CHAPTER XII.
GROWTH AND CIVIL ORGANIZATION OF KENTUCKY, 1776.
By the end of 1775 Kentucky had been occupied by those who were permanently to hold it.

Stouthearted men, able to keep what they had grasped moved in, and took with them their wives and children.

There was also of course a large shifting element, composing, indeed, the bulk of the population: hunters who came out for the season; "cabinners," or men who merely came out to build a cabin and partially clear a spot of ground, so as to gain a right to it under the law; surveyors, and those adventurers always to be found in a new country, who are too restless, or too timid, or too irresolute to remain.
The men with families and the young men who intended to make permanent homes formed the heart of the community, the only part worth taking into account.

There was a steady though thin stream of such immigrants, and they rapidly built up around them a life not very unlike that which they had left behind with their old homes.

Even in 1776 there was marrying and giving in marriage, and children were born in Kentucky.