The law courts were as yet very little troubled, each small community usually enforcing a rough-and-ready justice of its own.  On a few of the streams log-dams were built, and tub-mills started.  In Harrodsburg a toll mill was built in 1779.  The owner used to start it grinding, and then go about his other business; once on returning he found a large wild turkey-gobbler so busily breakfasting out of the hopper that he was able to creep quietly up and catch him with his hands.  The people all worked together in cultivating their respective lands; coming back to the fort before dusk for supper.  They would then call on any man who owned a fiddle and spend the evening, with interludes of singing and story-telling, in dancing—­an amusement they considered as only below hunting.  On Sundays the stricter parents taught their children the catechism; but in spite of the presence of not a few devout Baptists and Presbyterians there was little chance for general observance of religious forms.  Ordinary conversation was limited to such subjects as bore on the day’s doings; the game that had been killed, the condition of the crops, the plans of the settlers for the immediate future, the accounts of the last massacre by the savages, or the rumor that Indian sign had been seen in the neighborhood; all interspersed with much banter, practical joking, and rough, good-humored fun.  The scope of conversation was of necessity narrowly limited even for the backwoods; for there was little chance to discuss religion and politics, the two subjects that the average backwoodsman regards as the staples of deep conversation.  The deeds of the Indians of course formed the one absorbing topic. [Footnote:  For all this see McAfee MSS.]

    An Abortive Separatist Movement.

An abortive separatist movement was the chief political sensation of this summer.  Many hundreds and even thousand of settlers from the backwoods districts of various States, had come to Kentucky, and some even to Illinois, and a number of them were greatly discontented with the Virginian rule.  They deemed it too difficult to get justice when they were so far from the seat of government; they objected to the land being granted to any but actual settlers; and they protested against being taxed, asserting that they did not know whether the country really belonged to Virginia or the United States.  Accordingly, they petitioned the Continental Congress that Kentucky and Illinois combined might be made into a separate State; [Footnote:  State Department MSS.  No. 48.  See Appendix G. As containing an account of the first, and hitherto entirely unnoticed, separatist movement in Kentucky, I give the petition entire.] but no heed was paid to their request, nor did their leading men join in making it.

    Kentucky Divided into Counties.