"
Two hundred thousand acres in the West--Kentucky and West
Virginia--had been promised to the colonial officers and soldiers
who fought in the Seven Years' War. But after making the
Proclamation the British Government had delayed issuing the
patents. Washington interested himself in trying to secure them;
and Lord Dunmore, who also had caught the "land-fever,"* prodded
the British authorities but won only rebuke for his inconvenient
activities. Insistent, however, Dunmore sent out parties of
surveyors to fix the bounds of the soldiers' claims. James
Harrod, Captain Thomas Bullitt, Hancock Taylor, and three McAfee
brothers entered Kentucky, by the Ohio, under Dunmore's orders.
John Floyd went in by the Kanawha as Washington's agent. A
bird's-eye view of that period would disclose to us very few
indeed of His Majesty's loving subjects who were paying any
attention to his proclamation. Early in 1774, Harrod began the
building of cabins and a fort, and planted corn on the site of
Harrodsburg. Thus to him and not to Boone fell the honor of
founding the first permanent white settlement in Kentucky
* See Alvord, "The Mississippi Valley in British Politics," vol.
II, pp. 191-94.
When summer came, its thick verdure proffering ambuscade, the air
hung tense along the border.
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