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Introduction and Acknowledgment

Jefferson County: Before the Beginning

By Robert W. Scott, Copyright May 2003

        When it comes to the explorations of the Ohio Valley, Jefferson County looks like a game of horseshoes in 1700s. There are reports of Europeans coming close, but never quite seeming to hit the county for much of the eighteenth century. The short version of this story would be, it is highly likely that early explorers, especially fur traders, stopped in Jefferson County in the middle of the 1700s, but there is no proof. Certainly, the early history could be described in those two sentences. But then there would be no need for this chapter, and the hits and misses in themselves have some historical interest, and they point to why Jefferson County was settled later than neighboring counties of Switzerland and Clark, and how settlement came about.

        And this book introduces the claim that there is evidence that Jefferson County was visited between 1765 and 1774, far earlier than previously documented. There is also conclusive evidence that the Indian-Kentuck Creek was named no later than 1788.

        Contemporaneous accounts, such as journals by explorers, demonstrate that there were numerous trips on the Ohio throughout the 1700s. Who was first? There are a number of writings that claim the French explorer LaSalle came down the Ohio and even went overland, and that he went through Scott County, not Jefferson. Other experts say LaSalle did not explore the river and never claimed to do so, before ending up in Texas where, his men registered their opinion about his leadership skills by murdering him. The scholarly judgment is divided on LaSalle’s possible visit to the Ohio Valley. (Meanwhile, a fairly convincing theory has emerged that DeSoto came north through central Kentucky and crossed into Indiana at Evansville.)

        A review of the many journals and accounts available lead to the conclusion that for much of the 1700s the landscape, including the Indian-Kentuck Creek, the largest body of water leading from the county, and its steep Cedar Cliffs, offered little to impress passers-by. By contrast, travelers often noted such landmarks as the remains of ancient mammals at Big Bone Lick, the Kentucky River, and the Falls of the Ohio, the most easily definable points of reference at a time when many natural features, including the Kentucky River, were unnamed. Also complicating the search is that fact that names change or were used inconsistently. For example, Lewis Evans’ 1755 map uses the name Allegheny River for the stream until the Wabash joins. Only then, does the map label the water body as the Ohio River. In 1765, George Croghan notes that in a “Days Journey we passed the Mouth of the River Kentucky or Holstens River.” The Kentucky would also be called the Cuttaway River. The Ohio was also known to the French as the Belle Riviere (Beautiful River, apparently a French translation of an Indian word) and Ohio itself is spelled Hohio on the Trader’s Map of 1753. The first record of anyone reaching the Kentucky River (under that name) to which a date can be attached comes in 1754 when James McBride, and a company of others, came down the Ohio and landed at the mouth of the river.

        Pinpointing where explorers ventured in the early days is difficult because of the lack of names of natural features linked to reliable maps. The explorer Thomas Walker, who discovered the Cumberland Gap, apparently came to the Falls of the Ohio, where modern Louisville was founded in 1780. He did not go upstream. In 1749, George Croghan came down the Ohio, then headed north along the Miami.

        In 1751, the explorer Christopher Gist’s believed he was within 15 miles of the falls of the Ohio at one point, but his journal also makes it clear, he thought the falls were about 20 miles downstream from what we now know is the Licking River, which enters the Ohio at Cincinnati. He gives the number of miles he traveled, although his phrasing is unclear about whether the distance is measured from the Miami River. He talks about bones from Big Bone Lick being brought to him, but does not state he stopped there.

        “I concluded not to go to the Falls; but travell'd away to the Southward till We were over the Little Cuttaway River,” his journal notes. The Little Cuttaway is apparently the little Kentucky, opposite Lamb.

        But it would take a journal that specified the number of miles between major landmarks to prove any visits to the Jefferson County area. However, most of those who traveled that gap did not mention terrain between the mouth of the Kentucky River and the Falls of the Ohio. One of the few that does is the journal of John Jennings, which recounts the journey on Wednesday, March 19, 1766. “At half past nine, passed by the Kentucke (sic) River, Large at the Entrance, & pleasant Banks, on each side....At Eleven Majr Smallman & the Indians joyned us, with plenty f Buffalo & Bears Meat. At four O'Clock in the Afternoon, saw some Warriors Cabbins at the Point of a Creek on the West side of the River. At Seven encamp'd for the Night, on an Island full of Canes about ten Miles above the falls, & forty below the Kentucke River. “ It seems unlikely that the point of the creek would have been in Jefferson County, since the trip from the Kentucky River to the island took ten hours.

        There are reports of ventures onto the Lower Ohio Valley. But one academic view is that this term meant something different in the mid-1700s. “We conclude, knowing previous centers of English trading activities in the Ohio Valley, that "the lower part of the Ohio" did not refer to what would now be designated as the lower Ohio Valley, but rather that the reference was to present-day Ohio.”

        The main hope for proving early visits lies in maps, where presumably if the right elements are shown, demonstrate that someone visited the area to draw them. As with Gist’s assumption that the falls were 20 miles from Big Bone Lick, early maps are often distorted. In the middle of the 1700s, some show the Wabash reaching into Michigan and the Appalachians reaching the Ohio River at roughly southern Ohio.

        One map, however, is promising. It was published in London in 1778 by Thomas Hutchins with the lengthy title of “A new map of the western parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina; comprehending the river Ohio, and all the rivers, which fall into it; part of the river Mississippi, the whole of the Illinois River, Lake Erie; part of the lakes Huron, Michigan &c. and all the country bordering on these lakes and rivers.” This map is unusually accurate for the period in showing the bends in the river, particularly the Ohio’s turn from west to south between Madison and Hanover. Few streams are named, but the map meticulously shows small streams as 20 yards wide, and so on, all along both sides of the Ohio. One 20-yard wide stream appears on the north shore where the Indian-Kentuck would be expected and it shows the stream splitting into two that following a course very similar to the West and East Forks. It was accurate enough that it was later used as the basis for maps of the Greenville Treaty line.

        There is also a map from 1753 called the Trader’s Map, which may show the Indian-Kentuck. This map, crudely drawn, displays the Ohio as running east-west. It shows a stream below what appears to be the Kentucky River that could be the Indian-Kentuck, but does not clear East-West splits of the main forks. But in both maps, there is a stream that is where the Indian-Kentuck should be relative to the Ohio River, the falls, and the Miami Rive. It is also in the right relative position to an unmeasured stream that occurs just where Indian Creek should be, as are Laughery’s Creek and Whitewater River. No stream west of the Great Miami is named. Since both maps should latitude and longitude lines, the creeks are in the right position relative to modern maps on both the Traders map and the 1778 map.

        How accurate is the Hutchins’ map and when were the surveys made? According to Hutchins’ own account, “Those parts of the country lying westward of the Allegheny mountain, and upon the rivers Ohio and Mississippi, and upon most of the other rivers; and the lakes (laid down in my Map) were done from my own surveys, and corrected by my own observations of latitudes, made at different periods preceding, and during all the campaigns of the last war (in several of which I acted as an Engineer) and since in many reconnoitring tours, which I made through various parts of the country, between the years 1764 and 1775." That means that Hutchins work on the Ohio took place sometimes in that nine-year period.

        My interpretation of the two maps is that the detail on Hutchins’ work suggests he personally mapped streams the lengths and directions of streams such as the Indian-Kentuck, while the lack of detail on the Trader’s Map means that the maker mapped the streams’ mouths at the Ohio River, but simply drew wavy lines to indicate the inland courses without measuring their exact lengths or courses. Of course, this is conjecture.

        As early as 1764, the distance between various features on the Ohio had been accurately measured, possibly by Hutchins or William Smith. A table prepared by this author shows that the distance to Big Bones [Big Bone Lick in Kentucky, opposite Switzerland County] was 504 miles from Fort Pitt. It was another 55 miles to the Kentucky River, and 50 more to the Falls of the Ohio. “The Fourth Rout down the Ohio was given by an Indians trader, who has often passed from Fort-Pitt to the Falls; and the distances he gives of the mouths of the several rivers that fall into the Ohio may be pretty certainly depended on.” (Big Bone Lick, with its remains of massive early mammals such as mammoths and mastodons, provides one of the most identifiable natural features in the area, allowing a precise location of geography related to it. A map published in 1744 by Jacques Bellin has a French inscription stating that elephant bones were found there in 1729. This map was drawn by M. Chaussegros de Lery, who was being protected by Captain Charles Lemoyne de Longueil. According to a Web site about Big Bone Lick, de Lery took compass surveys that would lead to the charting of the Ohio.)

        It is John Filson’s first map of Kentucky, however, that provides one of the most interesting details. Drawn in 1784, but not published until 1793, the map clearly shows a stream in eastern Jefferson County as the Indian Kentucky, the most common for the name before the 1900s. It also somewhat accurately shows its three major branches (themselves not named), Filson’s map was made at a time when there were no towns or governmental organizations north of the river and few south of it. (Filson, who can also be described as Daniel Boone’s self-appointed publicist, is assumed to have been killed by Indians after he disappeared in 1788.) The Indian-Kentuck, in fact, is the only stream north of the Ohio between Clarks Creek and the Miami River that has a name. Other streams are designated as streams 20-yards wide and so on. Where did the name come from? The origin is uncertain, but all accounts that link it to events in the nineteenth century, obviously don’t hold water.

        But more organized efforts remained in the close-but-no-cigar category for several more years as far as Jefferson County is concerned. One account places Daniel Boone in the region. In 1774, he built his cabin at Harrodsburg and then followed the Kentucky River to its mouth on the same trip. However, while Boone ventured north, including his capture by Indians that took him to Detroit, he more usually followed the Licking River. Any ventures downstream on the Ohio either did not occur or were not recorded.

        At this time, surveying of Kentucky land was proceeding. A journal by Thomas Hanson, a young surveyor in the company of the better known Colonel William Preston and John Floyd suggests surveys were made of land across the river from Madison in1774. Hanson’s journal notes on the May 21, 1774, that “Mr. Floyd surveyed 600 acres of land on the lower side of the mouth of Kentucky which takes in little Kentucky for Col. Preston.” This would obviously be the area that became the town of Preston in 1795, later Prestonville. On the evening of the 22nd, the team went down-river three and a half miles and on the 23rd surveyed two tracts of 1,000 acres each on a bottom that extended 7.5 miles. This measurement describes the bottom just upstream from Milton, Kentucky and diagonally across from Madison.

        After the Revolutionary War broke out, such surveys did settlers little good because Indian troubles in Kentucky reached a great intensity as the British and Indians attempted to drive settlers from the Blue Grass State, and came close to succeeding. This effort produced a fort at the mouth of the Kentucky River, although its completion date and length of existence are not known. According to a letter by British Governor Henry Hamilton of Detroit, dated Sept. 5, 1778, “Prisoner brought in here by the Shawanese [a common variant of the name Shawnee] lately, who was taken near one of the Forts on the River Kentuke, tells me the Rebels were lately reinforced with three Companies each of 70 men. There are three different forts on that river & a forth has been begun lately at its conflux with the Ohio.” [Another account says the fort was 30 miles upstream on the Kentucky River.]

        The fort may not have lasted long. When George Rogers Clark moved his troops down the river in 1780, he noted that he, “landed at the mouth of Kentucky whare [sic] I intended to have Fortified as the growth of Kentucky greatly depended on a post being fixed on the Ohio River as a place of securety for the Emigrants that wished to come down the River but taking in View my designs to the westward I found that Kentucky was not the spot....” Although he could afford to keep two posts, he decided that the Falls of the River was “the more Eligible spot as it would answer all those desireable purposes and in a great measure Protect the Navigation of the River.” The natural conclusion is that he scouted the north shore looking for sites that could be defended, another unprovable assumption.

        But where Clark would be pleased enough with the land opposite Louisville to secure thousands of acres for his soldiers in a grant that stretched into Scott County, nothing apparently drew him to the Madison or Vevay areas. However, Clark’s men included soldiers like John Paul and Patrick Brown who would settle in the Madison area in the early part of the next century.

        Still, white settlement was getting closer. The town of Milton, Kentucky, opposite Madison, was founded in 1789. Since the river was not as deep or wide in those days before dams, it was possible to swim, or even walk across the river at dry times. Did no one venture onto the north shore? It seems likely, but there is no way to establish that possibility, unless a first-hand observation turns up. Other accounts suggest that the north shore attracted men fleeing the law, a fact noted particularly about “The Gore,” that stretch of land between the Indian-Treaty line and the modern Ohio border. It was probably true of the whole territory for those who might risk Indian capture over arrest.

        The Lamb area, just east of the Jefferson County border in Switzerland County, was a natural landing place. It is opposite the mouth of the Kentucky River. Its broad bottoms are far enough from the hills to take away the advantage of the heights. And it was at the end of an Indian trail.

        Not surprisingly, this is the site of the first known visit of Europeans to Switzerland County appears to be documented in an account of Indian captives who were carried north from Nelson County, Ky., in the Spring of 1782. About 30 captives were in the group, which included a Mrs. Ash, apparently the mother or step-mother of George Ash, captured in a raid in 1780. The account of this journey was made by William Polk, who was born in 1775, and was age seven when he and his mother and siblings were captured. Mrs. Ash did not live to reach the Ohio River. This tale was published in the Indiana Magazine of History in June 1913.

        The Indians told Mrs. Polk that they would soon cross the Ohio River, because they had horses on the other side. The Indians had concealed their canoes “a short distance up the Kentucky River, above the junction with the Ohio,” placing the site not far from Lamb. One of the Indians advised Mrs. Polk on treating her soar feet while they crossed. “Having crossed, he assisted her up the bank,” the account says. The party proceeded by land to the Indian camps in Ohio.

        Whites probably ventured to the north shore fairly commonly, taking chances with their fate. One account, given in John Hays Journal, places other Europeans on the Indiana side, opposite the Kentucky River in 1789 and 1790.

        A letter from J.F. Hamtramck to General Hamar, dated July 29, 1789 describes a pending expedition by a group of Kentuckians against the Wabash Indians, which succeeded, according to later accounts. This letter says Shawnees, whose village was on the Mississinewa River in Northern Indian were hunting on the north bank of the Ohio near the mouth of the Kentucky River. “There they were attacked by several Americans who were in pursuit of a Miami war party that had just passed by. The Americans killed several of the women and children in the Shawnee hunting party.”
This kind of vigilante action was common and so was Indian retaliation.

        “This morning about ½ past 10 oClock a Party of warriors of the Shawanies Nation brought in a Prisoner. They took him on this side of the Ohio at the mouthe of Kentuck,” according to entry dated Feb. 13, 1790. The prisoner, named McMullen, was taken in revenge because a group of Americans the last spring had killed several Miamis, including women and children. This account says the prisoner, “who was out hunting much about the same place where there own people were killed.” The only information about this is that he was very young and recently from Virginia.

        The traffic in captives also produced a journey into Jefferson County. Two teenagers, John and Peter Smock, were captured by Indians in Shelby County, Ky., about 1793, an estimate based on their known ages at the time of the capture. The two were held by Winnimac, a Pottawattomi chief, ransomed to their father for a keg of rum and released in 1795 at Greenville, Ohio, during negotiations for the Greenville Treaty. Their nephew John Smock related in The Madison Courier of June 26, 1874 that “the same band of Indians who scalped young Robbins (another relative) took the uncles (the Smocks) prisoners; the Indians were trailed to the river, where they crossed at Clifty Creek and stayed three days where the court house now is.”

        With the stream of captives during the 1780s and 1790s, it was also possible that other raid routes touched Jefferson County. Again a logical conclusion, but one that is not proven. George Ash, whose account has been as well known as any, likely visited Jefferson or Switzerland Counties in the late 1700s, and his own capture could have involved the same route as his mother’s. His experience will be noted later. But at this point, the British and Indians held hundreds of Americans in Canada and Detroit, including George’s brothers Isaac, Henry, Abraham, and Sylvester. Perhaps Ash’s capture in Nelson County contributed to the later stream of Nelson county residents who were among the earliest settlers in Switzerland County and parts of Jefferson.

        The first account with any specific facts about a European visit to Jefferson County involves the campaign of General Charles Scott to subdue Indians on the Wabash and Eel Rivers in Northern Indiana. Scott’s letter of June 28, 1791, details some of the geography involved in his crossing. The company arrived at the mouth of the county on the morning of May 19 and until May 23, was involved in crossing the Ohio, mustering, and receiving provisions and ammunition. “I marched four miles from the banks of the Ohio, on the 23d; and on the 24th, I resumed my march, and pushed forward with the utmost industry,” he wrote. He continues that by the 31st he had marched 131 miles and crossed for larger branches of the White River. This account does give statements that definitely show he crossed what became Jefferson County. But since he was heading northwest to reach the Eel River, it seems hard to believe that he would have gone any other way. Because Big Creek in western Jefferson County was called White River early in the eighteenth century, it seems possible that Scott’s company crossed that stream.

        While Scott’s letter does not give the detail, a biography says he led 852 mounted men across the river “at Battle Creek five miles below the mouth of the Kentucky River, near present Madison, Ind.” It’s not known where all the details came from because this version of the crossing was based on an article by a J.W. Whickour in 1925 in the Indiana Magazine of History. Whickour, who apparently drew from contemporary accounts, states that “Scott’s march led through Switzerland, Jefferson, Jennings, Scott, Bartholomew, Shelby, Marion, Hendricks, Boone, Montgomery, and Tippecanoe” counties. Whickour’s source for this route has not been discovered. Did he base it on a journal of the actual march?

        As with Kibbey’s decision to use the Cincinnati Trace as the basis for a road, it is necessary to ask why Scott, who apparently had not visited the Wabash River Indian villages, chose this route. Someone probably scouted it, either Indians or Europeans. If we believe the 1778 map shows the streams accurately, it’s possible Scott had access to a good map, such as Hutchins’. And how else would have known he had crossed branches of the White River without a map. And where is Battle Creek? Maps of Kentucky and Indiana show no modern stream by this name. The mouth of the Indian-Kentuck is five miles downstream from the mouth of the Kentucky River and would be a natural landing spot since boats could take him inland for two or three miles. Angling northwest from the landing opposite the Kentucky River would seem to be the natural route to the Eel River villages.

        Many of the early settlers had the opportunity to see Jefferson County, if not actually visit, before settling there. Many were soldiers, and some served with George Rogers Clark. Both John Paul, founder of Madison, and Patrick Brown, later his son-in-law, were in Clark’s expeditions.

        John Ryker lays claim to being the first European to live in Jefferson County (disregarding George Ash, who lived near the boundary and probably visited his holdings in what became Jefferson County). Ryker had the opportunity to view his future home in 1780. In the spring, he was part of the Low Dutch contingent that floated down the Ohio to Louisville. About July 1 of that year, he was part of a company under General Clark that headed upriver to fight the Indians in town towns in Ohio. Boats went up river, while the men marched from Bear Grass Floyd’s Station. “I was marched on the now Kentucky side of the river,” he stated in his application for a Revolutionary War pension. After some battles with the Indians, Ryker says he returned by the same route to Bear Grass.

        Ryker gives a tantalizing information about his service in December 1781 when he “During December of 1781 served as Indian spy frequently went a distance of 20 to 25 miles on the Ohio and up the river and in various directions, as occasions required.” He does not specify the starting point of his journey. The nature of the job suggests he could have easily gone north of the river. In the spring of 1782, he marched from Bear Grass to the Kentucky River, The company followed a circular route, apparently then heading inland to return to Bear Grass. In August, General Clark began another campaign that apparently followed the same route. Ryker says the expedition “Went up the Ohio River, army went on land & provisions were conveyed in boats.” Sometime after 1783, he spent another seven months as a spy, although he did not note the year.

        Settlers were crossing the river on a regular basis before much of the area was settled. Governor William Henry Harrison, in a letter written on July 15, 1801, provides evidence that white incursions north of the river were routine. He cites complaints from the Indians that “The people of Kentucky living on the Ohio from the mouth of the Kentucky river down the Mississippi make a constant practice of crossing over on the Indian lands opposite to them every fall to kill deer, bear, and buffaloe.” On May 9, he issued orders forbidding hunting, trapping or settling on Indian lands. On August 31, Harrison issued an order forbidding traders from following Indians to their Hunting grounds. But it is hard to take him seriously because on September 7, he pardoned Jonathan Freehart who had been convicted of settling on Indian lands at Saline (now Illinois) on the Ohio.

        Still something was happening north of the river on Nov. 28, 1795 because that is the day that the Kentucky legislature authorized the creation of the town of Preston in what was then Shelby County, and ferries across the Ohio and Kentucky Rivers. (The transcription doesn’t completely say that the ferries are at the town, but that seems implied.) That puts a ferry across the river from modern Prestonville to the Lamb area.

        Unfortunately, records on the Indiana side of the river, then part of the Northwest Territory, do not record a ferry. The government noted on June 6, 1797 that all ferry operators required a license from the territorial government, but it is uncertain whether Kentucky and the territorial government honored each other’s acts. The Indiana records show grants of ferry licenses at Clarksville, as early as June 6, 1797, and one at Six Mile Island above the falls of Louisville on Dec. 11, 1798, but none between Six Mile Island and the Miami River before 1803.

        Pressure was building not only because of hunting incursions. Vigilante actions continued all along the Ohio as settlers took it upon themselves to pursue Indians. Whites invaded government and Indian lands for lumber and attempted to organize settlement even before the land had been purchased from the Indians. On November 25, 1797, the government of the Northwest Territory issued a regulation for regulating trade with Indians, “Moved thereto by Information of some Associations in Kentuckey to lease Lands of the Indians - and Complaints of Trespass upon their hunting Grounds...”

        Moreover, whites attempting to reach the law or creditors were moving beyond the reach of government. The territorial government reported “a very great Increase of Intruders upon the Lands of the United States who are lessening the Value thereof by a waste of Timber - and may soon become formidable from their numbers.” This entry, made on January 8, 1798, also notes, “ Immediately over the great miami (In Knox County) report makes them nearly two hundred Families, amongst whom are many that have fled from this County merely to defraud their Creditors.” (At this time Hamilton County, Northwest Territory stretched to the Greenville Treaty line, that cuts through Switzerland County, reaching the Ohio at Lamb. Knox County would have started on the western side of the line, although this entry indicates it starts just west of the Great Miami River.)

        Attempts to use Indian lands were noted by Governor St. Clair on Nov. 25, 1797 when he ordered a notice published in the newspaper “Freeman’s Journal,” which warned against the plans “by information of some Associations in Kentuckey to lease Lands of the Indians--and Complaints of Trespass upon their hunting Grounds...”

        The government felt compelled to combat efforts to survey United States land, first noted on Oct. 6, 1794, by Winthrop Sergent, the secretary of state who often acted in the absence of Gov. Arthur St. Clair. Sergent wrote, “I am this moement informed that there are a number of men making a Survey west of the Great miami river of Lands the property of the United States and that they express the Intention of forming a Settlement there.” But the location and other details are not given. On December 9, 1794, Sergent issued a letter to Israel Ludlow, who performed the original survey of the town of Losantiville (Cincinnati) and who was later to survey the Greenville Treaty line. The letter notes Ludlow’s intention to explore territory on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. “It is incumbent on me officially to express to you that if this measure could at any Time be admissible without special Authority for so doing that this is not the moment--and further that I shall believe it my Duty to prevent the Survey of all Lands, Designation of their Boundaries by marking of Trees, monuments of Stone or otherwise not only within the unextinguished Claims of any Nation or Tribe of Indians, but throughout the whole Territory.”

        But after the treaty, work began to survey the land, and ultimately produce accurate land descriptions for those who would flood in to purchase it. Ludlow was chosen. His work proceeded as follows: “After delays waiting for an Indian and an Army escort, Ludlow began the Treaty line in June 1797. He ran a random line from Lorimies Store northeasterly toward Fort Lawrence, which intersected the Tuscarawas at 153 miles, 20 miles south of the crossing place. Ludlow then calculated a true line back and ran S.70 50'W. He blazed the line and set a post every mile.” This account, which originally ran in a magazine published by the Ohio Surveyor’s Historical Society, does not describe when Ludlow reached Lamb, but we can assume that he marked the line along its length to the Ohio River. Ludlow also later surveyed the boundary between Indiana and Ohio.

        About the same time, the possibility of improved land transportation grew. In 1799, Capt. E. Kibbey began cutting a road that would lead from Cincinnati through Vincennes. It ran through areas that would become Rising Sun, Vevay, Madison, Lexington Vienna, Salem, Paolo, French Lick, and Washington. The newspaper, “Western Sky,” published on July 23, 1799 states “Capt. E. Kibbey, who sometime since undertook to cut a road from Vincennes, returned on Monday reduced to a perfect skeleton. He had cut the road seventy miles when by some means he was separated from his men.” (Kibbey’s first name is not given in these accounts, but he is probably Ephraim Kibbey, a Captain of the militia appointed in 1789 by the territorial government at the site that would later be called Cincinnati).

        Seventy miles take the first year’s work into Washington County. Another 70 would take it past Madison. But the accounts discovered so far do not show how much work was done each year. Later descriptions (but not contemporaneous accounts) indicate that the road was laid in 1801 or 1802 and that the road extended from Judge Cotton’s (in what would have been Switzerland County) to the site that became Madison, a 20-mile segment, and on west another 17 miles to New Lexington.

        It seems likely that SOME road was operational between Madison and Lexington’s future locations by spring 1805 when “John Kimberlin of Virginia, with his two sons, Daniel and Isaac, floated down the Ohio River from Pennsylvania in a flatboat, and disembarked at the present site of Madison. From there, they moved westward over the Cincinnati Trace seeking greener pastures.”

        But no matter how many visited Jefferson County by design or by chance, or whether Kibbey’s road was completed in the 1700s, actual settlement still did not begin until after the 1800s and the area’s purchase from the Indians.

Bibliographical Notes

The accounts, journals and histories, involving, George Croghan, Thomas Hutchins, Christopher Gist and comrades, John Jennings, John Filson, Thomas Walker, and George Rogers Clark, letters of Charles Scott, William H. Harrison, J.F. Hamtramck, Henry Hamilton are available on the Web site of the Glen A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology at Also the academic report by Drs. Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Emily J. Blasingham, Dorothy R. Libby, regarding early English traders is found there.

Information related to Scott County came from an article by Carl Bogardus, written on July 23, 1970.

Images of both Hutchins map of 1778 and the Traders Map of 1753 can be found at the Library of Congress’ American Memory page at http://memory.loc.govl These can be propositioned in order to view different parts of the map and images can be enlarged to produce better view of details.
Images of Filson’s map are available at and

The transcription of the Executive Journal of the Northwest Territory by Richard C. Knopf is available at the Web site of the Ohio Historical Society