|
Popenoe/Popnoe/Poppino & Allied Families
|
|
|
Peter
II Popeno: Kentucky/Indiana Now
let’s look at what may have happened to Peter when he first left his family in
1778 and again when he left for good in the 1780s. He could have gone
directly to Kentucky but this was pretty early. By 1778 there were only three stations (forts) in Kentucky:
Boone's, Harrod's and Logan's. John
Strode's party (discussed in the next section) did not go out until 1779.
However, in early 1778, Colonel George Rogers Clark was recruiting men at
Redstone Arsenal, downriver from Morgantown, for a campaign down the Ohio River.
Peter's two brothers-in-law, Henry and Jesse Martin lived up that way and
the recruitment efforts undoubtedly extended to Morgantown.
Peter might have been looking for new adventure and the possibility of
getting land farther west, and could have joined them, though his name appears
in none of the records. In May 1778
Clark's 150 recruits floated downstream to the future site of Louisville. When
Clark finally revealed his plans to attack Kaskaskia and Vincennes, with the
goal of going on to throw the British out of Detroit, some of the men waded the
shallows to the Kentucky shore and fled to escape the madman.
Perhaps Peter had his introduction to Kentucky in this way. He does not appear to be among those who went on to
Vincennes; their names are known and they were later granted land along the Ohio
River in southern Indiana. Peter returned to
Morgantown a couple of years later, say 1780, and was there in early
1781 when
Charles Martin agreed to give him half of the land reserved for young Harry
Martin and the two land claims were registered back to back.
He then sold his land and perhaps left soon after. By 1781, thousands more
had moved from the East into Kentucky and the other border communities, but the
war in the West was still going badly. Governor
Jefferson, deciding that another effort must be made to take Detroit,
commissioned Clark a Brigadier General and directed him to collect an army of
2,000 men at Fort Pitt and move down the River as before.
However, Fort Pitt was short of food and everything else and offered no
support to Clark; by end of the following January he had 300 men and he wrote
Washington that they would be naked by March and he had no clothing for them.
Pennsylvania was uncooperative. Many
Pennsylvanians were encouraged by their county lieutenants to regard this as a
Virginia land-grabbing expedition. Eventually, Clark assembled 400 volunteers at Wheeling and on
August 8th started down the river.
But after reaching Louisville, it was determined that he had too few men
and it was too late in the season to capture Detroit so the troops settled down
in the local fort. After further
Indian attacks on the Kentucky settlements, by November l, 1782, Clark assembled
1,050 riflemen at the mouth of the Licking River and they moved north attacking
Indian villages that had mostly been abandoned. Peter Popino's land sale
was in February 1781 and he was presumably free to leave after that.
He might have headed down to Kentucky to join, or rejoin, John Popino, who
was listed in the Kentucky militia in 1780, or he might have joined Clark's new
volunteers for the "land-grabbing expedition."
His only mention in the records was in 1783 when he was listed in the
Kentucky militia, along with John Popino, John Morgan and others from the
Strodes Station area, performing service in Ohio.
This is the last record of his service, but from his later Vincennes
claims, he may have gone on to serve in one or more of the campaigns there. There is no record that he ever went back to Morgantown. During the remainder of
the Revolutionary War period conditions in Kentucky and across the Ohio
generally deteriorated and there were a number of campaigns against the Indians,
any of which might have involved Peter Popeno. With the ratification of the
Peace of Paris in 1783 which ended the Revolutionary War, the frontiersman who
had been congratulating themselves on winning the west were shocked and dismayed
to learn that the Congress had recognized the Indian title as supreme in all the
Northwest Territory (northwest of the Ohio River).
Not a single settler could legally take up land in all that vast region.
No white person was legally allowed to travel among the Indians without a
passport, signed by an Indian agent. As
usual, the frontiersmen did their own thing and ignored the Congressional
injunction. Some of them went up to
Vincennes during Clark's last campaign there in 1785. Clark had helped to negotiate Indian treaties that opened
much of southern Ohio to white settlement.
But the general behavior of the whites led the Indians to conclude that
they would not be satisfied with that, and the Indians organized a Wabash
Confederacy to expel whites from Vincennes and elsewhere.
Clark went back with 1200 men but morale was low and the Lincoln County,
Kentucky militia voted to go home. The main body of the Kentucky militia stopped
long enough to carve out "tomahawk rights" to the rich lands they saw
around them, then fled back to the Falls of the Ohio where they arrived by
sixes, tens, and dozens in total disorder. Clark had made his
conquest of the Old Northwest in 1778 in the name of the Commonwealth of
Virginia. When word of the
victories reached Williamsburg, legislation was adopted organizing all the lands
north of the Ohio as the county of Illinois and sending out a county lieutenant,
with instructions to show every possible respect to the French and to cultivate
the good will of the Indians. When
he reached Vincennes, perhaps in June 1779, he established a civil and criminal
court, headed by the village's wealthiest French merchant, then returned to
Virginia, leaving the people of Vincennes to govern themselves as they wished.
The principal activity of the commandant (a French colonel) and the court
was to make land grants, especially to the new American settlers.
The court was composed entirely of Frenchmen who were accustomed to
having their commandants make cessions of land at will, and they began to grant
lands, to every American immigrant who came and wanted a tract of land.
Vincennes had been
founded in 1732 and was a small thriving French settlement until the French and
Indian War when the British took over. The
inhabitants lived generally in peace with the Indians.
This changed when the Americans arrived.
The population in 1778 was 621 residents; by 1787 it rose to 900 French
and 400 Americans. The local government was openly defied by many of the
Americans who arrived and visits of Indians soon became occasions for drunken
debauchery and robbery. The usual
results followed as the outraged Indians extracted vengeance. In 1787, the Congress
directed the Secretary of War to take immediate action to dispossess "a
body of men who have in a lawless and unauthorized manner taken possession of
Fort St. Vincent [Vincennes]…." In
July, Colonel Josiah Harmer arrived with some 300 regular soldiers to bring
order to the town and to make a show of force that would "deter several
people from Kentucky and other parts from taking up the public lands. The
citizens of Vincennes surrendered their charter and when Harmer returned to Fort
Washington (Cincinnati) he left behind Col. Hamtramck to command the post and
govern the town. Meanwhile, Congress had
passed the Ordnance of 1787 that formulated a plan for a government of the
Territory Northwest of the Ohio. Arthur
St. Clair was named Governor, and Winthrop Sargent Secretary, with the goal of
establishing proper government throughout the Territory and making peace with
the Indians so that the United States could buy more of their lands to sell to
settlers to raise much needed funds. St.
Clair found the people of the Illinois country greatly distressed.
The Virginians had been a plague to these western communities, buying
things with Virginia money which quickly depreciated and later was repudiated.
Many of Clark's soldiers had remained behind to continue a rump
government under which they harassed the local inhabitants. Meanwhile, the
Indians were becoming more warlike and St. Clair returned to Fort Washington to
confer with Col. Harmer. Sargent
stayed behind and, on reaching Vincennes in June 1790, proceeded to organize
Knox County and set up a new government. In trying to straighten
out the land mess Sargent found that grants had been made by the French, the
British, and the courts set up by the Virginians. There were many forgeries.
Between 1779 and 1783, 26,000 acres of land had been granted, and from
1783 to 1787, when Col. Harmer checked the abuse, another 22,000 acres had been
granted, generally in parcels of 400 acres.
John Cleves Symmes, one of the new Judges wrote: "These
people have undoubtedly seen better days under the government of their grand
Monarch, and have unquestionable been declining ever since this country was
ceded to Britain in 1763--they received a second severe blow by the British and
the Americans in the late war, as it was three times taken and lost in one year,
the Conquerors every time preying upon and plundering the inhabitants, until
they were exceedingly distressed--and to finish their sorrow the Kentuckians
have several times assembled their New Militia in order to go against the
Indians, taking Post Vincennes on their rout going and returning, and while
here making very free with the property of the inhabitants under pretext that
the Service of the United States required it, for which the poor wretches never
received compensation." All of this is to give
some background by which we might fit Peter Popino into the Vincennes time and
place. He claimed two plots of land: 340 acres under a court deed
and 244-400 acres by right of improvements.[1]
The first was probably one of those dispensed by the French court
operating loosely under the Virginia government.
340 acres equals 400 arpents, the French measure.
That there was some such deed is evidenced by the fact that Luke Decker
later got this land, listing Peter Pappino as original claimant. It was located along the river Des Chis, a few miles south of
Vincennes. Decker was a big
wheeler-dealer and the largest slaveholder in Vincennes.
The area where Peter had his land is now part of Decker Township.
A claim in right of improvements means that the claimant lived on the
land for at least a year, planted a crop and built a house.
A later listing of American militia in 1790 showed that most of the men
had arrived around 1785. Such was
probably the case with Peter. He
probably did some militia duty around Vincennes from time to time. In 1806 the
Commissioners for examining claims submitted several lists of claims, including
those of Peter Popenoe, which were rejected for lack of evidence.
They also observed that "from about the end of the year 1785 until
about two years after the treaty of Greenville, the country about Vincennes,
completely surrounded by hostile Indian tribes, and cut off from every means of
relief, was placed in a situation highly dangerous. That the attempts to form
settlements and make improvements were faint, hazardous, and most generally
frustrated....Some few notices were filed with the Register by the
representatives of deceased persons, who claimed militia donations under the Act
of 1791. On examining the evidence, it appears that the persons...were dead
before the lst of August 1790 although they were of full age at the time of
their death and duly enrolled in the militia. Even some instances may be cited
of persons having been killed by Indians in defense of the country, and have
never received any donation of lands from the United States." |
|
|