Simon Kenton
Simon Kenton was born in Virginia and at the age of 16 fled to Kentucky, mistakenly believing that he had killed a man in a fight over a girl. Changing his name to Simon Butler he explored the Ohio River country in what is now West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. When he learned that the man had survived he returned to using his real last name, and developed a reputation among the settlers as a formidable woodsman.
Taken prisoner by the Shawnee in 1778, after being hit with a war club with force sufficient to leave a one inch dent in the top of his skull, he was subjected to tortures intended to kill him. His survival puzzled the Shawnee, who sent him to their village near Sandusky for further torture. There he was adopted into the tribe after the intervention of a British agent. Kenton escaped and made his way back to Kentucky, joining George Rogers Clark’s expedition as a guide in 1778.
As a prisoner of the Shawnee Kenton has seen the Mad River Valley in Ohio and impressed with the land there he began exploring it, claiming several tracts beginning in 1788. The land north of the Ohio remained dangerous for settlement until the Northwest Indian War of 1793-94, in which Kenton served. After the war Kenton formed a group of settlers from Kentucky and led them to the area around present day Urbana, Ohio
In Kentucky, Kenton was a friend and occasional hunting partner of Daniel Boone. He was present at the siege of Boonesborough and is credited with saving Boone’s life during the Shawnee attack. Kenton explored much of the land north of the Ohio in what is now Ohio and Indiana, always with an eye for areas suitable for sale to land speculators. His business dealings were somewhat hampered in his early days as he did not learn how to read or write until he was thirty years old, in 1785.
Kenton was present at the Battle of the Thames, where Tecumseh was killed in 1813. According to Allan Eckert, following the battle Kenton was asked to identify Tecumseh’s body and he deliberately pointed to another to avert mutilation of the dead chief. This story is likely apocryphal, British prisoners were used to identify Tecumseh’s body. Kenton died in poverty in Urbana in 1836 at the age of 81. He had been known to the Shawnee as the “white man who could not be killed.”