Alleghany County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Biographies.....Bailey, Ann "Mad Ann" 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Alice Warner http://www.rootsweb.com/~archreg/vols/00015.html#0003503 March 29, 2008, 1:15 am

Author: Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Virginia 1845



There was an eccentric female, who lived in this section of the country towards
the latter part of the last century. Her name was Ann Bailey. She was born in
Liverpool, and have been the wife of an English soldier. She generally went by
the cognomen of Mad Ann. During the wars with the Indians, she very often acted
as a messenger, and conveyed letters from the fort, at Covington, to Point
Pleasant. On these occasions she was mounted on a favorite horse of great
sagacity, and rode like a man, with a rifle over her shoulder, and a tomahawk
and a butcher's knife in her belt. At night she slept in the woods. Her custom
was to let her horse go free, and then walk some distance back on his trail, to
escape being discovered by the Indians. After the Indian wars she spent some
time in hunting. She pursued and shot deer and bears with the skill of a
backwoodsman. She was a short, shout woman, very masculine and coarse in her
appearance, and seldom or never wore a gown, but usually had on a petticoat,
with a man's coat over it, and buckskin breeches. The services she rendered in
the wars with the Indians, endeared her to the people. Mad Ann, and her black
pony Liverpool, were always welcome at every house. Often, she gathered the
honest, simple-hearted mountaineers around, and related her adventures and
trials, while the sympathetic tear would course down their cheeks. She was
profane, often became intoxicated, and could box with the skill of one of the
fancy. Mad Ann possessed considerable intelligence, and could read and write.
She died in Ohio many years since.

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