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HANCOCK TAYLOR MARKER
IS UNVEILED ON LANCASTER PIKE

(RICHMOND REGISTER –July 1960)

Hancock Taylor, pioneer who died here of a wound received in a fight with Indians in 1774 and who was buried a few miles southwest of Richmond was honored this afternoon with the unveiling of a bronze plaque. The marker was placed about one and one-half miles from the city on the Lancaster Road not far from the grave on the Oscar Tudor Farm.  Dr. J.T. Dorris, Vice Chairman of the Kentucky Historic Markers Committee and of the Eastern State College History Department addressed a meeting of the sponsoring organization, the National Society of Colonial Dames of America of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, this morning at the home of Mrs. Paul Burnam, West Main Street. He outlined Taylor’s brief life and told of the Virginian’s travels.

Presented Gavel
Dr. Dorris presented to the organization a gavel made from the Boone sycamore, a large tree that once stood at Boonesborough. Almost 50 Colonial Dames attended the meeting and the luncheon that followed. 

Dr. Dorris’ Address from October 5, 1951:

“Today we are honoring Hancock Taylor, an early explorer of Kentucky.  He was a native of Virginia when the Old Dominion extended to the Mississippi and the Great Lakes. His achievements did not place him in a category with Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and many other noted Virginians. Nor was he in a class with the Boones, Clays, and Breckenridge’s and many other distinguished Kentuckians. Nevertheless, his life and death deserve the particular consideration we are giving him today. Yet, if he was not among the great, he at least was related to the great.  A brother, Richard, had a son, Zachary Taylor, who became President of the United States. Moreover, he was a kinsman of Henry Lee, the father of General Robert Lee. He was a kinsman of the famous John Taylor of Caroline. He was a kinsman of John Edmund Pendleton, author of the resolution in the Continental Congress under which Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. And he was also related to John Penn, who signed that Declaration.

Manor Born
We might truly say, therefore, that Hancock Taylor was “to the manor born.”  His birthplace, in 1740 was not far from the birthplaces of George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, Patrick Henry, Henry Clay, and Robert E. Lee—a nativity unsurpassed in American History. Out of such kinship and environment should come men of great and noble possibilities.  Perhaps, Hancock Taylor would have made a greater name for himself if he had lived longer.  He died at the age of 34. Our hero grew to manhood during the struggle when Great Britain drove the French from North America.  Apparently, he did not participate in the French and Indian War.  He was ready, however, to promote advantages to Virginians accruing from the war.  In 1754, George III had assured Americans that officers and men who supported the British cause against the French in the New World would be rewarded with unoccupied western lands. Only a few years earlier Virginia had given large grants to each of two land companies. Dr. Thomas Walker had led a number of explorers through the Cumberland Gap, in 1750, for the Loyal Land Company, and a year later Colonel Christopher Gist had led another party to the Ohio Valley for the Ohio Land Company.

Surveyors Appear
After the end of hostilities in 1763, the British tried to delay the settlement of western lands.  But, explorers and hunters were soon passing through Cumberland Gap or going down the Ohio (River). By the 1770’s, surveyors were at work locating grants for claimants desiring land for service in the late war. Land rich in great possibilities, lured men—and women too—toward the setting sun, and the first great migration beyond the Appalachian Mountains was in the offing.  By 1775-1776, the tide of settlers was flowing through the Gap and down the Ohio, and in December 1776, Virginia created Kentucky County.  Until 1932, George Washington was regarded as among the first—if not the first—surveyor to locate land in what later became Kentucky. The survey was for a grant of 2,084 acres on the Levisa and Tug Forks of the Big Sandy River. This was land, which Governor Dunmore had conveyed to John Fry. The original parchment of this grant reposes in The Filson Club of Louisville. During the Washington Bicentennial, Colonel Lawrence Martin of the Library of Congress disclosed records, which proved that Washington did not survey this body of land.  Washington did acquire land later in Kentucky, but he did not survey them.

Surveyed in Kentucky
Hancock Taylor did survey lands in Kentucky. His first appearance in this region, however, was as an explorer. In the Spring of 1769, he accompanied his brother, Richard, and Col George Croghan “in an exploration….of the western country along the….Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.” The trio preceded from Orange County, Virginia, to Pittsburgh, then a frontier settlement.  There they obtained a small boat in which they descended the Ohio to its junction with the Mississippi, stopping frequently along the way to examine the country a short distance from the river.

On reaching the Mississippi, the men went up the stream to Fort Chartres, a handsome stone fort in the Illinois County, built by the French, but then occupied by British Troops. “After remaining at Fort Chartres for a few days, they descended the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas, which they ascended some 100 miles to a small French settlement.”  Here they encamped and hunted” until the Spring of 1770 when they returned to the Mississippi.  At the mouth of the Arkansas, Richard Taylor left Hancock and Croghan to examine a large tract of land, which the Colony of Georgia had purchased from the Creek Indians. With a trader whom the explorers had met on the Arkansas, Richard passed through the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek nations, and thence through Georgia and the Carolinas to his home in Orange County, Virginia.  He had been absent more than year.

Went South
After the departure of Richard, Hancock and Croghan descended the Mississippi to Natchez and New Orleans; from there they went to Mobile and Pensacola.  They returned to New Orleans in the autumn, hoping to sail from that place to New York.  Not finding a vessel for such a voyage, the two men returned up the Mississippi to the Washita, which they ascended for some distance to a place where they encamped and hunted during the winter of 1770-1771. In the Spring they returned to New Orleans, from which place they sailed to New York.  In due time, they arrived in Orange County, after an absence of more than two years.  If any one of these three men kept a journal of his travels, it has not come to light.  Such a manuscript would certainly merit publication.

They had traversed a region visited by the Spaniard, Desoto, in the early 1540s. They had descended the Father of Waters, which the Frenchmen, Joliet, Marquette, and La Salle had explored in the 1670s and 1680s. They had visited many of the earliest French Settlements along the Mississippi; and a narrative of their travels would rival accounts of western explorations, which have long since been published.

Compared Notes
After returning to Virginia, the Taylor brothers compared notes on the advantages of the several parts of the southern and western country they had visited. Hancock gave preference to region soon called Kentucky.  By 1773, he, Abraham Haptonstall, James Strother, and others were surveying the land in what became Jefferson, Franklin, Wooford, and Fayette Counties.  One of these surveys appears to have been for Robert McAfee, on the Kentucky River; another was for Hancock’s father, Zachary Taylor, who claimed land for service in the French and Indian War. There is evidence that Hancock surveyed a part of the present corporate limits of Louisville.  According to the late Mrs. Jouett Taylor Canon, he also surveyed land in present-day Frankfort, west of Ann Street, and the “bottom” where the penitentiary used to be and where a fine state office building has since been constructed. In 1774, while absent from the main surveying party, and accompanied only by James Strother and Abraham Haptonstall, Taylor and his companions were attacked by Indians. Strother was killed and Taylor wounded. With Haptonstall’s aid, Hancock succeeded in joining the main party above the present site of Frankfort.  Efforts to remove the bullet and save his life were futile, and he died after his faithful companions had reached the vicinity of present-day Richmond.  He was buried near a small stream, which has since been named Taylor’s Fork of Silver Creek.

Search for Grave
According to the noted historian of Kentucky, R.H. Collins (1874), Richard Taylor came to Madison County in 1803, to search for his brother’s grave. Robert Rodes and his son, William showed him the grave, which is about one and three-fourths miles south-west of the Madison County Courthouse. The men “marked the grave with a pile of stones, and with a headstone carved by a boy in the neighborhood.” The headstone has disappeared, but the pile of stones remains. Perhaps the earliest authentic record of the approximate location of Hancock’s grave is in the “Certificate Book” of the commission of four men appointed by Virginia in 1779 to untangle the confusion in land titles resulting from the haphazard system of land surveys in Kentucky. This commission held sessions in 1779-1780 at St. Asaph’s, Harrodstown, Bryan’s Station, Boonesborough, and the Falls of the Ohio.  The original document containing the decisions of the commission is in the Fayette County Courthouse. It has been published in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 21, Nos. 61, 62 and 63. 

The following decision made at Boonesborough is significant to us today. It is: “William Hicks by Daniel Boone this day claimed a settlement and preemption to a tract of land in the district of Kentucky lying on a branch of Silver Creek, including Hancock Taylor’s grave, and running north and northwest for quantity, by making a settlement and raising a crop of corn in the country in the year 1775….”  The decision gave Hicks 400 acres of land to include the site of the grave and 1,000 acres adjacent.

Search for Grave Cont.-
Some historically-minded people in Madison County appear to have known always the site of Hancock Taylor’s grave.  It was pointed out to me soon after we came to the county twenty-five years ago, and I have understood all along that it is the “first known white man’s grave in Kentucky.”

Haptonstall Kept Rifle
In passing we should note that Abraham Haptonstall kept Hancock Taylor’s rifle until his death. He was an employed weaver and hunter of the Taylors. When he died, the rifle remained as a treasure for the Taylor Family for many years. In 1926, it was presented to the Kentucky State Historical Society by members of the Taylor Family. There it should remain for all time with Daniel Boone’s relics of the pioneer life of Kentucky.

“It is indeed proper that The National Society of Colonial Dames of America mark the grave of Hancock Taylor.  His life belonged to the colonial period of the United States. He never lived to witness the Revolution and the separation of the Colonies from Great Britain.  His was the task, with many others, some of whom also lost their lives, in Western Colonial Virginia, to herald the coming of a new life and day in a large part of North America. And for this, he should certainly be memorialized."

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