messenger, taking long journeys on horseback entirely alone. One incident is told of how, when information of a supposed attack on a fort at Charlestown was threatened, and the commandant found it necessary to send to Camp Union near Lewisburg for supplies, as they were without ammunition, Ann Bailey offered to make this journey of one hundred miles through a trackless forest alone. Her offer was accepted and she reached Camp Union in safety, delivered her orders and returned as she had come, alone, laden with the ammunition. It is said that the commandant stated that the fort would not have been saved except for this act of heroism on the part of Mrs. Bailey, which hardly has a parallel. The services she rendered during the war endeared her to the people who overlooked her eccentricities and were ever ready to extend to her every kindness which their gratitude suggested. When her son settled in Gallipolis, she came with him and spent the remainder of her life wandering about the country, fishing and hunting. Her death took place in 1825.
Among the incidents of the early settlement of Kentucky none is more significant than the Rustic Parliament, which convened at Boonesborough, May 24, 1775. Without any warrant other than a common desire and reverence for justice, seventeen delegates convened. They were five hundred miles from any organized society or civil government. Nominally within the jurisdiction of Virginia, nominally subjects of the British crown, without knowledge of the battles of Lexington and Concord or even the Declaration of Independence, coming into the wilderness without a charter, they proceeded to the enactment of laws for the establishment of the courts of justice for their common defense, for the collection of debts, for the punishment of crime, for the restraint of vice. Having no early education, knowing only the meaning of the word "duty," they proceeded to express it in the laws made.
