Welsh explorers in Kentucky

[Blythe_Spirit_47]

Another article I thought was interesting. Thanks.

Were Welsh explorers in Hancock 600 years ago?

04/21/05

By Keith Lawrence
Messenger-Inquirer

Legend says the followers of Welsh Prince Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd came to what's now the United States more than two centuries before Columbus set sail from Europe.

The same legends trace the Welsh explorers to the Louisville area.

But did they also build the stone houses on Hancock County's Indian Hill?

An 1883 history of Daviess County says Indian Hill was six miles east of Knottsville.

"It is very high and furnishes a beautiful view of the surrounding country and of Hardinsburg, a distance of 28 miles," it says.

It adds that early settlers found three egg-shaped stone houses in a straight line on the hill about 250 yards apart.

George W. Bruner tore one of them down, for some silly reason. He reportedly dug down 6 to 8 feet and still couldn't reach the base.

The other two buildings -- about 12 feet high with neither doors nor windows -- still stood in 1883, the book says.

Six years ago, I wrote about the stone houses and asked if anyone had ever seen them.

Virgil Head said he grew up on Indian Hill Road and hunted squirrels in those woods.

"It's been about 25 years since I found the stone house," he said in 1999. "But it was something to see."

Head said: "I only saw one of them. It stuck up about 3 feet out of the ground. It was about 8 or 10 feet across at the top. The stones got bigger at each level as they went down.

He added: "You could see down maybe 10 feet into it. It was two or three times wider at the bottom than it was at the top. It was in good shape back then."

But Head said, "When I took my wife up there about 20 years ago to show it to her, we couldn't find it."

Are any of the stone houses still standing? Did the followers of Prince Madoc build them?

Welsh historians say Madoc was an illegitimate son of King Owain Gwynedd of Wales -- one of 17 sons considered a contender for the Welsh throne.

He reportedly sailed from Abrgele, Wales, on a May morning in 1169 -- more than 300 years before Columbus -- with one ship, the Gwennan Gorn, and a crew of 20.

They reportedly landed near modern Mobile, Ala., and stayed a couple of years.

In 1171, they say Madoc returned to Wales where he and his brother, Riryd, an Irish Lord, recruited 300 men and sailed back to Mobile in seven ships.

Madoc was reportedly killed in what is now Georgia in 1172.

Branches of his followers are said to have settled near the Falls of the Ohio -- modern Louisville -- and to have traveled up the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers and to have finally settled among the Mandan Indians.

But Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett, experts on King Arthur, were quoted last year as saying they believe a different Prince Madoc -- Madoc Morfran -- came to America in 562.

That's 600 years earlier.

One structure allegedly built by Madoc's men was Old Stone Fort near Manchester, Tenn.

Wilson was quoted as saying, "There are old-style Welsh hill forts around the Ohio River Valley that are patterned as they are in Britain."

If Welsh settlers built stone forts, could they have built stone houses too?

-- A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a legend of an old Spanish fort in Ohio County.

Ben Johnson, 74, of Utica wrote to tell me that when he was a kid in Hartford, "everyone knew about the 'Old Spanish Fort.' "

But he said archaeologists were reported to have examined the site and said that the mounds were probably manmade -- but predated the Spanish by several centuries.

They appeared to be ceremonial mounds, Johnson said.

Seems as if we've got a couple of mysteries worth investigating.

[WVaTom]

well worth the read.very interesting.

[Gregory]

Thanks for sharing this with us Enjoyed reading it

[PAPPY]

GREAT ARTICLE...THANKS...PAPPY