Bingham erroneously showed Flanders Callaway to Boone’s right as an old man. Flanders was only 22 years of age when he entered Kentucky.
At a recent fall festival, I spoke with a man about Jemima Boone when he showed an interest in my book Caintuck Lies Within My Soul. He said, “I cannot figure out why Daniel let Jemima marry Flanders Callaway since his father and Daniel hated each other.” Isn’t it strange how history sometimes confuses players in events, giving them relationships that carry forth into books and documents for years and years?
Being a historian and author, I had to explain his misconception, for Flanders was not Richard Callaway’s son. In Caintuck, the reader learns a more accurate lineage for this young man at his introduction into my story.
Flanders Isham Callaway, Richard’s twenty-two-year-old nephew and his younger brothers, James and Micajah, had traveled to Caintuck with our party despite their families’ strong objections. Their father, James, had passed many years earlier, and their mother, Sarah, only two years earlier.
Flanders’ father James had died in 1767 and his mother Sarah, nee Bramlett, had passed sometime after November of 1773. Flanders had at least five brothers and three sisters, all born in Virginia. His brothers, James and Micajah, would be among those captured at the salt lick (Blue or Big Bone?—an argument for another post) in February of 1778. Each was held captive for several years.
Flanders was not captured as he had been tasked with furnishing meat for the party of salt boilers and was not in camp when the Shawnee took the men. He and his hunting companion arrived to find the camp in disarray.
Jemima and Flanders married and had ten children, six girls and four boys. Flanders died in Missouri on 22 Feb 1829. He was 76 years old.