Beginning in the 1800s, American Revolutionary War veterans and others from Virginia and elsewhere began settling in the area of Blue Jacket's Town. Bellefontaine is on or near the edge of the Virginia Military District, where the cash-poor government granted tracts of land to veterans in payment for their services during the war. The Treaty of Greenville defined lands to be held by European Americans as separate from those to be held by natives but it was poorly administered in the area and whites frequently encroached on native lands.