Stone Gardens; War of 1812 veteran migrated to Crawford County area in 1825 as one of the earliest pioneers

Whitfield Bourne was born on August 24, 1798, in Jessamine County, Kentucky, the son of Francis Abner Bourne and Elizabeth “Betsy” Hayden Bourne.

His parents had married in 1791 in Orange County, Virginia, and carried the family west into the Bluegrass.

Francis Abner was himself the son of Francis Bourne, a corporal who had served in the 10th and 14th Virginia Regiments of the Continental Line during the Revolution under captains including Moses Hawkins and John Overton, and colonels Charles Lewis and William Davies.

That older Francis, born in 1727 in Spotsylvania or Culpeper County, Virginia, to John Bourne and Sarah Ramsey, had moved his own household into the new Jessamine County after the war and was buried in the Deboe-Bourne family ground near Nicholasville.

Elizabeth Hayden, born about 1770 in Orange County, Virginia, remains less fully documented in surviving records, though she lived long enough to see her children established in Kentucky and later Missouri, dying in Lewis County in 1846.

Francis Abner, born about November 30, 1769, farmed in Jessamine County and appears on the 1830 census there; he registered for military service around 1812 but left no clear record of active campaigning. He later moved to Lewis County, Missouri, where he died about 1847 or 1848 near Monticello.

Whitfield grew up among a large set of siblings that included Levi, Joseph Richard, Francis, and Hudson. At roughly sixteen he enlisted for the War of 1812 and served as a private in Captain Thomas Lewis’s company of Kentucky militia, substituting for Moses Masterson.

He enlisted about March 29, 1813, and was discharged September 28 of that year after roughly 194 days. Contemporary descriptions listed him as five feet nine inches, light complexion, blue eyes, and light hair.

He was present at the siege of Fort Meigs and at Dudley’s Defeat, where he and another young man were taken prisoner by Indians and carried into Canada. After several weeks, he escaped, wandered for days until he reached Lake Erie, and crossed with men who had a canoe before continuing to one of the northern forts.

No formal discharge was issued because of the parole. He returned to Kentucky, remained until manhood, and then, with his health failing, decided to go west.

He reached the Arkansas Territory as one of Crawford County’s early settlers. He first located a few miles below Van Buren. In 1825, when the Lovely Purchase opened, he moved with others into that large tract that William Lovely had negotiated from the Osage as a buffer between the Osage and the Western Cherokee..

The purchase ran roughly from the Verdigris River toward Frog Bayou and covered land that is now parts of western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma; most of the newcomers clustered near what is today Sallisaw. In 1828 the Treaty of Washington ceded the western portion to the Cherokee Nation, and white settlers were required to leave. Bourne returned to Crawford County and settled a short distance north of Dripping Springs.

The land stayed in the possession of his descendants for generations. His name appears on the 1829 tax list.

On September 4, 1831, he married Clarinda Weaver, born January 15 or 16, 1813, in White County, Tennessee. Several children were born to them, among them Margaret Ann, Benjamin Franklin, and Levi L. Clarinda died January 21, 1851. For his second wife he married Madaline Price, a widow earlier known as Madaline

Brownlee Kelly, born June 30, 1822. They married about 1852 in Crawford County. Five children came from that marriage, including Delphia, Harry Clay, and Dudley. In the late 1830s he served as one of the commissioners chosen to locate the Crawford County seat; a special session in November 1837 fixed it at Van Buren.

He farmed, belonged to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and lost livestock and buildings during the Civil War years while remaining too old for further military service. He applied for and received a War of 1812 pension in the early 1870s.

Whitfield Bourne died on April 1, 1879, at the age of eighty years, seven months, and seven days, on the homestead he had established. Madaline survived him until January 16, 1887.

Both were buried on the place, as was Clarinda (a later marker placed by descendants). The Bourne Whitfield Family Cemetery stands a short distance north of the Dripping Springs community on the original homestead, on Highway 220 just north of the intersection with Dripping Springs Road, on the east side of the road.

The small private plot also holds Madaline’s sister Mary B. Brownlee Lynn, who married J. I. Lynn and died December 8, 1868; Clarinda’s sister Lucretia Weaver Mayes, born about 1807 in Tennessee and died about 1850; and Benjamin Weaver (1785–1830) and Cecilia Womack Weaver (1781–1830), the Tennessee couple believed to be the parents of Clarinda and Lucretia.

Other unmarked graves are thought to include children or nieces. The old log house that once stood on the farm was later moved and reconstructed at Prairie Grove Battlefield, where it greets visitors as the first building they encounter.

The cemetery itself remains a quiet family enclosure, the resting place of the War of 1812 veteran who claimed the land after the long journey from Kentucky and the Lovely Purchase, together with the wives, in-laws, and kin who shared it.