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Written Circa 1946
- Unfinished
The Pioneer
By Charles R. Tanner
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I hear they’ve taken down the old bronze
statue in the square at Boltonville and put up a
ninety-foot granite shaft. The square will seem
funny without old Ezra Bolton’s stern face frowning
down on it, but I still keep right on thinking and
talking as if Ezra Bolton was one of the Holy
Trinity. And I suppose the schools there will still
keep on teaching American history as if it were just
the fringe around the edge of Ezra’s life.
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For Boltonville is proud, and justly so, of
its founder. Daniel Boone was all right, I suppose;
and Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson, and all of those
fellows did their best; but the fair-haired boy of
them all – ah! There’s no doubt about it that was
Ezra Bolton.
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There are a lot of Boltons still living in
Boltonville, and the Bolton Mills are there, and the
Pottery, but I don’t think that influences folks’
opinions any. If the Boltons moved out, bag and
baggage, and took their factories with them, the
people would still be just as proud of old Ezra… I
think.
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He really was a terror to the Indians. They
say he used to scalp them, just like the Indians
scalped the white folks, and the time came, so it’s
told, when he wouldn’t keep the scalp of any old
redskin at all, but specialized in chiefs’ scalp
locks only. That may be just a little exaggerated,
but I don’t know. From all I’ve ever heard of him,
it sounds likely.
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Old Ezra was born in 1791, but nobody knows
for sure just where; Freeboro, Massachusetts, most
likely. Several old newspaper articles give that as
his birthplace, but there aren’t any records of a
Bolton family there. Still, records weren’t kept
with any sort of regularity in these days. Freeboro
is as good a place as any to start off the story of
his life, I suppose, for he was gone from there,
never to return, by the time he was sixteen.
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That was how old he was when he ran away from
a farmer named Tucker, to whom he had been rented
out by his father. His mother, who was a Stacey,
must have been already dead by that time, and from
what we can gather, a dollar was worth more to his
father than a son, any day.
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Anyway, before he was seventeen years old, he
had crossed the mountains, worked his way down the
river and obtained possession, somehow, of a horse
and a gun, all that was necessary, in those days, to
rate one a man, no matter how young he was.
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Whether he some knowledge of hunting woodcraft
before he left home, or whether he picked it up
after he came to live in the wilderness, is unknown;
but he must have been quite a woodsman, for Simon
Kenton and Daniel Boone both knew him slightly and
he is mentioned once in Davy Crockett’s
autobiography. All in all, before he was twenty, he
was known throughout the border states as quite a
youngster.
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He did quite a bit of trapping in those days,
especially in the fall, and managed to sell enough
furs to keep him through the winter. The year he
was twenty, he spent the winter at Kendall’s
Landing; and of course it was inevitable that Job
Kendall had a marriageable daughter, that year. Old
Job married off daughters to most of the pioneers of
the state, it seems.
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Anyway, when spring came, there was young
Ezra, a benedict; and swearing to his bride that he
would settle down and become a respectable father
and a farmer that the town would be proud of. He
achieved the first goal with no trouble at all; as
to the second - - well, the year was 1812, and
throughout the border the cry was going out for
volunteers. Ezra held out as long as he could, and
then shouldered his long rifle and marched away with
a company which had been organized by job Kendall’s
oldest son, leaving Johannah already heavy with the
first of his many children.
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Ezra had enlisted, as he thought, to fight the
English, but before long it became evident that the
men of the frontier were going to have their hands
full with the Indians, and, indeed, it wasn’t until
they met them at New Orleans that Ezra’s particular
group ever saw Englishmen at all. But the years of
fighting polished off and perfected Ezra’s
character, and he returned from the south as
hard-fighting, as hard-drinking, and as hard-talking
as any pioneer on the west side of the mountains.
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Meanwhile, Johannah had tried to keep up the
farm. Ezra had hardly finished clearing it when he
left; yet cleared it had to be, if there was to be
food that winter; and most of the able bodied men
were gone to war. So, though she occasionally had
the help of one of the few men left in the district,
most of the remaining clearing fell upon the young
mother herself. She managed to plant some corn and
potatoes, pretty late; and did everything else that
could possibly be expected of an eighteen year old
girl with an infant daughter.
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It was a pretty hard winter, nevertheless.
The worst came in February and the early part of
March, when they were snowed in for nearly five
weeks. They ran out of food entirely and Johannah
had to take a gun and tramp off through the arrow
looking for game. She came back empty-handed for
several days, for she didn’t dare to go too far from
the house where she had left the baby. Whether she
ever did get anything or not, history doesn’t state,
but she held out somehow and when the snows at last
melted she made her way to the neighbor’s house, a
Mister Morey’s, and here she lived until the weather
broke and she could return to her own cabin.
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She managed better in the spring of 1814, and
in May, Ezra returned again in the fall, and when he
departed for the south to join up with Jackson’s
forces, there was enough laid by to make the winter
much easier one than the last. It would have been
an easier one, that is, if young Brice had not been
such a difficult child to bear. Folks thereabout
said that if she had had as easy a time with Brice
as she had the Lucinda, she might never have
developed that weakness in the chest that was to be,
the bane of her existence from that year on.
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The war over, Ezra returned with a new idea.
The town was beginning to grow, and although his
farm was hardly more than three years old, it had
increased quite a little in value, so he proposed to
sell it and go further west. He would probably have
carried out the plan at once had it not been for
Johannah’s health. That held him back for a year or
two, a fortunate circumstance, for when he did sell
and start west, he had a good wagon and team, and
plenty of supplies and quite a nest egg in cash.
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In the spring of 1818, he traveled down one
river, up another and on west until he came to the
point where the Keegaskin flows into the main
stream. Here, on the broad bottomland between the
two streams, where the business section of
Boltonville is today, he built his homestead. And
here, a month or two later, young Ezra was born.
They say that old Ezra had been pretty piqued
because Brice had not been named after him, but if
so, he was satisfied now. Little Ezra became the
apple of his eye, and forever remained so, even long
after Brice had been elected to Congress, his
namesake still remained his favorite.
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Ezra’s farm had netted him a goodly profit.
He saw, now, a chance to use the money to good
stead. When, during the summer of 1819, quite a
number of settlers passed his home on the way west,
he seized opportunity and established a general
store and trading post. That it was a successful
goes without saying, had it not been, this story
would probably never have been told.
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But fate was not to allow Ezra Bolton to
vegetate as mere general store keeper, yet. Early
in the spring of 1820, a settler’s wagon was
attacked by Indians and the settler killed. One of
his sons escaped from the attack and managed to get
back to Bolton’s store. Ezra at once called out all
the settlers in the neighborhood, send word up and
down the main river, and managed to get together
some forty men, who set out to avenge the murdered
man and to rescue, if possible, his wife and
whatever children were still alive. He left the
store and the farm in charge of Johannah; with such
help as little Lucinda was able to give her. And
though the child was only eight, the chances are
that that help was not a little, for even then the
hardness and strength of character that were to
distinguish Lucinda all her life must have been
evident.
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But, as was almost characteristic with Ezra,
he left his wife with child. This was Nehemiah, the
fourth child and the last which he had rom
Johannah. Physically, Johannah was weak and sickly
ever since that year when she found herself snowed
in with little Lucinda. There is not much doubt
that she had tuberculosis, and it tells volumes
about the indomitable spirit of the woman when we
realize that she fought that dread a disease for
over a decade before she finally succumbed to it.
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But to return to Ezra and his Indian fighting…
he departed on this sortie, which he expected to be
on a march of a few weeks duration, at the head of
about forty men. But the depredation which had set
him off had been but the beginning of a general
Indian uprising, and before he knew it his little
company had been absorbed into the army of General
Lew Shackelford, which had been sent to put down the
uprising.
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It was during this campaign that Ezra won his
greatest laurels. When he set out, he was at the
head of about forty men who rather dubiously called
him captain. When he returned he was Colonel Bolton
the Indian Fighter, and he remained so to the end of
his life. The campaign carried him over three
states and several territories and his name was
linked with Lew Shackelford’s, and his fame, if
anything, surpassed the general’s.
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The Indians were soon driven out of the
territory around the mouth of the Keegaskin, and the
result was that the land thereabouts was settled
much sooner than it would have been if the war
hadn’t taken place. So Ezra’s business prospered,
even in his absence, and he returned to find himself
a much more prosperous man than he had been when he
left, as well as much more famous one.
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They say, during the twenties, settlers would
go out of their way, along the river, to stop at
Bolton’s and trade, and listen to advise from the
famous Colonel Bolton. And quite a number settled
near there, too, for there was a certain feeling of
security to be under the wing, as it were, of such a
famous warrior.
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In 1828, Johannah died. All during Ezra’s
absence, she had run the store, kept up the farm,
and attended to the children, to say nothing of the
countless chores that were the natural business of a
woman of her day. There was fruit and vegetables to
put, wood to cut for winter, cloth to spin, quilts
to make, washing, cooking; need I list anymore? At
any rate, it was too much for a woman whose health
had been growing worse and worse for years, and at
last she succumbed.
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She was buried in August. The following
February Ezra married Maria Whitlow, the daughter of
Israel Whitlow, who had established a mill on the
Keegaskin, not far from Bolton’s place.
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Now, there are folks who consider Ezra a
heartless wretch for marrying as soon after his
wife’s death. But they’re modern folks, generally,
and folks who haven’t read much history, either. I
think the fact that Ezra held out as long as he did
shows that he truly loved his wife and truly mourned
her passing. Here was a successful young man, still
only thirty-seven years old, with four children to
take care of, with a busy store to look after, a
farm to ten and only the children to help him. It
was truly more than God intended any man to do, and
it is no wonder that, after trying it all winter, he
yielded to his natural impulses in the spring and
married again.
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Honeymoons were not a common thing, in those
days. But then, Ezra Bolton was not a common man.
He announced that he was going to take his wife to
Washington, to attend the inauguration of Jackson,
and in spite of the ordeals of the journey, take her
he did. When he returned with the office of
postmaster of the new village of Boltonville there
were some who said that was all he had gone to
Washington for in the first place; but more than
likely they were just jealous.
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For several years, it began to look like the
pioneering days of Ezra Bolton were over for good.
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