An Old Hero Returns...

I found this brief story of Simon Kenton in a book titled “On the Kentucky Frontier” by James Otis, published in 1900… and this story is of Kenton, at age 70, visiting Kentucky.

Poor Simon Kenton experienced the bitter effects of wrong, ingratitude, and neglect.  On account of some legal matters concerning his lands in  Kentucky, he was imprisoned upon the very spot where he  built his cabin  in 1775.  In 1802, beggared by lawsuits and losses, he  became  landless.  Yet he never murmured at the ingratitude which pressed him  down, and in 1813 the veteran joined the Kentucky troops under Shelby,  and was in the battle of the Thames.

In  1824, then seventy years, old, he journeyed (from Logan County, Ohio)  to Frankfort, in tattered garments and upon a miserable horse, to  ask  the Legislature of Kentucky to release the claims of the State upon  some of his mountain lands.  He was stared at by the boys, and shunned by the citizens, for none knew him.  At length, General Thomas Fletcher recognized him, gave him a new suit of clothes, and entertained him kindly.

When it was known that Simon Kenton was in town, scores flocked to see the  old hero.  He was taken to the Capitol and seated in the Speaker’s  chair.  His lands were released, and afterward Congress gave him a  pension of two hundred and forty dollars a year.  

He died, at the age of eighty-one years, in 1836, at his residence at the head of Mad River, Logan County, Ohio, in sight of the place where, fifty-eight years before, the Indians were about to put him to death.”

In 1865 Simon’s remains were moved from the original burial site to Oak  Dale Cemetery in Urbana, OH.  In 1884, the State of Ohio erected a monument there to honor Kenton.