American Historical Ephemera & Photography

Partly printed document, 1p, 8 x 4 3/4 in., housed under two-sided glass (scattered marks, toning, light soil). Docketed on verso.

"To the Sheriff of Mason County, greeting / You are hereby commanded to summon John Kenton & Simon Kenton to appear before the judges of the Mason Circuit Court, at the Court-house thereof in the town of Washington...to answer a Bill in Chancery against them by George Morton...." Docketing on verso reads, in part: "Executed on the Defendant John Kenton the 21st September 1815 the Defendant Simon Kenton not found." 

Legendary frontiersman and soldier Simon Kenton spent much of his life adventuring between the frontiers of the Ohio and Kentucky wilderness. By 1810, his family had permanently settled near Urbana, Ohio, though his legal difficulties related to land disputes and debts continued there as well as in his former home state. Warrants like the one offered here are referenced in books about Kenton, as is the fact that the aging frontiersman was so well liked there was little appetite to arrest him. Notable as well is the fact that the signer of the warrant, Marshall Key (1783-1860), was the nephew of US Supreme Court Justice John Marshall. Key hosted Harriet Beecher [later Stowe] at his home in Washington, Kentucky, in 1833. While there, the young teacher witnessed a slave auction in progress on the courthouse lawn, an event that served years later as an inspiration for her book Uncle Tom's Cabin.