Fort Jefferson and the Town of Clarksville grew from George Rogers Clark's plan, first proposed on November 16, 1779, after his captures of Kaskaskia on July 4, 1778, and Fort Sackville on February 25, 1779, and approved by Virginia governors Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson as the only Virginian settlements built in Kentucky under Commonwealth sanction. By January 1780 Clark had chosen a site five miles south of the Ohio-Mississippi confluence on the east side of the Mississippi River near Island No. 1, and he and most of his soldiers, civilians, and families arrived on April 19, 1780. By May, floodwaters had receded, and soldiers and civilians began building the stockaded fort, the adjacent town, their cabins, and farmland totaling 47 acres. Enclosed by the first week of June 1780, the 100-foot-square fort contained officers' quarters and mess hall, a well, a munitions structure, quartermaster stores, a parade ground, whipping post, flagpole, bake oven, privy, guard house, soldiers' huts, and a blacksmith's shop, with three gates, two bastions, two cannons, and surrounding blockhouses armed with swivel guns. Clarksville lay east and south of the fort and included 101 house lots occupied by at least 41 civilian families as well as officers and their families. Archival records name more than 550 people at Fort Jefferson, including 220 soldiers in eight companies under Colonel George Rogers Clark, support staff, militia, free and enslaved African American soldiers and civilians, and allied Kaskaskia Natives who fought British-armed Chickasaw on behalf of the American colonies. The community farmed corn, flax, turnips, and pumpkins, kept a few cattle, hunted and fished, built support structures such as saw pits and loading docks, and relied on civilian labor for clothing, food, and trade support. More than 60 recorded deaths occurred at Fort Jefferson, at least 38 with coffins, and a slight majority resulted from malaria rather than warfare.