Vancouver’s Fort - Louisa, KY, USA
N 38° 06.950 W 082° 36.162
17S E 359504 N 4219880
Marker is at the intersection of South Main Cross Street (Kentucky Route 2566) and East Main Street, on the left of the courthouse. A bronze marker with a DAR insignia is mounted on a pink sandstone monument.
Waymark Code: WM184AV
Location: Kentucky, United States
Date Posted: 05/27/2023
Views: 1
"I was employed by Charles Vancouver in the month of February, 1789, along with several other men, to go to the forks of Big Sandy River, for the purpose of settling, clearing and improving the Vancouver tract, situated on the point formed by the junction of the Tug and Levisa Forks, and near where the town of Louisa now stands. In March, 1789, shortly after Vancouver and his men settled on said point, the Indians stole all their horses but one, which they killed. We all, about ten in number, except three or four of Vancouver’s men, remained there during the year, and left the next March, except three or four men to hold possession. But they were driven off in April, 1790, by the Indians. Vancouver went East in May, 1789, for a stock of goods, and returned in the fall of the same year. We had to go to the mouth of the Kanawha River, a distance of eighty-seven miles, for corn, and no one was settled near us, probably the nearest was a fort about thirty or forty miles away, and this was built maybe early in 1790. The fort we built consisted of three cabins and some pens made of logs, like corn cribs, and reaching from one cabin to the other.
We raised some vegetables and deadened several acres of ground, say about eighteen, on the point, but the horses being stolen, we were unable to raise a crop."
(Signed) John Hanks.
The Fort Vancouver blockhouse survived but a year, suffering from both Indian raids and the difficulties of farming.
~ The Kaintuckeean ~
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