Frontier Kentucky by Rice Otis K.;

Author:Rice, Otis K.; [Rice, Otis K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 1993-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

Corporate Enterprise and Individual Initiative

THE DEFEAT of the Shawnees at Point Pleasant heralded both a wave of settlement and a surge of corporate activity in Kentucky. One of the first organizations to take advantage of the new conditions was the Ohio Company of Virginia, which had succumbed to the Kentucky craze in 1773. In the summer of 1775 its surveyor, Hancock Lee, and several assistants laid off a 200,000-acre tract in the Bluegrass region and established Leestown near the site of Frankfort. Most of the Ohio Company tract lay on the South Fork of the Licking River and on the North Fork of Elkhorn Creek. The surveyors also located and entered for themselves and their friends thousands of acres, taking care to avoid military surveys made on Elkhorn Creek in 1774 and 1775 by John Floyd.

The activities of the Ohio Company excited deep concern on the part of the Loyal Company. William Crawford, the official superior of Hancock Lee, held a surveyor’s commission from the College of William and Mary and was also a deputy of Thomas Lewis, the powerful surveyor of Augusta County. A number of his surveys had been patented to George Washington. The Loyal Company challenged the legality of Crawford’s appointment, and Washington, rather than face a collision with a rival organization, apparently prevailed upon the Ohio Company to send Willis Lee, the brother of Hancock, rather than Crawford, to Kentucky. Willis Lee, like his brother, had not been deputized by any county surveyor and his work therefore constituted no great threat to the Loyal Company. Moreover, with its influence in both the council and the General Assembly of Virginia, the latter was able to block efforts by the Ohio Company to have its surveys validated. Ohio Company surveys thus remained unpatented, and with the passage of the Land Law of 1779 were opened to entries, warrants, and patents by others.

Of less concern to the Loyal Company were other surveying operations east of the Kentucky River, most of them under the direction of Pennsylvanians. One of the parties, led by Robert Patterson and John McClellan, established McClellan’s Station, which in time became the village of Georgetown. Nicholas Cresswell, a young Englishman who had been engaged to locate lands for William Murray, a founder of the Illinois Company, also searched for desirable tracts in Kentucky. At Connellsville, Pennsylvania, Cresswell’s party was joined by another under James Nourse, and together the two descended the Ohio. In Kentucky Nourse visited both Harrodsburg and Boonesborough and laid out tracts on a stream which he believed to be either Eagle Creek or the headwaters of the Licking. At or near Fish Creek, on the upper Ohio, young George Rogers Clark, who had settled there in 1772, joined the Cresswell and Nourse parties and traveled with them to Kentucky, where he became a member of Hancock Lee’s surveying team. The surveys made east of the Kentucky River in 1775 were usually in 400-acre plots which might be patented later as settlement rights.

Although most

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