Simon Kenton was one of the most legendary frontiersmen of the American borderlands, a man whose life was shaped by violence, survival, and a series of remarkable turns of fate. Born on April 3, 1755, in Fauquier County, Virginia, he was the son of Irish immigrant Mark Kenton Sr. and Mary Miller Kenton, who had Scottish and Welsh roots. Raised on the family farm, he never had a real chance to attend school and remained illiterate for his entire life, learning only to write his own name.
In 1771, at the age of sixteen, Kenton became involved in a jealous fight over a woman. Believing he had killed a man, he fled into the wilderness of what is now West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, using the name Simon Butler for years. With his massive build and immense strength, he adapted to brutal frontier conditions and developed extraordinary endurance. During the late winter of 1773, Kenton and two companions were attacked around their campfire while drying wet clothes near what is now Charleston, West Virginia.
One companion was killed, while Kenton and the other man barely survived without food, clothing, or rifles. After a week of wandering along the Great Kanawha River, suffering from hunger and cold, they finally reached the Ohio River, where they encountered mountain men who helped them recover. Kenton worked as a scout for European settlers against the Shawnee during Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774. By 1775, he had moved to Boonesborough, Kentucky, where he spent the next few years scouting for the settlement and frequently encountering local American Indians.
In April 1777, during an Indian attack on Fort Boonesborough, a bullet struck Daniel Boone in the leg. As Boone found himself staring at a Shawnee warrior’s tomahawk, Kenton rushed forward, shot the man attempting to scalp Boone, struck another attacker, and carried Boone to safety under a hail of blows. Boone later told him, “Well, Simon, you have behaved like a man today. Indeed, you are a fine fellow.
”
Kenton participated in numerous military engagements against the British and their American Indian allies during the American Revolution. In 1778, he joined George Rogers Clark’s difficult but successful campaign into the Illinois country to attack British posts and Indian settlements. Upon returning home, he accompanied Daniel Boone on an assault against the Shawnee settlement of Chillicothe near Old Town, Ohio. In September 1778, while on a spying mission near Chillicothe, Kenton was captured by Shawnee warriors.
He was forced to run the notorious gauntlet for a quarter mile while being beaten with sticks by two rows of Indians. This ritual often killed prisoners, but Kenton survived it nine times. After suffering severe injuries from this and other torture rituals, he was saved by his old friend Simon Girty, who persuaded the Shawnee to adopt Kenton as one of their own. The tribe respected his endurance and gave him the name “Cut-ta-ho-tha,” meaning “the condemned man.
”
In June 1779, Kenton was sent to Fort Detroit as part of a prisoner exchange with the British. He was released and returned to serve under George Rogers Clark. In 1782, he discovered that the man he believed he had killed in Virginia was still alive, allowing him to reclaim his original name. Kenton began exploring the Mad River valley in Ohio and filed land claims there as early as 1788.
He had first seen the region a decade earlier as a prisoner of the Shawnee and had sworn that if he survived, he would return. During the following years, Kenton lived a relatively quiet life near Maysville, Kentucky, where he married Martha Dowden and purchased large tracts of land. The couple had four children together. From 1793 to 1794, Kenton served in the Northwest Indian War with “Mad” Anthony Wayne, fighting in the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
After Martha’s death in a house fire, Kenton remarried Elizabeth Jarboe in 1798 and moved to Ohio, where they raised six children near present-day Springfield. In April 1799, Kenton and his partner, Colonel William Ward, led a group of families from Mason County, Kentucky, to the area between present-day Springfield and Urbana, Ohio. In 1810, Kenton moved to Urbana, Ohio, and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the state militia. He served in the War of 1812 as a scout and militia leader, taking part in the Battle of the Thames in 1813, where the famous Indian leader Tecumseh was killed.
Kenton was chosen to identify Tecumseh’s body. However, because he knew both Tecumseh and another fallen warrior named Round Head, and because the soldiers were eager to cut up Tecumseh’s body for souvenirs, Kenton identified the body of Round Head as the chief. Kenton moved to the Zanesville, Ohio, area around 1820. During his final years, he lived in poverty due to land disputes and mismanagement of his finances, surviving on a government pension of $20 per month.
He died in 1836 in Logan County and was initially buried in New Jerusalem. In 1865, his remains were moved to Urbana, where the state of Ohio erected a monument to mark his grave in 1884.