Samuel M. Cassidy, Jr.

from Cave Spring Farm 1784,

"The first time Daniel Boone led a group of settlers west of the Cumberland mountains - into what was then Virginia's Fincastle County- Boone and his party were forced by Indians to turn back. Boone returned with another group in 1775. This time, acting as an agent for the Transylvania Company, he hacked out the famous Wilderness Road and succeeded in establishing a permanent settlement at "Boonesborough."

Robert Boggs was one of the first of the explorers and settlers who gathered at Boonesboro. Born in 1746 in the Mill Creek Hundred of Delaware's New Castle County, Boggs had migrated as a very young man to Virginia - first to what is now Rockbridge County; then even deeper into Indian territory, in the "Greenbrier" country. In 1775 he came to Kentucky and to Boonesboro working as a chain carrier for John Floyd, the experienced deputy surveyor of Fincastle County.

In that same year, as he explored the land northwest of the settlement, Boggs discovered a cave from which flowed a spring-fed stream. He claimed the cave for himself, along with a 1,000-acre tract surrounding it on the "Boggs Fork" of Boone Creek. This was the beginning of the Cave Spring Farm.

Boggs had little time to enjoy his new-found land, however; from over the mountains came the sound of the "shot heard around the world." He returned to the Holston country of the Great Smoky Mountains to serve first as a Captain in the Cherokee Expedition of 1776. Then he joined the American Revolutionary Army, and his tour of duty included spending the winter of 1777 - 78 at Valley Forge.

In 1779, out of the Army, Boggs came again to Kentucky - only to find that he had been given up for dead, and that others now were encroaching on his claimed land. Kentucky was still very much frontier territory, and the rush of new settlers had brought many conflicting and overlapping claims before the Virginia Land Commission. Under such circumstances, it was a long while before Boggs was able to straighten out his own land claims.

During this uncertain period, he went back eastward - to what was now formally Greenbrier County- to marry Sarah Huston in 1782. The newlyweds traveled west again to Harrod's Station, a settlement near Ft. Harrod, where they lived for twenty months. It was there that their first child, Nancy, was born.

Having finally secured title to his property, Boggs left Harrod's Station with his new family and settled at the Cave Spring Farm on February 18, 1784.

from The Story of a Log House,

"On February 18, 1 784, a small cavalcade arrived at the new double-log house built a short time before by Robert Boggs and helpers. For over a year Robert, his wife, Sarah, and baby, Nancy, had lived in Fort Harrod while Robert was perfecting his various land titles before the Virginia Land Commission then in session at Fort Harrod.

Robert and Sarah McCreary Huston had been married by the Reverend John Alderson in Greenbrier County, Virginia, in 1782. Little Agnes McCreary, but always called Nancy, was born in Fort Harrod on January 1, 1783, so was a little over one year of age when carried in her mother's arms on horseback to their new home. They rode the established trail to Boonesborough, spent the night there, then finished the journey the next day.

Robert Boggs was first in Kentucky in 1774 working as a chainman on John Floyd's surveying crew until all of the surveying parties were called back due to imminent war with the Indians under Cornstalk which culminated in the Battle of Point Pleasant later that year. There were no settlements in Kentucky at that time.

Robert Boggs was back in Kentucky in 1775 and helped in the building of Boonesborough. He also used that fort as a base for finding and claiming land. In 1776 he was a captain in the expedition against the Cherokees in the Great Smoky Mountains in what is now North Carolina and Tennessee. In 1775, he pre-empted 1,000 acres on Stoner's Creek; in 1780, he selected the land on which he later settled as Cave Spring Farm. Other claims were made in 1 780 and 1781, resulting in a total ownership of 2,276 acres in five separate tracts.

All of this might have been the reason that he did not marry Sarah Huston until he was age 35 and she was 25, a late marriage by the custom of that period."

from the National Register of Historic Places,

Robert Boggs first came to Kentucky in 1774 as a chain bearer for John Floyd, deputy surveyor of Virginia (Cassidy). Boggs returned in 1775 and helped to erect the fort at Boonesborough, the second settlement to be established in Kentucky. Using the fort as a base for selecting lands on which to make claims, he soon dis- covered a large spring issuing from a cave in what is now Fayette County and decided on this location for his future home.

After a lapse as captain under Major Evan Shelby in General Christain's army in the Cherokee Expedition of 1776 and a period in the Revolutionary Army in the east, he married and moved to Fort Harrod to await adjudication of his claims before the Virginia Land Commission. On February 18, 1784, he settled on Cave Spring Farm with his wife, child and others. From then until 1792 he and his growing family lived in the log house until the main stone residence was completed.

During the period of 1784-1800, ancillary buildings were also constructed, enough for a large family of around 25 people, including slaves, In charge of quarrying, brick-making and erection, was an Irish stonemason by the name of Devore (probably Dennis Dever according to Wooley, p. 600). None of the frame buildings which were once part of the farm complex survive. However, the main house of stone, the original log house, and many of the brick outbuildings still stand and are in excellent condition.* The unspoiled, beautifully landscaped farm is presently owned by a descendent of Robert Boggs and has been in the family continuously except for one period.

*About 1810-1815, Boggs had the log house dismantled and moved to higher ground. In 1974, the present owner moved the structure (without disassembly) back to the farm and near its original location (Mastin, p. D-3).