James Knox

The 1942 Historic Camp Knox marker says that in 1770 he settled here with 22 men, who cured and stored 2,300 deer hides and other furs in a skin house; Green County’s history page says the hunters named the branch beside the camp Skinhouse Branch. Kentucky Historical Society marker 709 says Knox led 40 Long Hunters to Kentucky in 1770, built a camp with nine men in what is now Green County, and returned to Virginia in 1771.

Sources differ on dates: an 1892 biography has the party crossing the Gap in 1769 and puts the Green River skin camp in 1774, so this story follows the markers’ 1770–1771. The 1892 biography says the Cherokee leader Captain Dick directed Knox’s men to a stream they named Dick’s (now Dix) River, and Wikipedia’s long-hunter article says Knox named it for him. Knox later recruited a company for Virginia’s 8th Regiment, commanded a company in Morgan’s Rifles at Saratoga (8th Virginia Regiment site), and served in the Kentucky Senate from Lincoln County, 1795–1800 (marker 709).