Ephraim Dicken served during the American Revolution after being drafted into the Culpeper County Militia in 1781, then reenlisting as a substitute first for Michael Wilhite and later for his brother-in-law, John Burdine. Under Col. Wells of Fredricksburg, his unit fought a British scouting party near Hot Water, where he was wounded by a sword and taken prisoner, then marched to Williamsburg and Jamestown and held for three months, during which he contracted smallpox, before being released in a prisoner exchange. Serving under Gen. Edward Stephens, he was present at the Siege of York when Cornwallis surrendered, and afterward spent his final three months of military service guarding British prisoners at Winchester, Virginia. He came to what would be Kentucky in the summer of 1786 with two brothers and an older sister whose husband had been killed during the war, and eventually all 15 of his brothers and sisters settled somewhere in Kentucky. After first settling near present-day Lebanon and returning to fight Indians under George Rogers Clark, he became one of the first settlers in what would become Monroe County when he moved there in 1794. He received a Kentucky land grant on Sulphur Lick Creek and the Cumberland River and before his death owned more than 1000 acres on both sides of the mouth of Big Sulphur Creek. Active in his community, he belonged to the local church and contributed to construction of the Meetinghouse. In 1806 he obtained a permit to operate a ferry on the Cumberland River and ran Dicken's Ferry Landing for 31 years, and in 1808 he acquired an acre near the landing and built a tobacco warehouse. When he died in 1837, the ferry passed to his daughter Martha (Patsy) and her husband, Archibald McMillin, and the place became known as McMillin's Landing. Family historians believe he was buried at the Dicken-McMillin-Chappell Family Cemetery overlooking the Cumberland River, although no firm evidence confirms it.