Fort Ashby is a census-designated place (CDP) in Mineral County, West Virginia, United States, along Patterson Creek.

Shawnee warriors claimed sections of the lower valley as choice camping grounds on which they stopped and rested in going to and from their great hunts.

Tribal differences of various natures seem to have been few and easily settled so that the combined efforts of all was directed toward keeping out the 'pale face' who was ruining the hunting ground.

The first fort at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers was built by men from Hampshire County, West Virginia.

Colonel Joshua Fry took command of part of Trent's men and came back with them east of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, where they started to build Fort Necessity.

In 1755, Colonel George Washington gave orders to build a stockade and fort on the eastern side of Patterson Creek.

[7] On Christmas Day 1755, Captain Charles Lewis of Fredericksburg took command of the fort and a garrison of twenty-one men.

The only really important battle at Fort Ashby occurred in 1756 when Lieutenant Robert Rutherford and his company of rangers was defeated there by a band of French and Native Americans.

Since there is a lapse of about two years for which no records of any kind have been found it is presumed that practically all settlers were driven out of what is now Mineral County except those who were protected by forts Ashby and Sellars.

It is believed their numbers were, about one hundred and fifty, that about seventy men are killed or missing and that several houses and plantations were destroyed.

Captain Wagner informs me that it was with difficulty that he passed the Blue Ridge as crowds of people were fleeing as if a lost moment would mean death.

It is really a question as to whether or not the first settlers of Frankfort community may have laid claim to the land of that immediate vicinity even before the Native Americans became much interested in it.

In 1777, Captain William Foreman gathered together from Hampshire County a company of men to keep down the Native Americans who had been agitated by the British.

Captain Michael Cresap who lived in Oldtown, Maryland across from Green Spring, came over into Hampshire County during the early part of the Revolution and organized a company of riflemen.

The men in this company from Frankfort include the names of Johnson, Ashby, Wagoner, Williams, Powell, Pew, Harris, and Miller.

Both buildings were used as hotels, replacing the old roadhouse which was located near where Charles Pyles now lives, and the tavern at Short Gap, to some extent.

Through the influence of several men of the village, particularly Dennis Daniels, one hundred and thirty-nine acres of land belonging to John Kellar was surveyed into town lots with streets and alleys running between.

Be it enacted by the general assembly, that one hundred and thirty-nine acres of land, in the county of Hampshire, the property of John Kellar, and laid off by him into in and out lots, with convenient streets, shall be, and the same is hereby established, a town by the name of Frankfort, and that John Mitchell, Andrew Cooper, Ralph Humphries, John Williams, Sen. James Clark, Richard Stafford, Hezekiah Whiteman, and Jacob Brookhart, gentlemen, be trustees thereof, who, or the major part of them, shall have power, from time to time, to settle and determine all disputes concerning the bounds of said lots, and to establish such rules and regulations for the regular building of houses thereon, as to them shall seem best.

And be it further enacted, that so many of the lots in the said town as are not sold by the said John Kellar are hereby vested in the said trustees, and they, or a majority of them, shall within six months after the passing of this act, sell the lots at public auction, having previously advertised the time and place of such sale at the court house of said county, on three successive court days, and convey the same to the purchaser in fee, subject to the conditions of building a house on each, sixteen feet square, with a brick or stone chimney, to be finished fit for habitation within three years from the date of sale, and pay the money arising from such sale to the said John Kellar, or his legal representatives.

Inskeep was so strong in his belief that he donated four lots in the center of the village to be used for the good of the public when the city did develop.

Before the completion of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Frankfort was on the direct route from Winchester to Wheeling over which hundreds of tons of merchandise passed monthly.

People are known to have traded with him regularly from Keyser and above and also from what is now Ridgeley when the North Branch Potomac River could not be forded to Cumberland.