Benjamin Logan

Benjamin Logan (c.1742 – December 11, 1802) was an American pioneer, soldier, and politician from Shelby County, Kentucky. As colonel of the Kentucky County militia (United States) of Virginia during the American Revolutionary War, he was second-in-command of militia in Kentucky. Logan was a leader in Kentucky's efforts to become a state.

Biography

Benjamin was born in Augusta County, Virginia, the eldest son of David (1706-1757) and Jane (McKinley) Logan. At fifteen, Logan's father died, and Benjamin inherited his father's 860 acre (3.5 km²) farm. He would marry Ann Montgomery in 1772, and they raised eight children.

In 1764, Logan saw service in Henry Bouquet's campaign against the Shawnee Indians. In 1774, he was a lieutenant in Lord Dunmore's War. The next year he moved to Kentucky, then still part of Virginia, starting the settlement of St. Asaph's, near Stanford, building Logan's Fort there.

In 1776, he was appointed sheriff and justice of the peace. During the Revolution, he was the second ranking officer in the Virginia militia for Kentucky County, as colonel; and later became a general. He fought Indians north of the Ohio River, under the command of George Rogers Clark, as well as in Kentucky. Logan and Clark were in frequent disagreement over strategy.

After the Revolution, Logan was active in Kentucky politics, especially the campaign to establish it as a separate state. He served as the local representative in the Virginia House of Delegates, from 1781 until 1787, where he first agitated for statehood for Kentucky.

In the fall of 1786, Logan led a force of Federal soldiers and mounted Kentucky militia against several Shawnee towns in the Ohio Country along the Mad River, protected primarily by noncombatants while the warriors were raiding forts in Kentucky. Logan burned the Indian towns and food supplies, and killed or captured a considerable number of Indians, including their chief, who was soon murdered by one of Logan's men. Logan's Raid and the death of the chief angered the Shawnees, who retaliated by further escalating their attacks on the whites, escalating the Northwest Indian War.

Logan was one of those who called for the Danville Convention, and was a delegate when they wrote the first Kentucky constitution in 1791 and 1792. After statehood, he served in the Kentucky state House of Representatives from 1792 to 1795. Logan later ran unsuccessfully for governor, in 1796 and 1800. In 1802, he died of a stroke at home, about 6 miles southwest of Shelbyville, Kentucky, and was buried in a family plot there.

Logan County, Kentucky and Logan County, Ohio are named for him, as is the Benjamin Logan Local School District in Ohio.

References

* Talbert, Charles G. "Benjamin Logan, Kentucky Frontiersman." University of Kentucky Press, 1962, ISBN 0-935680-22-5.

External links

* [http://www.logansfort.org/index.html Logan's Fort website]