Simon Kenton was born at the headwaters of Mill Run in the Bull Run Mountains on April 3, 1755, in Prince William County, Virginia to Mark Kenton, Sr. and Mary Miller Kenton. In 1771, at the age of 16, thinking he had killed William Leachman in a jealous rage, Kenton fled into the wilderness of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, where for years he went by the name "Simon Butler." After learning that his victim had lived, Kenton took back his original surname.
Noted activities
In 1774, in a conflict later labeled Dunmore's War, Kenton served as a scout for the European settlers against the Shawnee Indians in what is now West Virginia and Kentucky. In 1777, he saved the life of his friend and fellow frontiersman, Daniel Boone, at Boonesborough, Kentucky. The following year, Kenton was rescued from the Shawnee in Ohio by Simon Girty. He had survived many days of running the gauntlet and various other ritual tortures that usually caused death. He was later taken about 50 miles for more torture at Sandusky. There he was saved by Pierre Drouillard, an interpreter for the British Indian department and father of explorer George Drouillard. The Shawnee respected Kenton for his endurance; they named him Cut-ta-ho-tha. He was "adopted into the tribe by a motherly squaw whose own son had been slain." Kenton served as scout on the 1778 George Rogers Clark expedition to capture Fort Sackville during the American Revolution. Independence did not mean an end to warfare; in 1793-94 Kenton fought in the Northwest Indian War with "Mad" Anthony Wayne. Kenton started exploring the area of the Mad River Valley of Ohio and making claims as early as 1788. Kenton first saw the area a decade before while he was held as a prisoner with the Shawnee and vowed that if he survived he would return. In April 1799, Kenton and his associate, Colonel William Ward, led a group of families from Mason County, Kentucky to an area between present-day Springfield and Urbana, Ohio. In 1810 Kenton moved to Urbana, Ohio, where he achieved the rank of brigadier general of the state militia. He served in the War of 1812 as both a scout and as leader of a militia group in the Battle of the Thames in 1813. This was the battle in which the Indian chief Tecumseh was killed. Kenton was chosen to identify Tecumseh's body but, recognizing both Tecumseh and another fallen warrior named Roundhead, and seeing soldiers gleefully eager to carve up Tecumseh's body into souvenirs, he identified Roundhead as the chief. A large boulder located on the west side of the Ritter Public Library in Vermilion, Ohio, discovered in 1937 on a farm a few miles to the south, is inscribed "1784 S. KENTON," and tradition has it that it was carved by Kenton himself while in Indian custody. Documentary evidence, however, shows that Kenton was not in Indian custody in 1784, was not near Vermilion in 1784 and did not learn to write until 1785.
Marriage and family
Kenton married Martha Dowden and they had four children together. After she died in a house fire, the widower married Elizabeth Jarboe as his second wife. He had six children with her. Kenton died in New Jerusalem in Logan County, Ohio. His body was later moved to Urbana. Later his widow Elizabeth Jarboe Kenton and a number of their children moved to northwestern Indiana, to an area straddling Jasper, White, and Pulaski counties. It was heavily settled by families who migrated from Champaign County, Ohio, where Kenton is buried.
