Ann Kennedy Wilson Poague came with her husband, William Poague, to Fort Harrod in Harrodstown, Kentucky in February 1776, bringing with her the first spinning wheel. With the lack of flax in Kentucky, she used the lent of nettles to make the first linen, and from the nettle and buffalo hair, the first linsey. Her husband, who died September 17, 1778, made the first loom for weaving in Kentucky. He also made all of the buckets, milk pails, churns, tubs, noggins and the woodwork of the first plough made or used in Kentucky.
After Poague’s death, Ann married Joseph Lindsey, a victim of the Battle of Blue Licks. He eventually died and several years later, she married James McGinty. In the year 1785 the city of Harrodsburg granted Ann Lindsey, later McGinty, a license to conduct an Ordinary, which means a “meal at a fixed price.” She was the first restaurant in Kentucky. Her Ordinary was located just north of the fort.
Ann McGinty died on November 14, 1815. She is buried in the cemetery by the fort. The pioneer cemetery is the oldest cemetery west of the Allegheny Mountains and more than five hundred early settlers were buried here. The cemetery is unique in that there are eight distinct periods of grave markings, from the rude stones on which the settlers had no tools with which to carve name and date to the Italian marble used much later in the century.
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