Shown is Arthur Fox, Sr’s 1785 home and ca. 1795 stone home located in Washington, Kentucky.
(By Stephen Kelley from the People’s Defender 1984)
As we have mentioned before, Manchester, Ohio settled in 1791, the first permanent white settlement made within the limits of the Virginia Military District. Originally known as Massie’s Station, it was a fortified stockade used as an outpost and base of operations for the deputy surveyors who were risking their lives to locate and plat the lands in the VMD.
Prior to the establishment of Massie’s station, the nearest white settlement was in the Limestone-Washington, Kentucky area. At Limestone, now the site of Maysville, and in Washington were the homes of the earliest surveyors who began their surveying expeditions on the north shore of the Ohio River as early as 1787.
One of the first settlers to locate in the Limestone region was Arthur Fox, Sr. An Englishman by birth and a surveyor by trade, Fox floated down the Ohio River on a flatboat and landed at the mouth of Limestone Creek in the Spring of 1785. He soon became acquainted with such notables as Simon Kenton, Daniel Boone and sixteen-year-old James B. Finley.
Fox also developed an amicable relationship with William Wood, a Baptist minister who had arrived at Limestone with his family on the last day of the year, 1784. These two men quickly formed a partnership and bought seven hundred acres of land from Kenton that was situated about four miles south of Limestone. Within a few weeks Fox and Wood platted a small village in the dense stand of cane that covered much of their tract. This new village was named Washington to honor the commanding general of American forces during the Revolution who also became the new nation’s first chief executive. That first year, Fox erected a substantial log house on the north end of this town. Of all the structures that then stood in what is now Mason County, only this one has survived to modern times. Occupied and in an excellent state of perseveration, it is denoted as the oldest extant house in Mason County today. It was this home in December of 1786 that Dolly Wood was born, the first female only the second white child born in what became Mason County, Kentucky. Fox also built at least two other structures in Mason County. One is a ca. 1795 stone house which stands on Main Street in Washington, and another log house on Lee’s Creek a few miles south of Washington. This latter structure was an outpost known as Fox’s Station. It was the scene of an Indian battle in the Winter of 1790 where three pioneers met their death.
When Washington was founded by Fox and Wood, the area was still considered a part of Virginia. As such, the villagers were compelled to petition the House of Delegates of the General Assembly of Virginia requesting the officially designate Washington a town. This petition was granted in 1786 with nine trustees being appointed to conduct official business for the settlement. Among those trustees were Arthur Fox, Sr and Daniel Boone.
Fox did much surveying in what is now Adams County. Several of the large tracts he platted in the wilderness were located on the Ohio River, the East Fork of Eagle Creek and the West Fork of Ohio Brush Creek. It was he who surveyed the land on the West Fork on which was constructed the Campbell/Breckinridge home that we wrote about on September 29 and October 6, 1983. Fox also platted survey number 1412 in March, 1794 also located on the West Fork. It is on this tract that the Village of Seaman now stands.
