To view Kentucky in its primeval beauty and rugged grandeur; to talk face to face with Boone, Harrod, Todd, Cowan, and Kennedy, those hardy hunters who blazed the way and changed the uncertain trail to a broad thoroughfare through the western wilds; to experience the difficulties and encounter the dangers of those dreadful days—were experiences for one who would essay to write a history of the country, the times, and the people. Yet such were the advantages enjoyed by Kentucky's earliest historian, John Filson.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1747, given a common school and academic education, lured either by the spirit of adventure, the locating of lands, or the enthusiastic reports of the far-famed "second paradise" with its "happy climate and plentiful soil," Filson reached Lexington in 1782. Here he succeeded "Wildcat McKinney" as the second teacher in this "Athens of the West."

While engaged in teaching, Filson was securing information that was to give to the world, not only the first history of Kentucky, but the first authentic account of that vast, transmontane wilderness about which so many exciting experiences had been recounted.

It has been said, "he could ask more questions and answer fewer than any one of his time."

Active, observant, accurate, he gave, in his "Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky," in 1784, a work of much merit. It contained the first map ever drawn of this state, showing the three original counties of Jefferson, Fayette, and Lincoln.

As this was before any printing presses had been set up in Kentucky or at any other point in the West, Filson carried his map to Philadelphia and his manuscript to Wilmington, Delaware.

This little book of one hundred and eighteen pages was deemed of such consequence that one year after its appearance, it was translated into French and published by M. Parraud at Paris. Three editions were printed in England by Gilbert Imlay, Kentucky's first novelist, who incorporated it in his "Topographical Description of the Western Territory."

Not only was Filson a historian, biographer, and teacher, but he was also a practical, skillful surveyor.

He led a restless, strenuous life. Soon after his first visit to Kentucky he was back on his native heath, again in the state of his adoption, next in the Illinois country gathering data for a history of that section, the manuscripts of which are now the property of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

In 1788 Filson was associated with Mathias Denman and Robert Patterson, the founder of Lexington, in the purchase of a tract of eight hundred acres opposite the mouth of the Licking River, where they planned a town, now the city of Cincinnati, but named by Filson, Losantiville,—the "city opposite the mouth of the Licking."

As the party deferred surveying and staking off lots for a while, Filson's restless spirit again urged him on; and, after surveying the Great Miami with a party, he ventured still farther alone and was never seen again. His friends supposed he was killed by the Indians; but there is no record of the time, place, or manner of his death, and nothing to mark his grave. His name has been aptly given to that body of earnest, eminent workers of Louisville, the Filson Club, who have done so much to collect and preserve the many interesting facts about Kentucky's early days.