Daniel Trabue, the pioneer who wrote it all down

He went back to Virginia, peddled goods to American soldiers during the Yorktown campaign, married Mary Haskins in 1782, and brought his family down the Ohio in 1785.

After several years in Fayette County near the Kentucky River, the family moved to the Green River country in present Adair County. There Trabue helped survey and establish the town of Columbia and served as town trustee, sheriff, and justice of the peace while running a grist mill, an inn, and a store.

About 1823 he built a brick house on a hill above town; money troubles forced the family out in 1828. In 1827 he wrote his memoir of the pioneer years, including events at Logan’s Station, Boonesborough, and service under Anthony Wayne. It survives in the Draper Manuscripts and is read today as Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Trabue.

The map pin marks his house at 299 Jamestown Street in Columbia (KHS marker #1782). Read his memoir: Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Trabue (opens in a new tab), edited by Chester Raymond Young (University Press of Kentucky, 1981; borrow it at the Internet Archive (opens in a new tab)), and see his 1827 manuscript autobiography in volume 57J of the Lyman C. Draper Manuscripts (opens in a new tab) at the Wisconsin Historical Society.