The 28th, visited Colonel Alexander D. Orr.[1]
The 29th I left the two Companions who had come with me from Philadelphia. They continued their journey to Louisville while I went on by way of the inland Settlements. Colonel D. Orr offered me his Company to go with him to Lexington whither he proposed to go in a few days.
The 30th and 31st herborised while waiting until horses could be procured for the journey to Lexington. Guilandina dioica; Fraxinus (quadrangularis); Gleditsia triacanthos; Serratula praealta; Eupatorium aromaticum, Crepis Sibirica? etc.
Sunday 1st of September 1793. Dined at Colonel Lee's.[2]
The 2nd dined with . . . Fox and prepared my baggage for departure.
The 3rd the journey was put off until the Following day. The soil in the vicinity of Washington is clayey and blackish, very rich. The stones are of an opaque bluish calcareous Substance, full of petrifactions of sea-shells. The bones of those monster animals supposed to
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- ↑ Alexander D. Orr was representative in Congress for Kentucky, from its admission and through the fourth Congress (1792-97). A Virginian by birth (1765), he removed to Mason County at an early period, and had much influence in his neighborhood, where he lived as a planter until his death, June 21, 1835. Michaux's visit to Colonel Orr is probably significant of the fact that Orr was interested in the former's mission.—Ed.
- ↑ Gen. Henry Lee was one of the earliest settlers in Mason County. Coming to Kentucky as a surveyor in 1779, six years later he established Lee's Station, near Washington—one of the earliest in northeastern Kentucky. Lee was Kentucky delegate in the Virginia house of burgesses (1788), a member of the convention that adopted the federal constitution, and later member of the Danville conventions for organizing the State of Kentucky; his political influence, therefore, was important. Unlike many of the pioneers, he prospered in business and amassed a considerable fortune, dying on his estate in 1845.―Ed.
