John Filson / Kentucke 1784

In 1784 he published The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke—the first written history of the country—with a companion map engraved in Philadelphia. The book's appendix carried the earliest printed Boone narrative, drawn from Filson's interviews, and the map steered migrants through the Gap. In 1788 Filson helped plat Losantiville (later Cincinnati); that October he vanished while surveying near the Great Miami and was never found.