Boone’s Fort
About the same time that Boonesborough was being established, Captain James Harrod with a party of forty men descended the Ohio River, stopped for a time at the mouth of Licking River, and felled some trees on the present site of Cincinnati. Not being satisfied with the location of the settlement, they followed the Ohio to the mouth of the Kentucky River and ascended the Kentucky to a spot now known as Oregon Landing. Being fatigued [pg 8]from their long and difficult voyage, they left their boats and took a course from the river and found a big spring at which they built a stockade on the present site of Harrodsburg.
The large flowing spring one mile west of the present town of Stanford, Lincoln County, was made the site of a third settlement. Capt. Benjamin Logan headed this party of pioneers, and the station was, for a time, known as Logan’s Fort. Afterward, because of the fact that the fort was made by planting logs on end, it was called Standing Fort, and in later years the town was called Stanford. In the Logan party was a priest who was a musician of rare ability. In his daily walks, he was accustomed to sit, meditating, at the mouth of the cave from which ran the water of this great spring. The ripple of the stream flowing from the cavern, over the rocks and through the spearmint, was music to the Father’s ear, and to him it seemed the spirit of St. Asaph, the director of King David’s choir. He it was who named the spring and the creek which flows from it, St. Asaph’s.
While the people busied themselves at Harrodsburg, Boonesborough and Logan’s Fort, Simon Kenton, disappointed in a love affair in Virginia, seeking relief from sorrow by satisfying his hunger for hunting and at the same time acting in the interest of Lord Dunmore, came to Kentucky. He reached a point near Old Washington in Mason County, where he and his party cleared an acre of land, planted corn and ate the roasting ears the same summer. So far as we know, this was the first agricultural activity in the Commonwealth.
In April, 1775, the first battle of the Revolutionary War was fought at Lexington, Mass. At that time a party of hunters was camped at the big spring near the present site of the Fayette County courthouse, in Lexington, Ky. Months later, the news of the American victory reached [pg 9]the settlers, and because of their great joy over the victory gained, they named the camp site Lexington.
Limestone (now Maysville), Royal Springs (now Georgetown) and Martin’s Station were also built this year.
Stockade and Cabins at Lexington
In 1779, Lexington was first permanently improved and cabins built. From these rude stockade cabins grew the beautiful city of the Blue Grass, in which town for many years were manufactured practically all the fur hats worn in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Being in the center of the hemp-growing section, practically all the ropes and cables used in boating on the Ohio, Mississippi and Kentucky rivers were made in Lexington. These commercial enterprises, together with the exceptional fertility of the soil, account for the development of the city of Lexington more rapidly than the surrounding forts and stations.