Note: The following is from a manuscript copy of the autobiography of General James Taylor, of Newport, Kentucky, and was written about 1840. Gen. Taylor is usually given credit for naming the town of Newport. At his death he owned 60,000 acres in Kentucky, and property in 26 Ohio Counties. His net worth was $4 million. His last act was to vote, on his deathbed, for his distant cousin, Gen. Zachary Taylor, as President.
"The year 1794 was the first time I was at the Big Bone Lick. It had been a great resort of the buffalo, and the roads leading from the rich lands of the Elkhorn and its waters were larger than any common ones now in the State, and in many places were worn five or six feet deep. The road leading from the upper Lick, called the Gum Spring, to the lower Lick at the Fork, called the West Fork, was large and much worn, and where it was washed in gullies I discovered at least one fourth of the dirt appeared to be mixed with crushed bones. No doubt they had been masticated by the big animals of former days whose bones were so numerously found in and about these two Licks. A Major Finnell, about twelve or fifteen years ago, dug for those bones, and on a rise about ten or twelve feet above the bottom of the creek came to a well, and at the depth of about twenty feet found an almost entire skeleton of those enormous animals which had been buried there ages ago. The well was about twenty feet in diameter and twenty feet deep. The large bones were laid around the outside of the wall and so inwardly to the center, and the skull placed on the top in the center. Every one of the large bones was fractured, and had the print of a heavy instrument, used to endeavor to break them, it is presumed, on account of some superstitious belief. This account I had from Major Finnell. He had a partner in searching for these bones who forced him to sell his half for two thousand dollars. They were taken to New Orleans and sold for five thousand dollars, from thence to New York, and thence to England. I think it was about 1837 they were found. I was well acquainted with Semonell Stockdale, who was employed by Doctor Goforth, with several hands, to dig for those big bones. He obtained permission from David Ross, of Virginia, the owner at the time, or of Thomas Carneal, his agent, to do so. He, Stockdale, told me he found a large number, and several descriptions of animals, some of the large species carniverous and some herbiverous. The bones of a species of elk, full the size of a large horse, whose horns hung down the side of his head and curled outward. I understand Doctor Goforth shipped these bones to New York to an agent, who sent them to Europe and deprived him of the whole proceeds. This, I think, was about the year 1800. I was well acquainted with him. He was the son of old Judge Goforth, who came from Massachusetts and settled at Columbia with the first settlers of Ohio, about a mile below the mouth of the Little Miami, in the year 1789."
From First Explorations of Kentucky: Doctor Thomas Walker's Journal of an Exploration of Kentucky in 1750. J. Stoddard Johnston, ed. (Louisville: John P. Morton, 1898), p. 170-171.