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From the Portsmouth Times, Portsmouth, Ohio, Saturday, January 1, 1876.
SKETCHES of the Early Settlers of Greenup County, Ky.
BY JAMES KEYES.
ANTHONY THOMPSON.
The first survey of land in Greenup county, Ky., was made in the name of Patrick Henry, of revolutionary fame, in the year 1774. It appears in the patent made by Thomas Jefferson, Governor of Virginia, in 1780, to Anthony Thompson; that in the war between Great Britain and France in which the colonies of America took a part, which lasted four years from Braddock's defeat in 1755, until the taking of Quebec in 1759. Francis Drake served as corporal in that war. In 1763, King George the Third, who owned all North America at that time, issued a proclamation granting to each soldier who served in that war a certain quantity of land to be located in the Western part of Virginia. It appears that Francis Drake served in the British army. He assigned his claim to Patrick Henry, the great orator and statesman who had it surveyed before the revolutionary war. He assigned it to Robert Johnson who assigned it to Anthony Thompson. In 1780 the patent was issued and the land has been in the Thompson family ever since. The tract originally containing four hundred acres of bottom land commencing opposite the mouth of the Scioto river, running back to the hill and following down the foot of the hill to include four hundred acres.
Anthony Thompson, the father of the present Anthony Thompson, who occupies the old homestead, took possession of his land in 1805. He went to work by himself and built a house, cleared land, and made the improvements. But after two or three years of bachelor life in the woods by himself, he concluded that there was some better way of living than that. So he returned to Woodford county, Kentucky, where he came from, and procured a companion. That is to say he married a wife and returned to the scene of his labors in 1808. The life of a backwoodsman is well known to everybody. So it is unnecessary to dwell upon the incidents of his laborious life. Suffice it to say, he raised fourteen children who all grew up and married, and settled in the neighborhood, and raised families of their own. Their names were as follows:
George W. Thompson, born in.................1809
Eleanor Thompson, born in.......................1810
Reuben Thompson, born in.......................1811
Cynthia Thompson, born in.......................1813
Louisa Thompson, born in........................1814
Anthony Thompson, born March 11th......1816
Nancy Thompson, born in.........................1817
Sally Thompson, born in............................1820
Winney Thompson, born in.......................1821
Anderson Thompson, born in...................1823
David Thompson, born in.........................1825
Elizabeth Thompson, born in...................1827
Polly Thompson, born in...........................1828
John T. Thompson, born in......................1830
These are the names and time of birth as copied from the records now in the hands of Anthony Thompson, Jr., who still occupies the old homestead in the full enjoyments of all the luxuries and refinements of the present advance state of society. Mr. Thompson was fond of hunting in his younger days when game was plenty. He still takes great pleasure in relating the the early events of his life. One I will relate. It is a
DOG STORY.
There was a man who formerly lived in Portsmouth, and was very fond of hunting, by the name of James Salisbury. After game began to get scarce in Ohio, there was still plenty to be found in the hills of Kentucky. So Mr. Salisbury took to hunting in Kentucky. He would always go in the first place to get Anthony Thompson to go with him. He had a hunting dog which always followed him whenever he went a hunting. The dog soon learned that Salisbury always went to Thompson's before taking to the woods. So as soon as the ferry boat touched the Kentucky shore, the dog would leap out and take the road for Thompson's, as fast as his legs would carry him. When he arrived there the first thing was to hunt up Anthony. He then made all the demonstrations that a dog could do to attract Mr. Thompson's attention. As soon as Mr. Thompson saw the dog he would say "well there's Salisbury's dog; he has came over to take a hunt, and I may as well get ready to go with him." So he would mold his bullets, clean out his gun, and by the time Salisbury got there he was ready to start to the woods. This may not be equal to the thousand and one dog stories that we see in the papers, but as it our dog story, we feel very proud to have a chance to put it on record.
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