The Not-So-Great Outdoors
For 2023, I’m writing responses to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Days prompts provided by Amy Johnson Crow on her ”Generations Café” website and Facebook page.
My 6th great-grandfather Simeon Walton (1741-1798) is an unlikely frontiersman. A Baptist preacher from central Virginia, you would not expect him to trek through the wilderness. But trek he did – from Fredericksburg, Virginia, down the Great Wagon Road (or Great Valley Road) through Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and into Kentucky on the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap. He did this, not once, but twice – once in 1781 and again in 1795. This means he made the reverse trip once. As you read the following, think about that.
Let me tell you about Simeon.
Simeon’s interest in Kentucky went back to 1781. In that year, a group of Virginia Baptists called the “Traveling Church” pulled up stakes and moved as a congregation to Kentucky.
The founders of this group, Rev. Lewis Craig and Capt. William Ellis, wrote The Travelling church: an account of the Baptist Exodus from Virginia, a first-hand account of the travels of this group of about 200 Baptists from Spotsylvania County, Virginia (between Richmond and Washington, DC). One of the members of this group was Captain Ellis’s father, also named William Ellis, who is identified as the “aging shepherd of the Nottaway flock” and another was Simeon Walton, identified as “pastor for a season of Nottaway Church.” I don’t think that Simeon and his wife Agnes Hester permanently relocated to Kentucky in 1781, but I know for sure that they moved permanently to Kentucky in 1795. I’m going to spend some time and attention recounting the story that this book tells – not only because Simeon was on the trip, but because it is probably similar to stories of other groups who crossed the mountains along this route.
This book provides stunning evidence of the drive to move West after the American Revolution. Its depiction of the gathering of church members – described as “men, women and children, slaves, pack horses, cattle, dogs, and loaded wagons as had never been seen in the county before.” -- on “farewell Sunday” in September of 1781, at Upper Spotsylvania Baptist Church – is both inspiring and heartbreaking. This church was often called “Craig’s Church,” because of the importance of Lewis Craig to this church. After a day-long ceremony to see off the parishioners who were heading to Kentucky, the group camped for the night on the church grounds – the first night of many weeks of camping that were to follow – and left the next morning.
The authors compare this movement to that of the “greater church” as it “journeyed from Egypt but ensanguined plains of Canaan.” There are no records that show how and why this church decided to move, but move they did. They had even determined where they were going to settle – some were heading for the area of Logan’s Fort in central Kentucky (in what is now Lincoln County), and others a few miles east of Lexington. Simeon Walton was one of probably a dozen preachers who were part of this group. The authors also note that many more Baptists followed in the path of the “Travelling Church,” and Simeon and Agnes moved to Kentucky permanently in 1795.
The rest of this short book recounts the story of this trip. The church members took with them most items pertaining to the Spotsylvania church – including the church books and records, its communion service, and the pulpit Bible. Much of what was important to this church was packed up and taken to Kentucky – so much so that the Upper Spotsylvania was “without either congregation or constitution.” In addition to the 200 church members, there were an estimated 300 or more additional travelers.
The route they traveled went through the Virginia Piedmont – Gordonsville and Charlottesville and on to Lynchburg on the James River. They crossed the Blue Ridge at Buford’s Gap (the route of modern Virginia Route 460, near the Peaks of Otter.) From there, they followed the Great Wagon Road south through the Shenandoah Valley until the Wilderness Road (the route first traversed by Daniel Boone) headed in a southwesterly direction toward the next range of mountains. At Fort Chiswell (near modern Wytheville), they had to give up their wagons and travel over the next ranges of mountains by foot and packhorse. The road was rough, and the men and slaves in the group had to go ahead of the main group to clear away rocks and stumps and fallen trees.
It had taken the group three weeks to travel this far – and now the party had begun to hear that increasing activity on the part of the “savages” along the route meant that it was too dangerous at that time to make their way into Kentucky. The group had hoped to cross the mountains before winter weather set in, but that was not to be. While they were stopped in Holston (near modern-day Abingdon, just a few miles north of the Tennessee border), they encountered a group of Baptists from the same part of Virginia they were from. This group had started for Kentucky almost a year earlier but had also been delayed by threatened Indian troubles.
It was while the group was halted at Abington that they got word of the British surrender at Yorktown. This was the occasion for much rejoicing. Many members of the group had family members who had been involved in the fighting; several of Simeon’s brothers had served as soldiers in the war.
After waiting a few weeks, the group decided to keep heading west, willing to trade off the dangers of bad weather against the apparent retirement of the Indians to winter quarters. They followed the route of the Wilderness Road, which dipped into Tennessee before heading back into Virginia and on to Kentucky. They soon endured the first attack by the Indians – which they repelled, but not without the loss of the life of one of their sentries. Days of bad weather followed – rains that swelled the streams, increased cold and the resulting illnesses. Their food rotted, and for days on end they existed on the meat procured by their hunters and by the beef from their dwindling herd of cattle.
Under these conditions, it took the group three weeks to travel the 30 miles to the Cumberland Gap. By this time it was snowing, but they were afraid to light fires for warmth or cooking when they camped, for fear of Indians. They could travel only a few miles a day, but they were encouraged that they were past the last great mountain ridge and were actually in Kentucky. They only had 50 miles to go to reach the first blockhouse on the trail, where they would find warmth and safety. Reaching this objective was a tremendous relief to them. They quickly found a place to settle and, after clearing a spot in the woods, they established “Craig’s Station,” where they worshipped together on the second Sunday in December 1781, using the Bible they had brought with them from Spotsylvania. This was the first church meeting in central Kentucky.
It was only a couple of years later that most of this congregation moved to South Elkhorn (about five miles from Lexington), where they established another church. Ten years later, Reverend Craig (the leader of this group and a co-author of the book I’m summarizing here) moved to Mason County, Kentucky, and later founded a church in what would become Bracken County. Simeon and Agnes would settle near this church when they came to Kentucky a couple of years later.
I had many ancestors who heard the call of The West and left the comfort and familiarity of their homes to take advantage of what they hoped the frontier had to offer. Most of them were reasonably successful, although I don’t think anyone got rich. Some had to move several times before they settled in a permanent location. Some never really settled at all, but moved every few years for the rest of their lives. But this story of Simeon and the “traveling church” provides the best detail I’ve ever read about what it was like to be in the Great Outdoors in the 1780s.
Or, as they probably would have said, The Not-So-Great Outdoors.
Good grief. Quite the journey.