Author: John Edward Tidwell, Jr.
Captain John Duncan was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Alexander Dunkin, Scottish immigrants. He married Eleanor (Elinor) Sharpe, on August 27, 1761.
By 1769, John Duncan, along with his mother, his wife, and young children, three of whom were born before leaving Pennsylvania, had reached Elk Garden, where he was made a Sergeant, and later a Captain in the frontier militia of Washington County, Virginia. He was very active in protecting the frontier against Indian forays from 1774-1778. He frequently went out on tours of duty protecting settlers in the Powell Valley along the great buffalo trace to Kentucky and in the Cumberland Gap area.

In 1778, he moved his family, including his aged mother and two sisters and their husbands out to Kentucky. They settled at Martin’s Station on Stoner’s River, a fork of the Licking River. This location was eight miles from Ruddle’s (Riddle’s) Station.

In early June, 1780, British Colonel Byrd brought a body of about 600 men, mostly Indians and Canadians, down from the Detroit area. They marched to the Great Miami River and floated down to the Ohio River. They attacked Ruddle’s Station, near Covington. The show of superior artillery and the overwhelming number of the enemy appalled the fort’s defenders and they surrendered on pledges of personal safety from the Indians. However, all of their property was plundered and lost.
The next day, June 23, 1780, the enemy appeared before Martin’s Station and summoned them to surrender. They were told if they did not surrender that the Indians would be let loose upon them to deal with them as they pleased. They surrendered without firing a shot.

The prisoners, men, women, and children, were all taken by boat and on foot when necessary north to Detroit and then on to Montreal. The British wanted them to exchange for their own prisoners then in possession of the colonial armies. Captain Duncan was imprisoned in Montreal after his eldest son, John Duncan, Jr. made his escape from the British to carry communications across the wilderness through New York, to General Washington’s army headquartered in Pennsylvania. He remained there until his father and family were exchanged and released.

The frontiersman had been a man of great vigor of mind and body. However, the Canadian captivity took a heavy toll on him physically and broke his spirit. He had lost all of his possessions and he never went back to Kentucky. Captain Duncan and his family returned home from Montreal by way of western New York, Philadelphia, and Maryland, to that part of Washington County, Virginia, from whence they had moved to Kentucky. He remained in this area until his death.

John Edward Tidwell, Jr. (SRA No. 187582) descended from Captain Duncan. This information was taken from an article by Emory L. Hamilton, “Captain John Dunkin,” from HISTORICAL SKETCHES, Vol. 10, pages 22-28, published by the Historical Society of Southwest Virginia.