THE FILSON CLUB HISTORY QUARTERLY Vol. 27 LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, JANUARy, 1953 No. 1 GOODIN'S FORT •1780) IN NELSON COUNTY, KENTUCKY BY EVELYN CRADY ADAMS PART ONE: STORY OF THE FORT Verdant meadows, rippling streams, and forested hills in the far western reaches of the Colony of Virginia greeted Samuel Goodin and his family and warmed their hearts as they disembarked from • their flatboats at the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville, Kentucky) in April, 1779.1 The unpleasant memories of the severe winter just passed in Fayette County, Pennsylvania,2 grew dim in enchantment of the vernal scene and there was the comforting assurance that the long- sought goal of homesteads would soon be happily realized. Within a short time the family's land entries totaled nearly four thousand acres." On portions of these tracts and of others, homes were built and offspring nurtured. Over the years descendants have held immutable the pioneering spirit and perpetuated it with a new sense of responsibility in worth-while fields of human endeavor. After lingering briefly at the Falls, Samuel Goodin proceeded about fifty miles to the south to the section lying along Pottenger's Creek. When the good points of the vast wilderness bad been carefully weighed, he retraced his route some six miles and selected the site for his fort on the north bank of the Rolling Fork of Salt River, midway between the future towns of Nelsonville and New Haven in Nelson County, Kentucky.4 Prospects pleased. The advantages of the remote site were at once obvious to the woodsmen-settlers. To' them, accustomed to living in isolation, the absence of close neighbors did not matter. Besides, they were assured by the rising tide of westerly migration that their loneliness would be of short duration. The Rolling Fork, a humble stream withal, had much to offer. In addition to its rich bordering bottom lands, it guaranteed a life-sustaining water supply, abounded in fish, and for several months annually it was navigable by flatboats. 3 4 The Filson Club History Quarterly [Vol. 27 /0 piver • •7 •Iq ®II 2o 03 LOCATION MAP OF GOODIN'S FORT Courtesy of Mrs. Robinson S. Brown, St. 1. Goodin's Fort 11 Boston 2 Bardstown 12 Nelsonville--Iron Furnace 3 Old Kentucky Home 13 New Haven 4 Hodgenville 14 Atkinson Hill's home 5 Lincoln's Birthplace 15 Edlintown neighborhood 6 Elizabethtown 16 Rolling Fork Baptist Church 7 Fort Knox--r-Gold Vault 17 Lyons 8 Louisville 18 Pottenger's Station (1781) 9 Churchill Downs 19 Cox's Station (1780) 10 Shepherdsville-- 20 Trappist Moaastery old salt works 1953] Goodin's Fo• 5 During the summer and autumn it was fordable. Goodin's Ford was well known in pioneer days. Beeler's Ford and nearby Atherton's Ford superseded it, and these two fords yielded sometime back to the modern sturdy bridge that now spans the stream. A network of communicating roads, beaten out over the centuries by animals, awaited the coming of white settlers. Along the river's north bank ran the ancient north-south buffalo trace, and a con- venient well-traveled footpath led to another old trace that ran south- easterly. Filson, in a vivid description of these traces, observed in 1784 that buffalo herds had made "prodigious roads.., as if leading to some populous city.''5 The chosen Fort site measured up equally well in meeting the more immediate demands of shelter, food, raiment, and defense. Bounti- ful nature was kind. Virgin timber stood ready to be converted into snug cabin homes. There were fowl, fish, and fruitful vine. Newly planted cereal crops so quickly matured in the hitherto untilled soil that the harvests of 1780 were noted as exceptionally fine. John Houston and Captain Samuel Pottenger described with quaint precision the productivity of the same type of rich land that extended south along Pottenger's Creek. Houston, testifying in a land case, said that the "land at the mouth of the creek, is pretty rich and good," and Captain Pottenger described the cane as "rank and plentiful . generally as high as a man's head, and a great many as high as a man's head on horseback.''c In this erstwhile favorite hunting ground of many Indian tribes, the buffalo was quickly sighted in the canebrake, the wild turkey in the thicket, and the deer beside the water's edge. Squirrels were plentiful and the triangular tracks of scurrying rabbits dotted the blankets of snow. Evelyn Handy, Jr., 9-year-old eighth generation descendant of Samuel Goodin, is confident that he brought a bear trap with him from Pennsylvania, and it is most likely that bear meat was added to the already diverse menu. Groves of sugar maples supplied sweetening in general and syrup in particular to make griddle cakes more enticing, and sassafras bushes gave forth the makings of fragrant lacquer-red tea. The profusion of luscious blackberries, ripening on the briar about the Fourth of July, filled deep Dutch-oven summer cobblers and firkins of jam and jelly to cheer the chill of winter days. As soon as Jack Frost spread abroad his lavish glistening crystals in late autumn, rich meated nuts were garnered from pecan, walnut, hickory, and chestnut trees. Persimmons then no longer pungent were spread on roof tops tO increase their sugar content for the Yuletide holidays. The Filson Club Histot7 Quarterly [Vol. 27 Buffalo and deer preceded the domesticated sheep in providing material for clothing, and flax harvests soon kept hackles and looms busy turning out linen. Ranking high on the list of nature's offerings was an abundance of salt, and there were also deposits of iron ore. In this wonderful land the terrain was inviting, but the times were inconstant. Fortuitously, Samuel Goodin was destined to enjoy the peace that prevailed in 1780, as if it were a honeymoon, giving him opportunity to build his fort and plant crops unmolested. But by the time the trees began to bud in the spring of 1781 ominous clouds had gathered. The threat of open Indian resistance to the infringe- ment of white settlement along the border7 was so grave that all forts were ordered stockaded. Not one militiaman could be spared from local defense in response to Governor Thomas Jefferson's appeal for recruits to strengthen the Continental Army.s Historians have de- clared that no part of Kentucky was then free from danger. The Goodins loyally and promptly assumed their full responsibility. In fact, Samuel, his son Isaac, and his son-in-law Atkinson Hill had already shouldered the musket in Captain William Harrod's Company in 1780. Later Isaac and Samuel, Jr., served under General George Rogers Clark; and Samuel, Jr., also served under Colonel Benjamin Logan? Goodin's Fort was duly stockaded. It occupied a strategic position as a link in the cluster of early stations encircling future Bar&town, and throughout the perilous years it offered a haven to those settlers scattered over the twelve unprotected miles lying between it and the early forts to the west that became Elizabethtown and Hodgenville.a° A stockade was ordinarily built of split timbers 12 to 15 feet in length that were firmly implanted upright and side by side in a deep trench to form a solid wail between cabins. Arduous labor was expended in its construction by those of prudent foresight and with determina- tion to conquer the wilderness. As an additional measure of security scouts ever on the alert roamed the countryside and sent out alarms when danger was imminent, warning every person in field or unpro- tected cabin to flee to the nearest thick-walled retreat. The Indian scout, Peter Kennedy, was one of the heroes of Goodin's Fort. His Virginia parents lived three miles north, of the Fort and young Kennedy knew the terrain intimately for miles around in every direction. In 1781 when he was escaping from one of his brief periods of captivity he, fleet of foot, outran his pursuers for thirty miles and reached Goodin's Fort in safety. Unmindful of fatigue he straight- way directed a posse from the Fort against the retreating enemies with such skill that not one was left to return to his tribe? 1 1953] Goodin's Fort 7 Life in Goodin's Fort was outwardly of a simple pattern, but in essence and in the ebb and flow of the grim struggle for survival the current ran deep. The Fort, housing many souls, was among the larger ones in the area. Samuel Goodin's family at first consisted of himself, aged about 50; his three sons, Isaac aged 24, Thomas aged 20, and Samuel, Jr., aged 15; his two daughters, Elizabeth aged 18, with her husband, Atkinson Hill, aged 25, and Rebecca aged 9. In 1782 when Samuel Goodin married Elizabeth Van Meter, widow of Abraham Van Meter, she brought with her to the Fort her four small Van Meter daughters. Catherine Van Meter was 12, Letitia 10, Sarah 9, and Elizabeth, Jr., 2 years of age. Abraham Goodin, son of Samuel and Elizabeth Van Meter Goodin, was born in 1783. By 1797 all the daughters and all the sons, except bachelor Thomas and young Abraham, had married; and it may be readily assumed that the in-laws and at least a few of the earliest arrivals of the twenty-nine Goodin grandchildren, as well as the uncounted Van Meter grandchildren, also resided in the Fort at times. General Braddock, the only slave mentioned as living in the Fort, had been appraised March 8, 1782, at 100 pounds in the estate of his late master, Abraham Van Meter;m and on March 19, 1797, he was "emancipated, set free and forever exonerated from slavery.''1• General Braddock was highly respected.