Ted Franklin Belue chronicles the settling of Kentucky’s frontier between 1750 and 1792, when hunters, surveyors, and settlers pushed into what was then America’s far west. Biographical sketches bring figures like Daniel Boone, John Redd, Michael Cassidy, and Nicholas Cresswell to life alongside lesser-known long hunters and pioneer families.
Belue, a former Murray State University history professor, covers daily survival, warfare with Native nations, and the frontier’s flora and fauna in vivid prose. The result is a wide-ranging portrait of the people who first pushed the American frontier across the Appalachians into Kentucky.
Published 2011
336 pages
$20.71