Ashby

Fort Ashby stood beside Patterson Creek, in a valley used by Shawnee hunters and crossed by Indigenous trails leading toward the Potomac. Settlers entered the valley in the 1730s. During the French and Indian War, George Washington ordered a stockade built here in 1755 to protect the frontier settlements. The following year Lieutenant Robert Rutherford's rangers were defeated near the fort, in a period of raids and fighting that drove many settlers to seek shelter in fortified posts.