Frontier Knife Carried by Longhunter -Joseph Drake

Frontier Knife Carried by 18th century longhunter Joseph Drake

Beautiful antler handle, with pewter inlay frontier knife with forged blade, carried by Joseph Drake along the Ohio and Kentucky frontier in the 18^th century. This pleasing frontier knife was fashioned with a cross inlay in pewter into the antler handle. In the 18th century, possessions with the cross served multiple significant roles across religious, personal, and cultural domains and were cherished as both utilitarian and ethnicity object. Great condition with original untouched patina.  5 1/4″ Blade  – 9″ Overall Length

Joseph Drake (c 1745-50 – 1778) was a big, rough man who often butted heads with those around him. He was a longhunter and had an uncanny sense of direction. He had ventured into the wilderness west of Cumberland Gap just prior to Daniel Boone. It is reported that Joseph Drake’s party of long hunters reached the present-day location of Nashville, Tennessee on the Cumberland River in 1768. This group of longhunters came from Montgomery County, Virginia. Joseph Drake and Henry Skaggs of that county were the co-leaders. They and the 30 or so others who went with them were after big profits. They each took two horses, a good supply of salt, lots of powder and lead, and the equipment necessary to repair their rifles. At one point, Drake and a small party had a chance meeting with Boone, who was staying by himself in Kentucky at the time. They found him singing hymns at the top of his lungs to keep himself company. The men of Drake’s party and Daniel and Squire Boone hunted for a while together along the rivers in Central Kentucky.

In the spring of 1774, before Lord Dunsmore’s War broke out in Kentucky territory, Joseph Drake was sent for so that he and a partner could venture into the war zones and warn survey teams of the hostilities to come in time for them to escape. Joseph Drake was not to be found. Michael Stoner and Daniel Boone were asked instead to do the job. Apparently, Drake was not that easy to find or didn’t want to be found. Stoner and Boone traveled 800 miles in 62 days through increasingly hostile territory under very difficult conditions.

In 1775, shortly after the arrival of Daniel Boone’s party of trail blazers arrived at the sight of Boonesboro, Joseph Drake and frontiersman John Floyd visited the new fort from their camp on Dick’s River. On April 10, 1778, Joseph Drake moved his family to Boonesboro. With his young wife, Margaret, were two small children, John and Mary. Several months later the Indians had made Margaret a widow. She and Joseph had been married barely five years. Without question, historical documentation of Joseph Drake’s death states clearly that he died within sight of the Boonesboro stockade in early September 1778. Court records tell the remarkable story of his young widow’s life after the death of her first husband. A petition for land was granted her in the cold winter of 1779 when the land disputes were being settled by a special envoy sent to the territory. The fact that her husband had been killed by Indians may have played a part in her being granted 400 hundred acres on Drowning Creek, near Boonesboro. Drowning Creek, according to legend, got its name when Daniel Boone drowned an Indian there. It is a tributary to the Kentucky River.

Joseph Drake had married Miss. Margaret Buchanan. Margaret’s sister Jane married John Floyd, noted frontiersman and hunting partner of Joseph Drake. Margaret’s other sister, Ann, married Joseph’s brother Ephraim Drake. Ephraim was a longhunter too. Many years after the death of Joseph Drake there was a civil suit against Margaret involving the disputed ownership of slaves. When Joseph and Margaret had moved to Boonesboro, Joseph had owned a young slave named Aggy who had children, who had children. The two contestants in the suit against Margaret were her sisters. All were the daughters of Col. John Buchanan of Anchor and Hope Plantation, Wythe County, Virginia. Now that’s a story for another time!

Provenance:

Robert G Drake Akron, Ohio (descendant of Joseph Drake)

George Carroll, Urbana, Ohio

Gordon Barlow, Swoope, Virginia (1991)