Major Quirey was a valuable officer and a prompt and efficient soldier. During the war, he enlisted about 6000 men. Soon after his appointment as Captain in the 17th Regiment, U. S. A., an incident occurred which came near consigning him to an inglorious death. He had as pets a pair of large bears, and having occasion one day to pass near them he was suddenly seized from behind by the male bear and drawn under him, the animal sinking his nails into the cavity of the body. In the scuffle, however, he managed to get hold of the tongue of the bear, and drawing it across its teeth, forced the animal to bite off its own tongue. This feat he performed with one hand, while with the other he relieved the bear of one of his eyes. The pain he thus occasioned enabled him to extricate himself from his formidable foe, not, however, without detriment to himself. The Surgeon who dressed his wounds estimated his loss of flesh from off the left hip at _nearly 12 pounds_![9] On recovering from his wounds, Quirey returned to service and continued in office till the disbanding of his Regiment in 1815. In two years afterward he died. His widow whose life is full of romantic incident, survived him many years, having died only two or three years ago. She is still remembered with regret by many who have so lately listened to her well-told recollections of early days in Louisville. In July of this year, still 1790, the ninth and last Kentucky Convention met. It will be recollected that the first Convention had been held in 1784, and since that time, each returning year had seemed only to add to the difficulties experienced by Kentucky in attaining an honorable and independent position in the confederacy. This last Convention, however, saw an end to all the troubles experienced by its predecessors. The terms offered by Virginia were agreed to, and the 1st June 1792, was determined as the date of Independence. During the month of December succeeding the action of this Convention, Gen. Washington brought before Congress the subject of the admission of Kentucky as a State, and on the 14th of February in the next year, 1791, the long sought and anxiously hoped-for boon was granted. The ensuing December was chosen as the date of election for the framers of a Constitution for the New State, and in April 1792, that instrument was prepared, and Kentucky took her position among her sister States. Nor was this the only good which time had wrought for the new State. For the next year, 1793, brought with it the last incursions of the Indians into their once loved hunting-ground. Their twenty years' struggle was over. Their best and bravest blood had been poured in vain; the force of an irresistible destiny was against them; stern experience had taught them that right was not might, and, the contest ended, they quietly yielded to the all-conquering hand of the white man the soil that his axe, his plow, and his gun had redeemed from them forever.