Dolly and the first child born at Boonesborough

Dolly 

Dolly was the enslaved ser­vant of Richard Callaway, whom he brought to Kentucky in the par­ty that Daniel Boone led through the Cumberland Gap to set­tle Boonesborough in April 1775. She and Susannah Hays, Boone’s daugh­ter, were the first women at the fort. Susannah and Dolly cooked and tend­ed camp for the wood­cut­ters dur­ing the epic journey. 

Richard Callaway was killed by Indians in 1780. Dolly was one of three enslaved peo­ple list­ed in his will, writ­ten in 1772 and pro­bat­ed in 1784. He bequeathed “to my beloved Wife Elizabeth Callaway three negroes named Jane, Doll and Sall.” (Nothing is known of the fate of Jane and Sall.) 

Elizabeth, who mar­ried James French at Boonesborough, even­tu­al­ly moved to Montgomery County to live with her daugh­ter Keziah. Elizabeth died in 1813 and is buried in the French Cemetery. Dolly then came into Keziah’s possession. 

In 1840, a great “Celebration” was held at Boonesborough to com­mem­o­rate “the 65^th anniver­sary of the first per­ma­nent set­tle­ment of Kentucky,” which Dolly attend­ed. Keziah French, then well over 70 years old and very fee­ble, arrived at the Kentucky River, where she and Dolly were fer­ried across the riv­er and then seat­ed as guests of hon­or. Both wept at the mem­o­ries of those try­ing times. 

No one record­ed Dolly’s pass­ing. She very like­ly lies in an unmarked grave in the French Cemetery. (This pio­neer grave­yard is locat­ed on the south side of US 60 in Montgomery County, just east of the Prewitt-Grassy Lick Road and about a half mile from US 60.) 

It was not real­ized for many years that Dolly’s son Frederick was the first child born at Boonesborough. 

Frederick Hart 

There is a remark­able sto­ry about Dolly and her son Frederick regard­ing the search for the elu­sive “first born in Kentucky.” In 1950, G. Glenn Clift, sec­re­tary of the Kentucky Historical Society and lat­er edi­tor of the Register, wrote a lit­tle-noticed arti­cle putting forth evi­dence that Dolly bore the first child born in Kentucky. He cit­ed as his author­i­ty Orlando Brown, who was edi­tor of the Frankfort Commonwealth and son of Kentucky’s first U.S. sen­a­tor, John Brown. Orlando wrote in 1841 that 

The first child born in Kentucky was born in Boonesborough and is now liv­ing in the fam­i­ly of the Editor of the Commonwealth. He is a yel­low man [mulat­to], the child of a ser­vant who came out as a cook for Col. Hart’s com­pa­ny. On look­ing at him, so full of life and vig­or as he is, one can scarce­ly real­ize the fact that he is the first born in a State teem­ing with so many inhab­i­tants as now fill the Dark and Bloody ground. 

At Boonesborough, Dolly prob­a­bly did cook for “Hart’s com­pa­ny”: Nathaniel Hart was a mem­ber of the Transylvania Company. When Hart was killed by Indians in 1782, Frederick was includ­ed in the inven­to­ry of his estate. Thus, Frederick must have been sold to the Hart before Nathaniel’s death. 

Dolly’s son, called “Old Frederick” by Orlando Brown, “was born in Boonesborough in November 1775.” According to Clift, 

Colonel Brown nev­er aban­doned his defense of Old Frederick as the first-born. In his Governors of Kentucky, pub­lished in the columns of the Commonwealth in 1862, he quotes Frederick and says of his author­i­ty “it ought to be first rate in all mat­ters relat­ing to ear­ly times, see his moth­er came from the treaty ground at Watauga as a cook to Boone’s com­pa­ny that was to erect a fort at Boonesborough, and in her trav­el Hagar-like through the wilder­ness some­thing hap­pened by which it came to pass that our informer was the first child, oth­er than Indians, ever born in Kentucky.” 

Frederick took the sur­name of Hart, and was free by the year 1850. Free blacks often used the sur­name of the fam­i­ly with whom they had resided in bondage. Nathaniel’s wife, Sarah, died in 1785, and Frederick was includ­ed in her estate inven­to­ry as well. 

Frederick Hart was record­ed in the 1850 Franklin County cen­sus as a free mulat­to, age 70, with a wife, Judy, aged 40. In 1860, Frederick and his wife were liv­ing in Elyria, Ohio, now part of the greater Cleveland area. He died there in 1864 and is buried in the Columbia Center Cemetery. 

The sto­ry doesn’t end there. Frederick’s son Henry became a famous com­pos­er and musician. 

Rachel Grimes and Paula Falvey have con­tributed to the sto­ry of Dolly, Frederick, Henry, and Henry’s chil­dren with an incred­i­ble amount of orig­i­nal research. Rachel will speak about the Hart fam­i­ly and their accom­plish­ments at the October Second Thursday pro­gram at the Bluegrass Heritage Museum.