In Caintuck Lies Within My Soul, I wrote a scene where Jemima cares for her older, pregnant sister, Suzy, after her husband beat her. Like most every incident in the book, this one is based upon fact. Susannah Boone, born 2 November 1760, suffered abuse at the hands of her husband William Hays throughout their marriage.
William Hays (1754-1804), an educated Irishman, trained as a weaver, first encountered the attractive, flirtatious, oldest Boone daughter at Moore’s Fort during Lord Dunmore’s war, in the autumn of 1774. Tasked with helping Daniel with his accounts and reports as he served as a lieutenant in the Virginia Militia, Will became a frequent visitor to the Boone’s small cabin. In early spring 1775, Suzy and Will married.
At the time of their wedding, Daniel was recruiting men for the building of Boone’s Trace, the road into Caintuck. Will Hays signed up, no doubt for the ten pounds offered for his labor. Susannah convinced her new husband and father to take her along to cook and care for the company of men. Suzy and one female slave made the arduous trip into the new lands. They skinned and cleaned game, cooked, and took care of all the “women’s work for some 25 to 30 men. Additionally, they walked into this new territory. Suzy, when told her father had named Rebecca and Jemima as the first white women in Caintuck responded, “Every Kentuckian ought to try my gait, since I was the first white women in Kentucky.” (Actually, all three had been preceded by Mary Draper Ingles, who escaped her Shawnee captors in 1755 at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky. That is a story for another day.)
Suzy bore ten children, five boys and five girls, including Elizabeth, born at Boonesborough in1776, who may have been the first white female child born in Kentucky. Suzy suffered throughout their marriage until her death on 19 October 1800, shortly after the family’s arrival in Femme Osage, Missouri. Will followed her in death only four years later, shot to death while in a drunken rage by his own son-in-law.
Illustration – 1774 The Wilderness Road by Carl Rakeman, courtesy of the Federal Highway Administration – incorrectly dated.