Isaac Ruddell

Who was Isaac Ruddell?

Captain Isaac Ruddell was an 18th-century American Virginia State Line officer during the American Revolutionary War and a Kentucky frontiersman. He was an officer commanding a company under BGEN George Rogers Clark. He was the founder of Ruddell's Station, one of the earliest settlements in Bourbon County, Kentucky. He founded another settlement also known as Ruddell's Station, or fort, on the site of an abandoned fort on the Licking River in present-day Harrison County, Kentucky. During the Revolutionary War, the settlement was destroyed by a joint Canadian and Shawnee party under British officer Captain Henry Bird in 1780. He and his family were held prisoner in Detroit for over two years before their release.

He was also a brother-in-law to Kentucky pioneers Isaac, Joseph and John Jacob Bowman. His grandson, John M. Ruddell, was a prominent Kentucky statesman and landowner.