Colonel William Oldham

Colonel William Oldham was born on June 17, 1753, in Virginia. His mother was a first cousin of General George Washington himself, a family connection that linked him by blood to the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army he would serve under. He entered the Revolutionary War as a Captain in the Virginia forces, and by multiple accounts he fought at Lake Champlain, endured the brutal winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge alongside Washington's army, and was present at the Battles of Brandywine and Monmouth. It should be noted that some details of his pre-1791 military service are not fully documented in all historical records, though his Revolutionary War service is referenced in multiple institutional sources including the Oldham County historical marker. In the spring of 1779, he resigned his commission and moved to the Falls of the Ohio, the frontier settlement that would become Louisville, Kentucky. There he became one of the first magistrates of Jefferson County and served as its Sheriff by 1786. He married Penelope Pope in 1783, and a later historian described him as "a chivalrous and enterprising man, brave and experienced officer, and very efficient in defending the country against the incursion of the Indians."

In the fall of 1791, Oldham was appointed Lieutenant Colonel-Commandant of the Kentucky Militia Regiment and ordered to lead his regiment to join General Arthur St. Clair's expedition into the Northwest Territory. He arrived at Fort Washington in the Northwest Territory on October 2, 1791, assumed command of his regiment the following morning, and marched northward along the road blazed by St. Clair's army. His regiment joined the main army on October 9 and participated in the remainder of the campaign. It was not an easy command: only 450 men turned out instead of the 1,000 requested, many of them untrained conscripts, and desertions plagued the march. Throughout the campaign Oldham worked to hold his regiment together, at one point personally warning St. Clair that his Kentucky militia intended to desert en masse.

On November 4, 1791, Colonel Oldham was killed in action while trying to rally his troops during the initial stages of the battle on the Wabash River - the second highest-ranking officer killed at St. Clair's Defeat. His name is among the 32 officers inscribed around the base of the obelisk at Fort Recovery, Ohio, authorized by Congress and erected in 1912. His remains are buried in one of the mass graves beneath that monument. In his honor, Oldham County, Kentucky was created in 1824.

Sources

Flint, J., cartographer, and E.G. Gridley, engraver. Map of the Falls of the Ohio, from actual survey: adapted to the low water of 1819. Cincinnati: E.G. Gridley, 1824. Map. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. Public domain. https://www.loc.gov/item/2018590030/.

Lytle, Richard M. The Soldiers of America's First Army, 1791. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2004.

"Colonel William Oldham Historical Marker." Historical Marker Database. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=136163.

"Oldham County." ExploreKYHistory. Kentucky Historical Society. https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/844.

"Slaughter on the Wabash." HistoryNet.https://www.historynet.com/slaughter-on-the-wabash.htm.

J. Flint and E.G. Gridley, "Map of the Falls of the Ohio, from actual survey: adapted to the low water of 1819." Engraved and published by E.G. Gridley, Cincinnati, 1824. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. The Falls of the Ohio — the treacherous two-mile series of rapids that gave rise to the settlement of Louisville, Kentucky — was the frontier home Colonel William Oldham adopted after the Revolution, and the community he left behind when he answered his country's call one final time in 1791.