Mad Ann Bailey’s Grave: Heroine of the Frontier

“Mad” Ann Bailey’s grave and memorial are in Tu-Endie-Wei State Park in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Bailey’s husband, Richard Trotter, was killed during the Battle of Point Pleasant. After the death of her husband, the course of her life changed. Heartbroken, Anne swore to avenge her husband’s death, harboring a grudge against the Shawnee.  

She taught herself how to shoot a gun and became a scout and courier during the Revolutionary War. Bailey was involved in the campaigns against Shawnee Native Americans, who gave her the nickname “Mad Anne” because of her quick temper. She was also known as the “White Squaw of Kanawha”.

She is said to have dressed like a man in buckskins and taught herself how to drink and swear like a man of the time as well. She is the subject of numerous stories and is said to have killed several Indians.  

Bailey would spend 11 years roaming the Western Virginia wilderness, relaying messages between frontier forts. Around 1785, she married John Bailey, a Greenbrier County soldier, but she did not give up scouting.

In 1791, when she was 49 years old, she made a daring 200-mile ride to help save a besieged fort.  Fort Lee, near present-day Charleston, West Virginia, was facing an imminent attack from a large force of Indians.  The fort was nearly out of gunpowder.  Anne bravely volunteered to ride to Fort Savannah near present-day Lewisburg to retrieve a much-needed powder supply. 

She made the dangerous ride in just three days. Returning with the gunpowder and saving Fort Lee. She remained a scout and courier until 1795, when the Treaty of Greenville, Ohio, ended the Northwest Indian War.

Today, this gravesite memorial in Tu-Endie-Wei State Park honors the “Heroine of the Frontier” Ann Bailey.