William Whitley, I am your horne, The truth I love, a lie I scorne, Fill me with the best of powder, I'll make your rifle crack the louder. See how the dread, terrifick ball Makes Indians blench at Toreys fall, You with powder I'll supply For to defend your liberty. One day in 1785 a messenger came to Whitley's Fort with the tidings that Indians had captured a mother and her babe, after killing three older children. Mr. Whitley was not at home, but Mrs. Whitley sent for him. In the meantime she collected a company of twenty rescuers. On his return Whitley placed himself at their head, pursued the Indians, and rescued the prisoners. The title Colonel was given to Whitley in 1794, when he commanded the Nickerjack expedition against the Tennessee Indians, who had been conducting foraging expeditions into Kentucky. The march was conducted with such secrecy and despatch that the enemy were taken by surprise, and were completely routed. The last of his campaigns took place in Canada against the British, French, and Indians in 1813. Many claim that before he received his mortal wound in the battle of the Thames, he fired the shot that killed Tecumseh, the chief who had given so much trouble to the settlers of Kentucky and Indiana. Others say that the shot was fired by a Colonel Johnson. The body of the Indian fighter rests in an unknown grave hundreds of miles from the territory he helped to wrest from the Indians, but the brick house he built near Crab Orchard is still one of the historic buildings of Kentucky. [Illustration: WHITE HAVEN, ST. LOUIS _Photo furnished by Albert Wenzlick_ See page 362] LXXXIII WHITE HAVEN, NEAR ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI WHERE ULYSSES S. GRANT COURTED JULIA DENT Immediately after Ulysses Simpson Grant graduated from West Point, he was sent to Jefferson Barracks, at St. Louis. His military duties were not so arduous that he was unable to accept the invitation of Fred Dent, a former roommate at West Point, to go with him to the Dent homestead on the Gravois Road, four miles from the Barracks. The young second lieutenant did not have to be urged to repeat his visit. In fact he went so often that the road between the Barracks and the Dent farm became as familiar to him as his old haunts on the banks of the Hudson. He did not meet Julia Dent at first, for she was absent at school, but he found enough attraction in a sister to make him a frequent visitor. Then came the eventful day when he met seventeen-year-old Julia. The courtship was by no means a long-drawn-out affair; the young people were engaged before Grant was ordered to the Mexican border, though the fact was not announced until his return to St. Louis in May, 1845. The marriage took place in August, 1848, after the close of the Mexican War.