The rumors woke to passionate loyalty the hearts of the pioneers; and a roaming party of hunters, when camped on a branch[32] of the Elkhorn, by the hut of one of their number, named McConnell, called the spot Lexington, in honor of the memory of the Massachusetts minute-men, about whose death and victory they had just heard.[33] By the end of 1775 the Americans had gained firm foothold in Kentucky.
Cabins had been built and clearings made; there were women and children in the wooden forts, cattle grazed on the range, and two or three hundred acres of corn had been sown and reaped.

There were perhaps some three hundred men in Kentucky, a hardy, resolute, strenuous band.

They stood shoulder to shoulder in the wilderness, far from all help, surrounded by an overwhelming number of foes.

Each day's work was fraught with danger as they warred with the wild forces from which they wrung their living.

Around them on every side lowered the clouds of the impending death struggle with the savage lords of the neighboring lands.
These backwoodsmen greatly resembled one another; their leaders were but types of the rank and file, and did not differ so very widely from them; yet two men stand out clearly from their fellows.