William Whitley (August 4, 1749 – October 5, 1813), was an American pioneer in what became Kentucky, in the colonial and early Federal period.
[1] After scouting a location near a branch of the Dix River called Cedar Creek, they returned to Virginia to prepare for a permanent move west.
[2] He and his family moved to the safety of St. Asaph's fort (present-day Stanford, Kentucky), as the local Shawnee and Cherokee resisted European-American encroachment in their territory.
Not feeling safe, the Whitley and Benjamin Logan families moved to the protection of Fort Harrod, near present-day Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
During the Revolutionary War in 1779, Whitley discovered the mutilated bodies of the Starnese family near Blue Lick (south of Boonesborough, Kentucky) and documented the find.
After the Revolutionary War, Whitley volunteered for service in George Rogers Clark's expedition against Indians in the Northwest Territory.
By 1779, Whitley had returned for his family and permanently settled on the land he had claimed years earlier in what is now Kentucky.
Whitley and his family built a large brick house outside town, near what would later become Crab Orchard, Kentucky.
It had the first clay (instead of turf) track in the United States and here horses were raced counterclockwise (instead of clockwise, as was the British tradition).
[2] Militia colleagues returned his horse, Emperor, his powder horn, strap, and rifle to his wife in Kentucky after the war.
These were: Esther Whitley died at the home of her daughter, Ann Harper, in Woodford County, Kentucky, November 20, 1833.