I'm looking for someone knowledgeable about North Carolina colonial history and archaeology as it relates to defensive sites such as forts in the 18th century. Specifically, I am trying to determine what prior experience/exposure the North Carolina proprietors of the Transylvania Company had regarding architectural templates for defensive sites when they established Fort Boonesborough in Kentucky in 1775. I'm aware of Fort Johnston established in 1744 by the British to defend the Cape Fear region (although I don't know anything about how it was built). My very initial impression is that the proprietors and settlers of Fort Boonesborough did not have much if any experience of fortified sites similar to the militia forts erected in West Virginia that shared elements with the civilian/settler forts built in Kentucky during the Revolutionary War. Judge Richard Henderson, who spearheaded the Fort Boonesborough enterprise, drew a plan of the fort that incorporated blockhouses, stockade and cabins into a defensible rectangular plan. From what I know of his background, he didn't have any experience with military forts other than the likelihood that he had seen or knew about British forts that followed classic European fort construction
templates. Some of the people with him probably had more knowledge but the fort template that was repeated with variations across Kentucky seems to have been a new hybrid. There are contemporary sites like Bledsoe's Station in Tennessee that followed a similar architectural template. Offline is fine with me.

Nancy O'Malley
Assistant Director/Curator
William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology
1020A Export St.
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506
Phone: 859-323-9855
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
http://www.uky.edu/~omalley/
https://uky.academia.edu/NancyOMalley




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