Col. Joseph Crockett.
Nothing can be truer than that God provides men for the hour. Among the one hundred men who participated in the Battle of Point Pleasant, and went on to become settlers of Kentucky, that state so open to the prey of the Indians that its first three years saw more people slaughtered by Indians than that state had white population at the end of that time, had among its other emigrants who were in the Battle of Point Pleasant, Col. Joseph Crockett, for a sketch of whose life we are indebted to his illustrious grandson, Col. Bennett H. Young, of Louisville, Ky. It is as follows:
“My great grandfather, Col. Joseph Crockett, was born in Albermarle, and was one of the men who marched with Andrew Lewis, with Charles Lewis, and with William Russell, and was engaged in the conflict at Point Pleasant. He was then a young man.
“He returned shortly after the battle of Point Pleasant, and remained for several months as First Lieutenant in a company of Colonial Militia that was stationed at Point Pleasant. When the fires of the Revolutionary War were kindled, and it was necessary for every man to go to the front to resists British invasions, the Indians were to be left a little while to themselves. Virginia and North Carolina were then sending their pioneers to make the settlements of Kentucky which were, under God’s providence and direction, one of the chief agencies in the success of the colonies in their great struggle against the mother country. My ancestor organized a company and marched to the front. He was successively a Captain, Major and Lieutenant Colonel. He was a Major in Morgan’s riflemen, and recruited two companies for that celebrated organization. He was a Lieutenant at White Marsh, was a Captain when Burgoyne surrendered, was engaged in all the battles previous to that great event. He was at Princeton and Trenton, and Valley Forge and Red Bank, and in 1779, he raised a regiment known as the Crockett Regiment, which was sent west to assist George Rodgers Clark in his war with the Indians, and was with that distinguished soldier, second in command, in all the skirmishes and battles with the northwestern Indians on the Ohio and Miami Rivers, and helped to destroy Chillicothe, and the Indian towns* on the Wabash, and throughout the northwest, and in these battles stayed the uplifted hand of the cruel and avenging Indian, who would otherwise have wreaked his cruelties upon the frontier settlements of both Pennsylvania and Virginia and thus coming in the rear of these enemies, avenged many of the wrongs heaped upon the Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky settlements.”
SOURCE: The Battle of Point Pleasant, A Battle of the Revolution, October 10th, 1774, Mrs. Livia Nye Simpson-Poffenbarger, The State Gazette, Point Pleasant, W.V., 1909
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