Greenbrier County, West Virginia - Historic Ride of "Mad" Anne Bailey

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Submitted by Valerie Crook <vfcrook@earthlink.net> 1999

Extracted from The History of West Virginia,
Old and New, by James Morton Callahan, 1923, 
Vol. I, pg. 99-100

  The Bullett lands including the site of Charleston were purchased in 1788 by George 
Clendenin of Greenbrier who brought with him several daring pioneers.  Fort Clendenin
was built in 1788. Attack upon it by Indians in 1791 was the occasion of the famons 
historic ride of "Mad Anne Bailey" up New river to Fort Union to secure needed supplies.

     Of all the celebrated characters of pioneer times, there were none more remarkable 
  than Anne Bailey, the pioneer heroine of the Great Kanawha valley. Her maiden name 
  was Hennis and she was born in Liverpool, England, in the year 1742. When she was 
  in her nineteenth year, her parents both having died she crossed the ocean to find 
  relatives of the name of Bell, then (1761) residing near Staunton, Virginia. Here 
  soon after (1765) she wedded Richard Trotter, a distinguished frontiersman and a 
  survivor of Braddock's defeat.
     A cabin was reared near where Swope's Depot on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway 
  now stands, and there in 1767 a son, William, was born. The year 1774 brought with 
  it Dunmore's War, and Richard Trotter enlisted in General Lewis' army and at the 
  battle of Point Pleasant, October 10, 1774, yielded up his life in an attempt to 
  plant civilization on the banks of the Ohio.
     From the moment the widow heard of her husband's death, a strange, wild fancy
  seemed to possess her, and she resolved to avenge his death. Leaving her little son
  to the care of a neighbor, Mrs. Moses Mann, she at once entered upon a career which
  has no parallel in Virginia annals. Clad in the costume of the border, she hastened 
  away to the recruiting stations, where she urged enlistments with all the earnestness
  which her zeal and heroism inspired. Then she became a nurse, a messenger, a scout, 
  and for eleven years she fearlessly dashed along the whole western border, going 
  wherever her services required, and thus the wilderness road from Staunton to Point
  Pleasant was all familiar to her.
     November 3, 1785, at Lewisburg, in Greenbrier county, she was married a second time,
  her husband being John Bailey, a distinguished frontiersman from the Roanoke river. 
  Fort Lee was erected by the Clendenins on the present site of the city of Charleston 
  in 1788-89 and to it John Bailey and his heroic bride at once removed.
     In 1791, the fort was besieged by a large body of Indians, and to the terror
  of the garrison, it was found that the supply of powder in the magazine was almost
  exhausted. A hundred miles of wilderness lay between Fort Lee and Lewisburg, the only 
  place from which a supply of powder could come. Colonel George Clendenin, the commandant
  at Fort Lee, asked for volunteers to go to Lewisburg, but not a soldier in that garrison
  would brave the task. Then was heard in a female voice the words "I will go," and every 
  inmate of the fort recognized the voice of Anne Bailey.
     The fleetest horse in the stockade was brought out and the daring rider mounted
  and disappeared in the forest. Onward she sped. Darkness and day were one to her. It
  was a ride for life and there could be no stop. Lewisburg was reached; there was but 
  a short delay, and she was returning with two horses laden with powder. The garrison 
  in Fort Lee welcomed her return, and she entered it, as she had left it, under a shower 
  of balls. The men thus supplied, sallied forth and forced the savages to raise the siege.