Founding of Stamping Ground, Kentucky

Contributed by Kevin Arnold

The following story describes how William Plummer, my g-g-g-g-grandfather, pioneered across the wilderness of Kentucky and founded the small town of Stamping Ground, Kentucky.

The text was written by Bettie Truesdell, Paschal M. Plummer's granddaughter. Paschal M. Plummer's daughter, Emma Ford Plummer, married my great-grandfather, Robert Russell Arnold. (Chapter headings added by Kevin Arnold.)

First to Arrive

It was almost sundown.  Two horses, with their heads drooping wearily, climbed to the top of another timbered ridge.  The two riders, William Plummer and his bride, looked over rolling, timbered country toward the sunset. For six weeks they had been riding over the narrow mountain trails that led from the valley of the Potomac to the new land of Kentucky.  They were tired of riding, tired of camping by the trail each night, tired of the heavy forests, tired of the hills.

Now below them lay a fertile valley.  The timber was broken by patches of rich, blue grass.  A tiny stream shining like gold in the sunset wound down a side of the valley.  It was a pleasant, peaceful valley, an ideal spot for a house.

It was the year of 1783 and, despite reports that the Kentucky Indians were peaceful, the first desire of these settlers was to find a building spot where they could get water easily in case of a siege.  They found a little valley with hills to the north and south and open rolling land between. It was an ideal site - an ever-flowing spring of good water, huge oak, walnut and maple trees for timber to build the cabin, bush grass to feed the horses, and when the trees were down, there would be rich ground for their crops.

The Plummers selected a site for the house and, in a few weeks, a neat cabin, twenty-five feet square with a huge fireplace and two tiny windows, stood in the new clearing. New land was turned and corn was planted and four days later the narrow green shoots of young corn began pushing up through the dark brown earth.  The season was late, but they raised enough that year to carry them and their stock through the winter.

During the summer when there was so much work to do, there had been no time to feel the isolation of the place. But as the leaves dropped from the trees, the corn was gathered in and the honk of the southward flying geese was heard, they longed for their neighbors and friends of their Maryland house.

Their remoteness from other people was strikingly brought out by an incident which William Plummer has always remembered. As he was returning home from a hunting trip through the November dusk he paused on the hill above the house to look about him. The glow of the sunset faded from the banked clouds in the west and a dull red star appeared.  For miles the forest of gaunt, bare trees stretched onward toward the horizon. Below in the valley the tiny clearing seemed insignificant as it huddled in the majestic forest.  A faint light shown from the cabin and he sighed as he thought of the one tiny cabin alone in miles of wilderness.

The Beginning of a Town

The next spring when the roads were open, two new families crossed the mountains and took up farms adjoining the Plummers.  The three tracts met in a point and the new families built near the Plummers. They soon became friends and corn husking and sugar making were pleasant social affairs instead of monotonous drudgery.  More settlers came in a few years and a town was founded. Much discussion ensued as to what the town should be called.  It was finally named from an event which occurred each fall.

One Sunday in early September, a group of men were sitting in front of one of the tiny cabins in the tiny village.  Faintly off in the distance sounded the rumble of trampling hoofs.  Wondering, the men rushed for their guns. In a short time a huge herd of buffalo came trampling down the one street of the settlement.  Nearby flowed a large spring and the buffalo moved toward it.  As the leaders reached the spring they stopped to drink. Soon the entire herd had crowded around drinking.  Having satisfied their thirst the herd moved on again leaving the vicinity of the spring a muddy quagmire. The men shot several buffalo and while they were skinning them, William Plummer suggested, "It looks as if the buffalo come every year.  Let's call the town Stamping Ground."

Success

It was the summer of 1810.  Everywhere was the drowsy peace of a Sunday afternoon.  William Plummer and his wife sat on the wide porch of their comfortable two story house. Fall hollyhocks bloomed against the white-washed walls.  Below on the brook a flock of geese and ducks paddled noisily about. Broad fields of corn and tobacco stretched toward the south and the west.  On the south the leaves of their maple grove shimmered in the sun.  Eastward in the wide pasture, six horses and four cows grazed contentedly. From the woods came the faint sound of hogs as they searched for food.  A short distance away stood the house of one of his nine children.

William Plummer smiled contentedly.  He would never be known, but he had made a house in the wilderness and raised a family. This is the success of a pioneer.