Talk:History of Kentucky

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Float-by "discoverers" of Kentucky?

I'm going to move all the float-by explorer paragraphs to Ohio River#History where they have a much better fit. These guys have marginal to negligible impact on history of Kentucky, but may be meaningful additions to the Ohio River article. They're simply misplaced. Sbalfour (talk) 22:25, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

@Sbalfour:, That whole section (First Europeans) seems to be getting out of hand on you. It's gotten way too long and too subdivided into a sentence or two about multiple "first explorers". All of those sub sections should be whittled down and combined into one or two concise paragraphs about the first explorers, and then turned into the first subsection under the "Early European settlement" section. Heiro 20:25, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Agreed - the sub-sub-section titles were placeholders of a kind, since we can't put "margin notes" in the article. A number of the early explorers like James McBride (Filson's nominee for "discoverer") played bit parts, and really ought to be moved into a footnote. Thanks for your critique. Sbalfour (talk) 16:28, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Done, at least for now. Your suggestion was so fitting that it ought to have been done forthwith, so now it is. Sbalfour (talk) 18:23, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

The French in Louisville: la Belle

Supposedly, there existed a French outpost of Huguenots prior to the establishment of Louisville in 1778 named la Belle. Gist and Walker did not note any French colony on the Ohio in 1750. The Huguenots didn't emigrate to America until about 1685, so we have a timeframe of 65 years. I'm not able to locate any sources that devote more than one sentence to this. Ouiatenon's span was 1717-1750, so I would suppose la Belle, if it existed, would have been in that timeframe. There aren't many, if any, French place names in colonial Kentucky, so I'm dubious. Anyone have any colonial sources? It would have been New France in that timeframe.

French visitors to Big Bone Lick

I've recently read that a French cartographer accompanied by a French military captain and entourage of soldiers and allied Native Americans, visited Kentucky's Big Bone Lick in 1729 (some sources say 1739). Then there was fur trader Robert Smith who maintained a trading post on the Great Miami River, who visited the Lick in 1744. He was the one who originally supplied Gist with his information about northern Kentucky. Sbalfour (talk) 22:11, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Overmountain towns

We have some info on the Abraham Woods and follow-on expeditions in WV. Just as important were the early overmountain settlements of Nolichuky etc as staging for Gist, Boone and other longhunters via the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. 168.103.225.193 (talk) 17:43, 14 May 2023 (UTC)