Richard Calloway, Forgotten Hero

Every great man has his past, his family, his close associates contributing to his success. But when forgotten, a bit of the historical tapestry of America suffers. Colonel Richard Calloway was such a man. An eighteenth-century pioneer whose fragments chronicle a narrative of indomitable gifts, leadership, law, love of his family, and two strong women. And most of all, heroism. Richard Calloway was a man who not only dreamed but also began the process of creating civilization in the wilderness. He had learned to be a woodsman during the French and Indian War. He had been a trustee to the town of New London, Bedford County; a justice of the court; a farmer. He knew it could happen again in Kentucky. The Virginia House of Delegates agreed. Colonel Calloway's exploits into the wilderness of Tennessee and Kentucky created the pathway known as the Wilderness Trail and the construction of Fort Boonesborough. The daily life of intrepid pioneers, the abduction of Calloway's and Boone's daughters, surrender of the salt-makers to Chief Black Fish of the Shawnee, the Revolutionary battle proclaimed by history as The Siege of 1778, as well as the little-known trial of Daniel Boone, which followed the Siege, are facets to Richard Calloway's valor. He was a real American hero. "No single man accomplished more than Richard Callaway[sic] in laying the foundation that culminated in the admission of Kentucky into the Union, June 1st, 1792." (R. Alexander Bate, The Filson Club Quarterly, Vol. 29, 1955)