Pluggy
Pluggy (
McClelland's Station
in 1776.
Life
Originally from a
Ottawas to stage raids against American settlements.[3] In late 1775, he joined the British at the start of western operations in the American Revolution.[4]
In December 1776, Pluggy led a band of thirty warriors up the
Harrod's Town on Christmas morning [5] and, later that day, ambushed a 10-man party under John Todd and John Gabriel Jones. The men had been marching down the valley towards the Ohio River, where Jones and George Rogers Clark had stored 500 pounds of gunpowder, when they were attacked killing Jones and another man in the fusillade and capturing another four men in the final charge.[6] The remaining four were able to escape, the story later being told by one of the survivors, pioneer and hunter David Cooper, in the 1987 book The Kentuckians by Janice Holt Giles.[7]
Several days later, he arrived at
McClelland's Station, a settlement of thirty families located in present-day downtown Georgetown[8] and defended by twenty settlers including frontiersman Robert Todd, Robert Ford, Robert Patterson, Edward Worthington, Charles White and founder John B. McClelland. On 29 December, Pluggy led between forty and fifty warriors against the fort and retreated after several hours of fighting leaving a number of men dead including Charles White and John McClelland. During the retreat, Pluggy himself was shot and killed by four of the fort's defenders in retribution for the death of McClelland.[9][10]
He was later buried by members of his tribe on a bluff overhanging the nearby spring and, for a number of years afterwards, a popular legend claimed that the echo heard in the area was the death cry of Pluggy.[11]
Notes and references
- ^ Smyth, Samuel Gordon. A Genealogy of the Duke-Shepherd-Van Metre Family: From Civil, Military, Church and Family Records and Documents. Lancaster: New Era Printing Company, 1909. (pg. 181)
- ISBN 0-521-66345-8
- ISBN 0-521-47569-4
- ISBN 0-271-02522-0
- ISBN 0-8117-0968-X
- ISBN 0-8117-0077-1
- ISBN 0-8131-0177-8
- ISBN 0-8117-0979-5
- ISBN 0-8131-1801-8
- ^ Conover, Charlotte Reeve. Concerning the Forefathers: Being a Memoir, with Personal Narrative and Letters of Two Pioneers, Col. Robert Patterson and Col. John Johnston. New York: Winthrop Press, 1902. (pg. 146)
- ^ Federal Writers' Project. Kentucky: A Guide to the Bluegrass State. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939. (pg. 264)
Further reading
- Taylor, James W. History of the State of Ohio. Cincinnati: H.W. Derby & Co. Publishers, 1854.