Individual Details

Capt. John Ashby was brother of Elizabeth Ashby, the latter of whom married (and divorced) John Hardin’s brother, Mark. He was also the brother of Thomas Ashby Jr. who lived near the Hardin cluster of surveys in Fayette Co., PA.

In 1755 George Washington ordered Captain John Ashby to build a blockhouse, or fort, in the Patterson Creek are where many of the Hardins were located. GW was familiar with the lot numbers since he did the survey. He gave John Ashby the choice of building the “fort” on either Lot #16, then owned by Charles Keller, or on either or both of lots #17 & 18, then owned by James McCracken. John Ashby chose Lot #16 for the site. Subsequently a town grew up around the site, and the town was eventually named (in the 1920s) Fort Ashby, after the fort that John Ashby built during the French & Indian War (and parts of which are still standing).

Half of Lot #17 was bequeathed to Maj. John Hardin’s grandson in his will:
Item, I give & Bequeath unto Henry Hardin, a grandson, the son of John Hardin, a track or parcel of Land on Patterson Creek in Hampshire Co. In Va., one Hundred Acres More or Less in the Lot No. Seventeenth on the South Side of Sd. Creek & also forty four acres adjoining to the Other Land for him frely to Enjoy and Posses....

Divorce	Bef Nov 1753	Mark Hardin
Marriage		Mark Hardin
Birth

Spouse	Mark Hardin (1718 - )
Child	Mark Hardin (1750 - 1830)
Child	Benjamin Hardin (1753 - 1834)

Father

Thomas Ashby ( - 1752)