Site of Bledsoe's Fort

Site of Bledsoe's Fort. . , Isaac Bledsoe's Fort was one of eight Cumberland settlements named in the Compact of Government created in 1780 by the pioneers who first came into the Cumberland Valley and settled this land. They were the vanguard of the “great leap westward"., The site of the fort had been passed down by oral tradition but in 1994, the site was confirmed by an ongoing archeological exploration conducted by Dr. Kevin Smith of the Department of Sociology and Archeology at Middle Tennessee State University. Numerous artifacts of the period were recovered and the location of the walls and cabins were determined. Explorations are still continuing., Some of the families known to have lived here or to have sought protection here during periods of Indian hostility were those of Isaac Bledsoe, Anthony Bledsoe, William Hall, Hugh Rogan, Gibson, Neely, Donoho and Clendening. The date the fort ceased to exist as a structure is unknown, but it's surmised that when the Indian Wars came to an end in 1795, the inhabitants moved out, established their homesteads and continued their lives of settling the land., You are standing at the northwest corner of the fort. In his 1852 narrative, "Early History of the Southwest", General William Hall who had lived at the fort described it as, "an oblong square and built all around in a regular stockade except at one place, where stood a large double cabin". During an Indian attack in July of 1788, Anthony Bledsoe was killed in the passageway of the double cabin. There were possibly three blockhouses and ten cabins in the stockade.