Captain Elisha Golay's Company

The massacre of settlers at Pigeon Roost in Scott County was part of a series of Indian hostilities that began in the fall of 1810. To halt threats in Jefferson County, along the modern Ripley County border, a company was formed under the command of Captain Elisha Golay and ordered to proceed from Madison on May 16, 1812 by David Hillis, Lt. Col. of the Sixth Indiana Militia Regiment. In the initial order, given May 10, Hillis, through Major John Vawter, commanded Golay to convene a battalion of fifteen privates, two corporals and two sergeants. He also gave Golay the power to draft men if there were not enough volunteers in order to add three privates and one sergeant. The list here has twenty privates and four sergeants. It is not known if they were volunteers.

This account was given by Perret Dufour, whose writings from the 1860s, have been collected as “The Swiss Settlement of Switzerland County, Indiana.” Dufour gives verbatim transcripts of the orders. Golay was ordered to arrive at the frontier and “without delay to build a block house of such size and form as will most securely and conveniently accommodate a detachment of from thirty to forty men and officers.” Dufour says this blockhouse was Buchanan’s Station. This account places that fort’s construction a year earlier than the 1813 date often given. The company was ordered never to fire after sunset, unless at an enemy, and also never to engage in conversations with Indians unless circumstances required it. Although Dufour does not specifically say so, the company included men who lived in both Jefferson and Switzerland County. (Switzerland Co. was created from Jefferson in 1814.)

Captain				Privates
Elisha Golay			Lewis Golay		Osborn Monroe
Lieutenant			John Tague		Williamson Dunn
William Blankenship		James Picket		Thomas Taylor
First Sergeant			Peter Mosbyer		Booth Thomas
Luke Oboussier			James Edwards
Second Sergeant			Samuel Lattimore
Beverly Vawter			James Hicks
Third Sergeant			Achilles Vawter
Peter Storm			Joshua Tull
Fourth Sergeant			William Chambers
Thomas Whitson			Lewis Blankenship
First Corporal			Squire Hall	
John Hall			Daniel Demaree
Second Corporal			William Laughridge
Abraham Cline			Stephen Rutherford
				William Fidds