Author: Henry B. Stobbs
Hugh Henry, Junior was born to patriot Hugh Henry, Senior and Mary Donelson, sister of famed patriot, explorer and politician Colonel John Donelson II on 25 June, 1751 in Pittsylvania County, Virgina. Appointed a lieutenant of militia in September of 1775, the younger Hugh marched under Captain John Donelson III, Colonel Evan Shelby’s regiment, in an expedition in the spring of 1777 against the Cherokee. Later that year Henry, his father, and brothers David and Isaac signed the Oath of Allegiance.
In January of 1778 Hugh Junior served as a sergeant in Captain Dillard’s Company alongside his brothers Isaac and David. After marching to Boonsboro, the Henry men were transferred to George Rogers Clark’s Illinois Regiment. On 27 May they were placed under the command of Captain John Montgomery.
On June 24, 1778, 175 men including the Henry brothers set out from Corn Island at the falls of the Ohio River. Crossing the river at Fort Massac during a solar eclipse, the expedition’s members took the event as a good omen. After a trek of 120 miles through the wilderness Clark’s men crossed the Kaskaskia River at midnight on the 4th of July and captured the garrison at Fort Gage in Kaskaskia without firing a shot. The Virginians under Captain Montgomery would go on to help capture Kahokia and Fort Vincennes before being discharged in August and returning home, as Hugh Junior wrote in his pension application, “in time for potato harvest.” For their service, the Henry brothers would in 1788 be granted 108-acre parcels in Clark’s Grant; there is no record that they retained the grants for by the end of 1778 they had joined their Donelson relations in Washington District, North Carolina – the Watauga settlement; they would not remain long.
In early 1780 the Henrys joined Colonel John Donelson in his famous expedition that resulted in the settlement of Fort Nashborough in the area that would become modern Nashville, Tennessee. Hugh Henry, Senior and his wife Mary traveled with other family members aboard one of the expedition’s flatboats; Hugh the younger had left late in 1779 with the overland party led by Colonel John Robertson. On December 17 of 1780 Hugh Junior married Miss Elizabeth Tamnasson. Under Indian pressure, the Henrys and others removed to Davis’ Station in the southern part of the Kentucky Settlement; in 1784 Hugh Junior, along with his father and brothers, signed a petition to Congress for Kentucky statehood.
Hugh Henry, Junior would return to middle Tennessee by 1790 and serve as a justice of the peace and second major in the Tennessee (Robertson) County militia; he would be appointed the first sheriff of Robertson County in 1796. He and Elizabeth would raise six children. Henry was granted Revolutionary War Pension No. S2611 in 1832 and, after a long and adventurous life, passed away on April 17, 1834.