The Search for Cassity and Gilmore’s Station

While teeming through the pages of local history, there are two places of interest lost to history that are important in the early settling of Kentucky; and they are somewhere right in the Owingsville vicinity.

During the earliest days of Kentucky, pioneers built stockades and stations along the way to protect themselves from Native attacks.

These stations were usually just a group of houses built closely together then walled with logs around them.

Stockades were better reinforced and fortified to house several families and livestock; usually much bigger than a station.

The most famous types of these structures are Fort Harrod and Fort Boonesboro.

According to Collins’ History of Kentucky, published in 1847, the first and only station or stockade in Bath County was built in 1780 at the Bourbon Furnace site to protect against Native raids.

The station was only a blockade house that had 17 militia troops garrisoned in it and sat on the hill above where the furnace stands.

There are two other stations, however, that predate or were built around the same time as this blockhouse according to other historical references.

James Wade, an early historian and settler of Bath County, detailed an incident where Daniel Boone was making a trek from Blue Licks back to Boonesboro, and chose a route along Slate Creek in 1780.

His story says that Boone “found fresh Indian signs near Gilmore’s Station, which had been deserted.”

Other references show that Gilmore’s Station was only described as being twelve miles east of Mount Sterling, undoubtedly somewhere in Bath County.

If this account is accurate, Gilmore’s Station must have predated the blockhouse at the Bourbon Furnace.

Some accounts show that the station was possibly located near Peeled Oak along Slate Creek, however the exact location isn’t widely known.

John ‘Jack’ Jouett owned property adjoining the Thomas Owings tracts along the head waters of Little Slate Creek in the mountainous area near the Bath, Montgomery and Menifee County lines; a hotbed of Native hostilities in the earliest days.

Whether this is the true area Gilmore’s Station once stood is just not known.

Peter Cassity settled in the Stepstone area of Bath County near Saltwell, building a station around 1787.

Other accounts on Ancestry.com state the station was built in 1777, but this is more than likely a typographical error that has been passed down.

Cassity’s Station would have been a two or three family stockade type of structure that was adjacent to Slate Creek on a high ridge, according to one historical description found during an online search.

A genealogy site states that the station was on property that belonged to the Garrett family and was located a short distance up behind the old house.

After making a few calls, I discovered the old house is no longer there and the ridge the station may have sat on parallels Saltwell Road and is visible just off Interstate 64 near the 117 mile marker.

The person I spoke with told me he had never heard of the station, but knew of an old grave yard on the property, with stones that are barely legible from the early 1800s.

It is known that after the 1793 attack on Morgan’s Station at Harper’s Ridge, present day Montgomery County, men from Cassity’s Station joined the search for the Natives and hostages taken; an important piece in the story of the last major Native raid against Kentucky settlers.

Throughout time, most properties change hands many times, while some remain within the family via heirs.

Unfortunately, due to actions during the Civil War and other actions beyond control, old land records have been lost over the generations.

These early fortified stations were an integral part of Kentucky settlement and eventual statehood.

Recently, efforts with the Historical Society and Chenault family in Montgomery County revealed the location of an early pioneer stockade called Fort Baker, or Baker’s Station.

A bronze historical marker was placed at the fort’s location to commemorate the significance of the pioneers who lived in, and bravely fought to defend, the small stockade.

With the resurgence of historical interest, especially here in Kentucky, it is my hope that one day the locations of these sites can be found if nothing else for the historical record.

Until then, the search for Gilmore and Cassity’s Stations remains a story to be told.