Our story begins in 1778 with Captain James Moore, originally of Maryland then Virginia, serving under George Rogers Clark during the Revolutionary War {1775-1783}. In this year, Captain James Moore took part in an expedition, called the Illinois Campaign, to what is now known as Illinois. It is generally supposed that Captain James Moore served in the commissary department. With his adventurous and daring disposition, by the spring of 1782, Captain Moore was the leader of the first American colony to settle in what is now known as Monroe County. Captain James Moore along with Larken Rutherford and James Garretson are documented as the first English-speakers to permanently settle at or near Bellefontaine. France had long since abandoned the area, as it had been ceded to Britain in the wake of the Seven Years War in 1763.