[104] The manufacture of salt in the Kanawha Valley, for more than half a century its leading industry, is now a thing of the past. The Salt or Great Buffalo Lick on the Kanawha River, near the mouth of Campbell's Creek, was visited in succession by buffaloes, Indians, and pioneers to obtain salt. As early as 1797 a certain Elisha Brooks began in a crude way to manufacture salt, but it was first established as a profitable industry by the Ruffner brothers in 1808. In 1817 coal was substituted for wood as fuel. At that time there were about thirty furnaces and fifteen or twenty wells in operation, producing between 600,000 and 700,000 bushels annually. The maximum of prosperity was reached about 1850, when the output was 3,000,000 bushels for the year.—Ed.
[105] For the Great Kanawha River and the battle of Point Pleasant, see Croghan's Journals, volume i of our series, note 101.—Ed.
[106] For an account of the settlement of Gallipolis, see F. A. Michaux's Travels, volume iii of our series, pp. 182-185, and note 34.—Ed.
[107] The Guyandotte River rises in Logan County, West Virginia, and flowing northwestward for about one hundred and fifty miles, joins the Ohio a few miles above the Kentucky line.—Ed.
[108] Greenup, the seat of the county of that name, is seventy-two miles above Maysville. It was incorporated in 1818, and named in honor of Governor Greenup.
Christopher Greenup, born in Virginia, about 1750, served throughout the Revolutionary War, and in 1783 came to Kentucky to practice law. He was elected a member of Congress (1792), and in 1804 governor of Kentucky. At the expiration of his gubernatorial term, he represented Franklin County in the legislature, continuing in public life until his death, in 1818.—Ed.
[109] For further information on this point, see Flint's Letters, volume ix of our series, note 89.—Ed.
[110] For the early history connected with the Scioto River, see Croghan's Journals, volume i of our series, note 102.—Ed.
[111] For the Pittsburg Navigator, see Cuming's Tour, volume iv of our series, note 43.—Ed.
[112] In 1790, Nathaniel Massie, the surveyor of the Virginia military tract, who played so prominent a part in early Ohio history, contracted with twenty-one Kentuckians to settle a town which he would lay out on his land along the Ohio River. The following year a stockade was built on the mainland, ten miles above Maysville, and one of the three islands opposite was cleared and planted with corn. He called the settlement Manchester, but for years it was known in Kentucky and Ohio as Massie's Station.—Ed.