in Mercer County, Kentucky, then returned to the Conewago Colony with encouraging news: there was good land, and plenty of it. One migration party, led by Hendrick Banta, settled near the Falls of the Ohio (now Louisville region). Samuel's group arrived in March 1780 and established themselves near White Oak Station, close to Fort Boonesborough. Among them was my 4th-great-grandfather, Peter Cossart, who settled near Hart's (or White Oak) Spring, about a mile from the fort.
The promise of new land in Kentucky, however, came at a terrible cost for the Durie family. During an attack near Samuel's son Petrus's newly built cabin in Mason County, Petrus, his sister Angenitie, and two brothers-in-law were killed, while Petrus's wife escaped with their children. Later, another son, Hendrick, was killed during an attack on White Oak Station. Samuel's son-in-law, Peter Cossart, my ancestor and husband of Marie Durie, was killed while gathering blackberries in the summer of 1781.
Life on the Kentucky frontier was harsh. Although the end of the Revolution eventually brought peace with Native nations, it also brought increasing numbers of settlers, competing land claims, and the expansion of slavery into Kentucky. The once close-knit Dutch/Huguenot community gradually began to disperse. Many families remained in Kentucky, but others—including members of the Banta family—helped found the Shaker community at Pleasant Hill. Still others, including some Banta and Cossairt families, moved north around 1800 to Turtlecreek Township in Warren County, Ohio.
For the Conewago Colony in general—and for Samuel Durie's family in particular—the decision to stay or go was anything but easy. Yet those choices became part of the larger westward movement that shaped both American history and my own family's story. Earlier migrations from New Amsterdam to New Jersey and Pennsylvania had been relatively peaceful. The move to Kentucky, during the turmoil of the American Revolution, proved to be far more costly.
Photo:
Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers Through the Cumberland Gap by George Caleb Bingham, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
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