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Jefferson County: First Visitors and First Settlers

      The first visitors to Jefferson County were probably trappers and accidental visitors. French explorers came down the Ohio in the late 1600 and French trappers entered the region at least by the 1700s. English Pennsylvania trappers were roaming the Midwest in the 1740s. Others would pass by what became Jefferson Co. George Rogers Clark and his company came down the river in 1778 on the way to Louisville. Also, because Milton, Ky., was founded in 1789, it’s hard not to believe that residents ventured across the river, which was often passable in the summer in the days before dams raised the water level year round.

      However, the first documented European visit came on May 23, 1791 when General Charles Scott and a mounted company of 852 men crossed the river five miles below the mouth of the Kentucky River at Battle Creek, which may have been an older name for the Indian-Kentuck Creek. A 1925 article by J.W. Whickour, based on contemporary accounts, says the company marched through Switzerland, Jefferson, Jennings, and other counties on their way to Indian villages on the Wabash. In 1793, two teenagers, John and Peter Smock, were captured by Indians in Shelby Co., Ky. An 1874 account by their nephew John Smock says that pursuers trailed the Indians to the Ohio river. The Indians cross the river at Clifty Creek and stayed for three days on the present courthouse site.

      Another early visitor was probably George Ash, kidnaped in Nelson Co., Ky., and raised as an Indian. Ash settled near Lamb between 1795 and 1800. The Indians gave him a land grant which was not recognized by the Greenville Treaty of 1795. However, Congress gave him the right to claim 640 acres. Although Ash lived in Switzerland Co., the land he received under this claim extended into Milton Twp. There was also a road cut by Captain E. Kibbey from Cincinnati to Versailles, which may have been completed in1799, 1801, 1802, or later. Accounts made years later say the road ran through Jefferson and Switzerland Counties.

      The next documented visitor was George Logan in 1801, according to an 1885 publication. That same book also cites Col. John Ryker as the first permanent settler of Jefferson Co. in 1804 in the Eagles Springs area of what would become Ryker’s Ridge. According to John Smock, John Ryker’s sister Rachel and her husband Samuel Smock (John Smock’s parents), sister Deborah and her husband Mason Watts, and their brother Samuel Ryker crossed the Ohio and Corn Creek and settled near Hanover in 1805. (Samuel Ryker may have moved back to Kentucky, returning in 1810.)

      The Rev. Jesse Vawter and family, the Underwoods, Branhams, and Ralph Griffin and other families, mainly from Woodford Co., Ky., moved to Indiana in the fall of 1806, apparently settling near modern Fairmount Cemetery, where they founded the Crooked Creek Baptist Church in 1807. Also in 1807, William and son John Hall, settled on bottom lands, in what became the small town of Fulton and later part of Madison. This land is located in the most eastern part of Madison adjoining the Ohio.

      George Ash patented the first land in Jefferson Co.--435.62 acres in Section 17 Twp. 3N Range 12E and Section 16, along with fractional section 21 on April 1808. Robert McKay of Shenandoah Co., Va., patented the same land on Oct. 19, 1808. This land is in Milton Twp. and borders Switzerland Co. on the East and the Ohio River on the southwest corner. (Since both McKay and Ash later sold land in Section 17, it’s possible neither man prevailed in claiming the entire tract.)

Robert W. Scott, December 1995