the crop ripened he hunted steadily, and his family lived on the abundant game, save for which it would have been wholly impossible to have settled Kentucky so early.  If it was winter-time, however, all the wild meat was very lean and poor eating, unless by chance a bear was found in a hollow tree, when there was a royal feast, the breast of the wild turkey serving as a substitute for bread.[15] If the men were suddenly called away by an Indian inroad, their families sometimes had to live for days on boiled tops of green nettles.[16] Naturally the children watched the growth of the tasselled corn with hungry eagerness until the milky ears were fit for roasting.  When they hardened, the grains were pounded into hominy in the hominy-block, or else ground into meal in the rough hand-mill, made of two limestones in a hollow sycamore log.  Until flax could be grown the women were obliged to be content with lint made from the bark of dead nettles.  This was gathered in the spring-time by all the people of a station acting together, a portion of the men standing guard while the rest, with the women and children, plucked the dead stalks.  The smart girls of Irish ancestry spun many dozen cuts of linen from this lint, which was as fine as flax but not so strong.[17]

Neither hardship nor danger could render the young people downhearted, especially when several families, each containing grown-up sons and daughters, were living together in almost every fort.  The chief amusements were hunting and dancing.  There being no permanent ministers, even the gloomy Calvinism of some of the pioneers was relaxed.  Long afterwards one of them wrote, in a spirit of quaint apology, that “dancing was not then considered criminal,"[18] and that it kept up the spirits of the young people, and made them more healthy and happy; and recalling somewhat uneasily the merriment in the stations, in spite of the terrible and interminable Indian warfare, the old moralist felt obliged to condemn it, remarking that, owing to the lack of ministers of the gospel, the impressions made by misfortune were not improved.

Though obliged to be very careful and to keep their families in forts, and in spite of a number of them being killed by the savages,[19] the settlers in 1776 were able to wander about and explore the country thoroughly,[20] making little clearings as the basis of “cabin claims,” and now and then gathering into stations which were for the most part broken up by the Indians and abandoned.[21] What was much more important, the permanent settlers in the well-established stations proceeded to organize a civil government.

They by this time felt little but contempt for the Henderson or Transylvania government.  Having sent a petition against it to the provincial authorities, they were confident that what faint shadow of power it still retained would soon vanish; so they turned their attention to securing a representation in the Virginia convention.  All Kentucky was still considered as a part of Fincastle County, and the inhabitants were therefore unrepresented at the capital.  They determined to remedy this; and after due proclamation, gathered together at Harrodstown early in June, 1776.  During five days an election was held, and two delegates were chosen to go to Williamsburg, then the seat of government.