Background
Her father had been a soldier in the campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough. Her father had been a soldier in the campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough.
Her father had been a soldier in the campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough. Her father had been a soldier in the campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough.
She came to America in 1761, and her life henceforth was identified with the frontier. Her first husband was Richard Trotter, a pioneer in the Shenandoah Valley. Her most famous exploit was in 1791. Fort Lee, on the site of Charleston, West Virginia. , was besieged by Indians, and the supply of ammunition ran low. Ann Bailey made a solitary ride of about a hundred miles through a forest wilderness to the fort on the site of Lewisburg, and returned to Fort Lee with a supply of powder. The siege was raised, and the achievement has been retold in prose and in indifferent verse. To her other occupations she added those of letter carrier and express messenger. After her husband's death she lived with her son, removed with him to Ohio, and died in Gallia County in that state. There is a dubious version of her earlier life, according to which she was born in 1700, and was kidnapped. If this version be credited, she performed her noted exploits in extreme old age, and lived to be 125 years old.
Her first husband was Richard Trotter, a pioneer in the Shenandoah Valley. He was one of the survivors of Braddock's expedition of 1755, and, serving in Lord Dunmore's war against the Indians, was killed at the battle of Point Pleasant, October 10, 1774. Her second husband, John Bailey, was also a border leader.
