Blennerhassett Island, located just downriver from Parkersburg, is named for Harman Blennerhassett, an Irish aristocrat who brought his young wife, Margaret, to the island in 1798 and built a paradise there with a gleaming white mansion as its centerpiece. The large circular home, completed in 1800 at a cost of $40,000, sat at the upper end of the island, where people traveling down the Ohio River could see its magnificence. But Blennerhassett's cultured and intellectual background hadn't prepared him for life on the frontier. Generous, extravagant and often impractical, he squandered much of his fortune. Growing desperate, Blennerhassett fell under the spell of Aaron Burr, a former Vice President under Thomas Jefferson who, in 1806, was planning to raise an army against Spanish troops in New Orleans and estabish his own Southwest government. Using Blennerhassett's island as a headquarters, recruitment center and training area, Burr put together a small expedition of boats and soldiers.