Kasper Manscoe, or Mansker, was a German and spoke English with a strong accent. He was one of the earliest and most energetic of the explorers of what is now Tennessee. He probably came from Pennsylvania, a State that gave to Tennessee some of its best citizens during its early period. In the summer of 1769 he was one of a party of daring adventurers, who spent several months in the Cumberland country, hunting and exploring. They spent most of their time on Roaring River and Obed's River. In the spring of 1770 some of the party returned home. Mansker, with several others, made canoes, in which they loaded the proceeds of their hunt, and descended the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi to Natchez, where some of the party located, the others, including their leader, Mansker, made their way back to New River, Va. It is believed that they were the first white men to navigate the Cumberland River. In the autumn of 1771 Mansker led another party to the Cumberland.

They made their headquarters at a place since known as Station Camp, about ten miles west of Gallatin. This party was called the "long hunters." They spent the winter in huts made of buffalo skins and retuned to the settlements in the spring of 1772. Mansker again came to the Cumberland in 1779 and built a fort near Mansker's Lick, on Mansker's Creek. Three years later he built another fort about one mile east of the first named, and there made his home until he died, an old man, respected and beloved by all. He was a Colonel of militia. His remains lie in an unmarked grave near his old home in Sumner County. He had no children.

Andre Michaux, a French scientist, who was sent to America by his government to report on the flora and fauna of the United States, in his diary in 1796 says: " The 25 (February) started to return to Carolina and slept ten miles away at the house of Colonel Mansko, a decided enemy of the French because, he said, they had killed their king. Although I had not dined, I would not accept the supper, believing that a Republican should not be under obligations to a fanatical partisan of royalty. I was greatly mortified that the night and the rain should compel me to remain in his house. But I slept on my deer skin and paid for the maize he supplied me with to cross the wilderness."

It is not probable that the old hunter Mansker had any love for French loyalty, but that he hated the French nation because it had, only a short time before overrun his own native Germany.