262 The Winning of the West 



attracting to live within her borders men like those 

 who were fitted for social and political leadership 

 in Virginia. 



Though the typical inhabitant of Kentucky was 

 still the small frontier farmer, the class of well-to- 

 do gentry had already attained good proportions. 

 Elsewhere throughout the West, in Tennessee, and 

 even here and there in Ohio and the Territories of 

 Indiana and Mississippi, there were to be found 

 occasional houses that were well built and well fur- 

 nished, and surrounded by pleasant grounds, fairly 

 well kept; houses to which the owners had brought 

 their stores of silver and linen and heavy, old-fash- 

 ioned furniture from their homes in the Eastern 

 States. Blount, for instance, had a handsome house 

 in Knoxville, well fitted, as beseemed that of a man 

 one of whose brothers still lived at Blount Hall, in 

 the coast region of North Carolina, the ancestral 

 seat of his forefathers for generations. 21 But by 

 far the greatest number of these fine houses, and 

 the largest class of gentry to dwell in them, were in 

 Kentucky. Not only were Lexington and Louis- 

 ville important towns, but Danville, the first capital 

 of Kentucky, also possessed importance, and, in- 

 deed, had been the first of the Western towns to 

 develop an active and distinctive social and political 

 life. It was in Danville that, in the years immedi- 

 ately preceding Kentucky's admission as a State, 

 the Political Club met. The membership of this 



21 Clay MSS., Blount to Hart, Knoxville, Feb. 9, 1794. 



