Capt. Samuel Pottenger

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Samuel3 Pottenger was born April 29, 1754. Some information concerning Samuel Pottenger from The Kentucky Encyclopedia follows: POTTENGER'S STATION. Capt. Samuel Pottenger of Prince Georges County, Maryland, established a station in 1781, about a half a mile north of the present Gethsemani (Nelson County) post office and half a mile south of Gethsemani Abbey. Pottenger, born April 29, 1754, to Robert and Elizabeth (Willett) Pottenger, first visited Kentucky in 1776. He served as a Revolutionary War soldier in Maryland in 1777, with James Harrod in 1778, and with William Harrod in 1780. Numerous families settled with Pottenger at his station before moving to their own land nearby. Among the settlers were Samuel Pottenger's siblings (Elizabeth, Jemima, Susannah, William, Robert, John. Dennis, Anne, and Eunice) and their uncle Samuel Pottenger with his wife and their children. A contingent of Pennsylvanians representing the Masterson family added to the station's population. Charles, John, John, Jr., Thomas, William, William, Jr., Hugh, Hugh, Jr., Jerry, and Zachariah Masterson as well as their wives and children (whose names are not compiled) lived at Pottenger's Station. During the winter of 1782-83. the station's population swelled to include thirty-seven people from Samuel Cartwright's station, eighteen miles east. Captain Pottenger and his company had joined Gen. George Rogers Clark in the fall of 1782 to invade Indian territory in the Upper Miami River drainage in retaliation for Indian raids into Kentucky earlier that year. Upon their return, they discovered that the settlers at Cartwright's Station were starving and took them to Pottenger's Station. As the country settled and the Indian threat abated, the families of Pottenger's Station moved to their own lands, and many eventually resettled in the Great Miami Valley in Butler and Preble counties, Ohio. Captain Pottenger built a house in 1788 about two miles east of his station, where he died on January 20, 1831. He was buried in the Cox Creek Baptist Cemetery. See Sarah B. Smith, Historic Nelson County, Its Towns and People (Bardstown, Ky., 1983). NANCY O'MALLEY