BOURBON COUNTY, KENTUCKY

Source: "Stockading Up" by Nancy O'Malley. Kentucky Heritage Council, University of Kentucky Program for Cultural Assessment, April 30, 1987, pp. 59-66.

A particularly well known Bourbon County station was established by John Grant in 1779. John Grant came from North Carolina with William Ellis, a Virginian, and built a stockaded station on the waters of Houston Creek along the main buffalo road from Bryant's Station to the Blue Licks. The station was intended for 20-30 families then crowded into Bryant's Station (Drake 1942). It was attacked and burned in June of 1780 by 60 Indians, during which two men named Stucker and a woman named Mitchell were killed. This attack was by a group which splintered off from Byrd's large war party after Martin's and Ruddle's Stations were taken. The Indian attack led to its abandonment in 1780, but it was rebuilt by Grant in 1784 (Dunn 1945; Ardery 1939). The Grants sold the Bourbon County property in the late 1780s and 1790s.

John Grant listed the following inhabitants in a letter to Col. John Todd dated April 24, 1780 (Drake 1942). They included John Tamplin, John Jackson, John Van Cleave and his son John, George Stucker and his son George, Samson Culpepper, Stufel Stucker, Philip Drake, Christopher Harris, William Van Cleave, Manoah Singleton, Thomas Gilbert, William Liley, William Loring, Robert Harras, James Rowland, Josiah Underwood, Frederick Hunter, William Morrason, James Gray, Henry Miller, Stephen Murphy, Michael Stucker, Edmond Lilley, Samson Hough, William Ellis and six others he would not "properly call effective". George Summitt, who later built Summitt's Station in Nicholas County, also lived at Grant's Station in 1780.

The station was not reoccupied when Hardesty (Draper mss. 11CC169171) came to Kentucky in fall of 1784. However, once it was reestablished, several primary sources mention relevant events relating to it. Shane interviewed a Mr. Giltner who related that his grandfather, Bernard, and his father, Francis, came to Kentucky in 1786. After camping near "Morelands Store" (later a post office and small community on Bryan's Station Road between Paris and Lexington), they proceeded to Grant's Station located "within 20 feet of where the railroad now runs, right on the dividing ridge between the waters of the Licking and the Kentucky rivers" (Draper mss. 15CC81). Hardesty (Draper mss. 11CC169-171) typified the 1787 population at the station as several families living together but not "making up a station" anymore, implying that it was not stockaded or that settlement was more dispersed. In 1788, Timothy Peyton was fatally wounded between Bryant's and Grant's Stations. He was taken to Grant's Station where he died (Mastin 1979; Draper 12CC129-130; 11CC43). John's brother, Squire, was residing at the station in 1789 when he married Susanna Hann (Rouse 1935). The station continued to serve as a stopping place for parties coming to Kentucky. Mary Dewees noted in her journal that her party lodged at Grant's in November of 1788 before going on to Lexington (Blair 1965).

When the Grants left, they sold their relatively large land holdings to several people. The Bourbon County Deed Book A (pages 186-187) contains a deed transfer of Grant's 200-acre station tract to George Berry on June 14, 1788. James Ingels (whose son later built a brick house nearby) purchased the property from the Grants. The Ingels house is on Bryan Station Road almost directly opposite the station site. The April 14, 1792 issue of the Kentucky Gazette included an advertisement that Richard Wilmott, a hatter, established a hat manufactory at Major Robert Wilmott's place in the house lately occupied by Captain John Grant on the road from Lexington to Bourbon County. The Wilmotts built a house on Bryan Station Road about 3/4 of a mile to the northeast of Grant Station. However, the advertisement suggests that they take up residence at the station before establishing themselves on their own property.

The location of John Grant's Station is well documented. Grant is listed as having seven tracts in the Houston Creek area (Brookes-Smith 1976:77). These include a 400-acre settlement, a 600 acre preemption and a 300-acre military warrant, all with a survey date of August 25, 1780 (Virginia Survey Book 1, page 47). In 1783, he acquired three more tracts of 100 acres, 200 acres and 400 acres in the vicinity. Finally, in 1787, he acquired yet another 400 acres. All of these grants connected or were near one another. His station had to have been located on one of his 1780 tracts since he established it in 1779. The site was indicated on a survey plat drawn for a land dispute between Lewis Craig and John Rogers (Staples 1932:66-69; Fayette Circuit Court Complete Record Book "A", page 397). This plat shows the station in the middle of a square settlement tract surrounded by his preemption. The configuration does not agree with survey calls in his original entry. However, it suggests that the station occurred in the approximate center of the settlement tract according to the survey conventions of the time.

The station site itself (designated 15Bb76) is located at the head of a small tributary of Houston fork approximately six hundred feet northwest of present Bryan Station Road. It is marked by a pyramidal stone monument placed there by the Martin's Fort Chapter of the Children of the American Revolution (C.A.R.). A spring which has been partially walled provides a source for the small tributary which flows to the northeast from the station. The 1784 house stood to the west of the spring and run. Archaeological remains take the form of a square depression now being used as a dump by the land owner. This feature was a basement for Grant's 1784 house. Limestone blocks are scattered in the area and probably once formed foundations. The structural remains sit on an elevated area in an otherwise flat upland setting. The elevation is roughly rectangular which is suggestive of a stockade. An old road once ran along the southwest edge of the elevated area and can still be seen along a fence row opposite the old railroad grade which is immediately to the northwest. Since 2030 families once occupied the site, more cabins must have once been present. These may have stood in the flat pastured areas around the existing structural remains although no archaeological evidence was noted. The entire elevated area measured approximately 25 m (E-W) by 35 m (N-S).