George Rogers Clark (1752-1818)
George Rogers Clark was born near Charlottesville, Virginia, traveled west and settled in Kentucky in the early 1770s, despite the British prohibition of such western settlements. At the outbreak of the Revolution, these isolated outposts were subject to Indian attacks. Clark successfully lobbied the Virginia legislature to consider Kentucky a county of Virginia, which qualified it for governmental protection. Clark spent the duration of the Revolution running effective military campaigns against the British. He conquered the Northwest Territory during the American Revolution to prevent the British from controlling the country west of the Allegheny Mountains. His actions there allowed it to be ceded to America. After the war, Clark oversaw the distribution of lands in Illinois to those who served Virginia during the Revolution and he aided in Indian relations in the west. In 1803, he retired to a cabin overlooking the Falls of the Ohio near Clarksville, Indiana. A stroke necessitated the amputation of his right leg in 1809, at which time he moved to Locust Grove, the home of his sister, Lucy, and her husband, William Croghan. He died there in 1818.