Up the river, without a paddle

Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark were the big names surrounding my childhood. Boone was the first to blaze a new trail into this part of my world bringing his family and those of many others into a frontier settlement called Boonesborough. George Rogers was the dashing, military leader who spent most of his time in the "other" settlement called Harrodsburg . [Clark is credited with almost single handily saving this frontier by bringing gun power from Virginia just in time.] The Harrodsburg's group was primarily from Pennsylvania and Virginia. Clark County, Kentucky was named after George Rogers Clark, and the high school I attended was named George Rogers Clark! Boone's Creek, Boone's station, Boonesborough road, Boone's Creek Baptist Church, and to many other land marks to name were titled after this fairly large Boone clan.

Interesting to me, was the fact that Daniel Boone was employed by a gentlemen from North Carolina name Richard Henderson. This North Carolina supreme court judge, had the grandiose plan to start his own country. Before Boone was ever hired, Henderson had made an agreement (treaty) with the Cherokee Indians to buy 200,000 acres of land in the heart of this new country. This new country was to contain all the land south of the Kentucky River and be called Transylvania. This left the land north of the Kentucky River unclaimed. Clark County is the land just north of Boonesborough, and the Kentucky River, being one of the earliest settlement areas of the state. Some miles to the east, "up river", the Red River flows into the north side of the Kentucky (where my Ewen side settled). A creek called "four mile creek", because it was four miles "up river" from Boonesborough, flowed into the north side of the Kentucky. It is here that my Jones side first settled. It would take almost 150 years before my Jones side decided to move into the county seat named Winchester, where I grew up! You could sort of say that both my Jones side and Ewen side started "up the river without a paddle"! Unknown to me at the time (my childhood), my great grandmother on the Jones side was Ellen Dorcas Henderson, but that is another story.