Copyright N?. COPWilCHT DEPOSrr The CHILD'S Story Making of Louisville THE HEROIC AGE From the Inception of the Town in 1780 to its First Charter in 1826 FANNIE CASSEDAY DUNCAN ILLUSTRATED JOHN F». MORTON & COMPANY INCORPORATED LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY Copyright, 1914 BY Fannie CassEday Duncan MAR 18 J9/4 oy 0)CI.A362948 To THE Memory of My Father, SAMUEL CASSEDAY Who inspired much that was best in Early Louisville, This Little Story of the Kentucky City is A TRIBUTE Kentucky's Order to Kentucky's Teachers Make me men to match my mountains; Men to match my forests bold; Sun-crowned, rugged men of stature, Cast in Nature's largest mold. What was his name ? I do not know his name. I only know he heard God's voice and came; Brought all he loved across the sea, To live and work for God and me ; Felled the ungracious oak, With horrid toil Dragged from the soil The thrice-gnarled roots and stubborn rock; With plenty filled the haggard mountain-side, And, when his work was done, without memorial died. No blaring trumpet sounded out his fame ; He lived, he died. I do not know his name. No form of bronze and no memorial stones vShow me the place where lie his moldering bones. Only a cheerful city stands, Builded by his hardened hands; — • Only ten thousand homes, Where, every day, The cheerful play Of love and hope and courage comes; These are his monuments, and these alone, — There is no form of bronze and no memorial stone. — E. E. HAI.E By permission of Little, Broun & Comj any CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Foreword IX, X I. How the Site of Louisville looked to the First White People i-6 A Scalp Stretched Out to Dry. An Indian Brave. II. The Pioneer and How He Reached Kentucky, 7-12 Fort at Boonesborough. Coming to Kentucky. Pack-Horses. Crossing the Cumberlands. III. In the Beginning I3~'5 First Log Cabin in Louisville. IV. The Settlement at the Falls 16-26 An Ohio River Flatboat of 178S. Corn Island and the Cabin Homes. An Early Type of Home. The Falls of the Ohio. V. Why this Site was Chosen 27-29 The Trail. VI. The Settlement on the Mainland 3o~39 A Midnight Raid on a Lonely Home. Cemetery where George Rogers Clark was First Buried. Tablet Erected by the Kentucky Society of Colonial Dames. General George Rogers Clark. Tablet Erected by the Sons of the Ameri- can Revolution. (vii) viii CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE VII. How Louisville Appeared at the Beginning, 40-45 First Log Cabin in Kentucky. VIII. How the Pioneer Lived and Looked .... 46-53 A Pioneer in Full Dress. Buffaloes. IX. Louisville under Virginia Rulers 54~59 X. Steamboat Days on the Ohio 60-66 The Dizzy Wharf and Types of Boats. Fulton's Steamboat. XL Louisville a Kentucky Town under Kentucky Trustees 67-76 The Grayson Home. A Stylish Pioneer Home. XII. Some Earliest Things in Louisville . . . . 77-112 Some Present-Day Louisville Homes. An Early Fire Engine. On the Way to a Fire. Jefferson County Courthouse of ISIL A Worm Fence. An Early Type of Graves. John P. Morton & Company's Building. A Louisville Home. APPENDIX I. Recommendations of the Court of Kentucky to the several Towns and Garrisons ... 115 II. The Petition of the Inhabitants of the County of Kentucky 117 III. Act for Establishing the Town of Louisville at the Falls of the Ohio 120 FOREWORD This little book appears in response to a call for a compact, popular history of Louisville, suited to the use of pupils in the public schools. It makes no pretense to organic unity, nor is it intended in the small space occupied to be complete in details. It is intended to be accurate as far as it goes. The story of Kentucky in her pioneer times is to a large extent the story of the American western frontier in the closing days of the Eighteenth and the opening days of the Nineteenth centuries; hence the study of Louisville's early people and of the conditions surrounding them is of more than merely local interest. The writer has long held that the history of its own city should be made familiar to every child in it, since, as President Wilson says, ''the real rootages of patriotism are local." Every child should learn how much he owes to those who have gone before and made possible the life he now leads with such easy abundance of all necessary things. He should know the hardships of frontier days which had to be borne for him, and the sort of people who worked out the problems of the pioneer period — from forest to factor}^ from factory to commercial prestige. Above all, the child while in school should be taught to know its own city, because the schools have a profound influence on those who in a few years must carry on the city's affairs and determJne its destiny. (ix) X FOREWORD This account of the making of Louisville confines itself to the heroic age of Louisville — the period from La Salle's voyage in search of a water route to China, in 1 669, to the city's first charter, in 1828. If through it Louisville children shall have had aroused in them a desire for fuller information concerning their city and State, they can readily find it in those books to which I have again and again turned for inspiration in its compilation — to McMurtrie, Casseday, Collins, Smith, Durrett, Johnston, and the archives of The Filson Club. I have merely skimmed the surface. In preparing this book I am indebted most of all to Miss Adeline B. Zachert, Director of Children's Work in the Louisville Free Public Library, now holding a similar position in the Public Library, Rochester, N. Y., at whose request it was undertaken; to Miss Ruby A. Henry, teacher of Commercial Geography in the Girls High School, Louisville; to the efficient members of the staff of the Louisville Free Public Library, Miss Caroline Q. Fullerton and Miss Mary Brown Humphrey, of the Reference Depart- ment, Miss Bernice W. Bell, Head of the Children's Department, and especially to Mr. George T. Settle, Librarian. Fannie Casseday Duncan. Louisville, Kentucky, 191 1^. THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE THE CHILD'S STORY OF THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE CHAPTER I HOW THE SITE OF LOUISVILLE LOOKED TO THE FIRST WHITE PEOPLE It seems hardly possible now, but it is true, that there was a time when there was no Louisville and no Kentucky. It was not so long ago, either. Less than two hundred and fifty years ago the broad acres, fertile valleys, and peaceful meadows which we now call Kentucky were deep forests, rushing streams, and the wild resorts of wilder animals. The land was not named Kentucky, but Fincastle County, and it belonged to Virginia. Where Louisville now stands there were no inhabitants except Nature's own things — wild flowers, wild birds, wild grape- vines, wildcats, bears, buffaloes, deer, wolves, foxes, wild turkeys, snakes, and Indians. The land belonged to the Indians. Nobody knows where they came from or when they came, or how they got here in America. There were many tribes of them, and some were much more civilized than others. Those who lived around Kentucky were not settled in THE MAKING OF LOUISVIIvLB villages, but moved about from place to place, with very rude wigwams for houses. They lived by shoot- ing animals and birds and catching fish. The Indian tribes were nearly always at war with each other until they got the white man to war with. Their fights were so bloody, and the tribes were so evenly matched in skill and treachery, that no one tribe dared to make its home in Kentucky; but by common consent any tribe could use this land as a hunting ground. And there were so many things here to hunt: things that the Indians wanted — things for food, for clothing, for huts, for ornament. So they were always to be seen dodging through the Ken- tucky forests. But, except for a few Indian tribes fring- ing its border, Kentucky was not at this time inhabited by human beings. If it had not been for the Indians near by, though, everything in Kentucky would have had a different history, and the country would have been much more easily and quickly settled by white people. The whites had first to settle the Indians before they could settle families, for, as vSmith says: "The pioneer had to expect the savage foe from behind every tree, within every brake, and from every ambush." On the frontier the white man lived A Scalp Stretched Out to Dry AN INDIAN BRAVE 4 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE in an unending war with the red man, and the red man with the white. It will be remembered that all of America at one time belonged to the Indians, and so when white men began to come into it the tribes naturally feared what they might do to them or take from them. Frenchmen were the first to come into Kentucky, but as they came only to trade beads and trinkets for the fine furs which at first the Indians did not know the value of, the Indians did not object to the French. But when white men began to come into the Indians' country to settle there and make homes there, the Indians grew very fierce and used all their skill and treachery against them, even killing little babies and stealing boys and girls and carrying them away, nobody knew where. But the French were not long the only white people here. Very soon came the Spaniards and the English; and the right and title to the great valley of the Mississippi River became a bone of contention among the French, Spanish, and English, as it had long been between the northern and southern Indian tribes. The Indians were sometimes on the side of the French and sometimes took the part of the English or the Spanish, and soon every possible route in Kentucky was an Indian warpath. But until 1669, when the first explorers sailed down the Ohio to the Falls, where Louisville now stands, no white people of any kind had ever been seen in this part of Kentucky. The leader of this expedition was a Frenchman HOW THE SITE LOOKED 5 named La Salle. He had come all the way across the ocean in one of the small sailing vessels used in 1666. When he left France he expected, by going westward, to find a short water- route to China. Near what is now Montreal, in Canada, the Indians" told him of some rivers which rose in the country far to the south of the Great Lakes and which, joining their waters, rushed on, a mighty flood, for so great a distance to the south that it took nine months to reach the sea. La Salle got the idea that this great body of water must be the sea he was looking for, and he determined to go and explore it. The Indians doubtless meant to describe to La Salle the meet- ing of the Monongahela and the x^llegheny, form- ing the Ohio, its junction with the rushing waters of the mighty Mississippi — the *' Father of Waters" — and the long journey southward to the sunny Gulf. Rivers, not seas, were the only highways for boats in the strange new land; but patient and hopeful. La Salle w^as lured on and on through waters and waters until one day in the autumn of 1669 he reached the Falls of the Ohio — the first white man who had ever seen it. Here his Indian guides declared they would go no farther, and they left La Salle to perish in the Kentucky wilderness unless he could find a way out, which he did. So without doubt Louisville territory belonged to its French discoverer. It seems fitting that the name of a French king, Louis XVI, was later given to the City by the Falls — Louisville. 6 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE But La Salle was not looking for sites for a city. He was searching for a short way to India or China. He must have thought, though, as he drifted down the broad waters of the Ohio, how beautiful the New World was in its original freshness, and that Kentucky was certainly its garden spot. He saw great forests, full of brightly colored birds; he saw wild grapevines, growing to the tops of the gnarled and twisted oaks; he saw the brown sides of buffa- loes flecking the earth, and the earth dotted with beautiful flowers and blossoming herbs. The wood- notes of the thrushes and the flashing wings of thousands of strange birds made the place seem a very paradise. Audubon, in his book ''Birds of America," wrote that in the autumn of 1813 he saw "immense legions" of wild pigeons in Kentucky. He says "they were passing over the country for three days, and in such numbers that the light of noon was darkened by them as by an eclipse." He wrote, too, that one could often see from seven to eight thousand buffaloes in a single herd. They had trampled a wide trail through the Kentucky wilder- ness. If La Salle came upon such a drove, it must have seemed indeed strange to his eyes, used as he was to the courtly scenes of his native land. CHAPTER II THE PIONEER AND HOW HE REACHED KENTUCKY Now I think we will have to go over to Virginia for a while, because so many Kentuckians came here from Virginia, and because Virginia owned Kentucky. Whoever discovers a new country claims a right to it. The English had discovered Virginia, and so they both had and took the right to it. It was settled, by people who came over from England, as early as 1606. They did not come, as those who settled Massa- chusetts came, for the sake of liberty and religion. They came to get rich here, as other English people had gone to India to get rich there. King James was King of England at this time, and he had very little idea of what a vast territory he had come into possession of. But he sent a man to govern Virginia, and permitted him to give aw^ay huge tracts of land to all those persons who wanted to go and settle in the new country. The grant made to the Virginia Company included not only what is now Virginia, but also all of what is now West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and all the land west of Ohio, to the Mississippi River. No one then dreamed that the Ohio Valley w^ould ever be an empire for millions of men and women to build mighty cities in. It was looked upon by the Coast people as the fringe of Virginia — a place for (7) THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE savages, who were kept at bay by the Alleghanies. Kentucky was then Fincastle County, Virginia, just as now Jefferson County is Jefferson County, Kentucky. By a strange destiny Kentucky separated the Indians of the North from the Indians of the South, and into this gap, in the closing days of the Seven- teenth Century, poured a flood of men and women from Virginia, from North Car- oHna, from Penn- sylvania, and from Maryland — men and women who were to be the first Kentuck- ians, and who were to give tone to all who follow- ed. The earliest of these to come were rather adventurers, like Daniel Boone, than seekers after homes or wealth. It was the report of these adventurers, who told of the fertile Kentucky soil and of the abundance of game and pelts, that turned the feet of real home-seekers to the land beyond the mountains. How did they get over the i\lleghany Mountains into Kentucky? If you wanted very badly to go somewhere and found a great mass of steep land in your way, what would you do? Just, I suspect, what those Virginians and North Carolinians did — walk up and down the edge of the mass, searching for some Fort at Boonesborough THE PIONEER— HOW HE REACHED KENTUCKY 9 low place where one could cross over. If you will study your map you will find that the mountains which block the way from Virginia into the Valley of the Ohio run in long ridges, rank behind rank. You will see, too, that a space separates the Blue Ridge from the Alleghanies. At one point the Cumberland Mountains break dowm into several COMING TO KENTUCKY possible passways. One of these is at Cumberland Gap. It was through this gap that the home-seekers came into Kentucky. First came a train of pack- horses; then a patient herd of cattle and hogs, driven by boys and young men; last came a little army of women and children, the women plodding along, the children dancing with many an unnecessary step after the strange and beautiful things in the forest. The pioneer men with their guns and dogs and sharp knives led the whole procession as it wound in and 10 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE out and up and down the rocky gorges of the Cum- berland Mountains — home-seeking. Those who came from Pennsylvania followed a road that ran from Philadelphia through a desolate country to the hills of Western Pennsylvania. There they crossed the mountains to what is now Pitts- burgh, where the Alle- gheny River, sweeping from the north, meets PACK-HORSES the Monongahela, coming from the south, to create the Ohio River. Here they embarked — men and women and livestock and household goods — in keel-boats, in Kentucky flatboats, and in Indian pirogues, and were slowly paddled down the river to the hopeful, if squalid, little settlement at the Falls where Louisville was to be. Its only name then was the Beargrass Settlement. 12 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE Such was the frame into which Louisville was to be set: such were the people who were to set it there. These men and women, who pushed on over moun- tains and through forests and across rushing streams Into the wilderness to carve out of Fincastle County, Virginia, the State of Kentucky and the city of Louis- ville, were a picked people, bred In the open fields of Britain and Virginia. They were full of English ideals, full of a manly vigor that was willing to face the dangers and privations of the frontier and its savage foes, and to do battle for everything that men must have in making a home in a far country while con- stantly raising the level of civilization. Out of it all came that unique specimen, the Kentuckian — patient, fearless, loyal to duty, quick on the trigger, but full of self-control. He was not skilled at all In book learning, but inquisitiveness and keen observation supplied the place of books, and he taught himself In a school which required judgment, skill, and a mighty grip on current events. CHAPTER III IN THE BEGINNING If La Salle saw nothing at the Falls of the Ohio to make him wish to land there and build a great city, there came others whose vision was broader. After La Salle went onward, many exploring parties passed the Falls of the Ohio and also went on. It was nearly a hundred years later when two men — an English surgeon in the royal army and an Irish land speculator — went wandering over Kentucky and stood on the edge of the roaring Falls of the Ohio and dreamed the dream of a great city to be builded by the water's side, its river laden with craft and the craft laden with furs and merchandise for ports and stations farther south; the city itself to be a great storehouse for commerce. The two men who saw this vision were John Connolly and John Campbell. Doctor Connolly had been granted two thousand acres of land in the Ken- tucky region for his services in the French and Indian War, and he was wandering around looking for the best place to locate. When he came to the Falls he concluded that right here a big city must some day grow. So he took his two thousand acres immediately opposite the Falls, fronting one mile on the Ohio River. The land was level enough for the making of streets and the building of houses almost without any grading from the engineer. (13) 14 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE John Campbell went into partnership with Con- nolly, buying one half of his acres. They then em- ployed a notable surveyor, Thomas Bullitt, to lay out a town for them. It is possible that Doctor Connolly intended to have here a great English town, loyal to the British flag — a point from which FIRST LOG CABIN IN LOUISVILLE England could control the Western country for herself. It is certain that he afterward came into Kentucky with just such a plan. But Campbell, as time showed, had no such patriotic motive. He meant only to enrich his own pocket-book by buy- ing lands cheap and selling them dear and making all he could out of the deal. Campbell County was afterward named for him, on account of his land holdings there. IN THE BEGINNING 15 In 1774 the partners advertised lots for sale at the Falls and sent men to live on their land, for there was a condition in their grant that all granted lands must be occupied and improved within three years from the time they were granted. Stuart Sanders was the name of the leader of the men sent to live on the land. This group was the very first to take up a residence at the Falls and become citizens of Louisville. But it was a long time before the town was really settled. Stuart came in 1775. Where do you suppose he made his home? In the hollow of a big syca- more tree! He soon had cause to be afraid of the Indians, and he went over to an island in the river and lived there. It was harder for the Indians to reach him there, because of the Ohio rapids. The island came to be named Corn Island, and we shall hear a good deal about it. By the time it was occupied by settlers Stuart had learn- ed the trick of rowing safely through the swirling rapids, and he made money by carrying passengers back and forth. CHAPTER IV THE SETTLEMENT AT THE FALLS Neither Connolly nor Campbell had the honor of founding the city of Louisville. The honor belongs to a man of far higher patriotism and broader views. His name was George Rogers Clark. He was one of those who left Virginia and came to make his home in Kentucky, or Fincastle County. The Revolu- tionary War was on by this time, and ClarJ<: purposed to drive out the English from the Northwest, to make friends with the Indians if possible, and to snatch the whole Northwest Territory from the control of the English. Clark saw that Kentucky stood as a buffer between the foreign forts and Virginia. If Kentucky should be conquered by the English and Indians, Virginia and the Coast would become border lands and any extension west of the mountains would be impossible. Clark guessed that England knew the advan- tage to be gained if she could make Kentucky an ally of her own, separating it from the rest of Vir- ginia and making it an English stronghold, and he believed England would lose no time in trying to persuade the half-neglected Kentuckians to break off from their careless mother, Virginia, and to become part of an inland English domain. Thus Clark, feeling the necessity for closer relations be- tween Virginia and Kentucky and for better armed (16) THE SETTLEMENT AT THE FALLS 17 and better trained soldiers on this borderland, started off on horseback over the mountains to see the governor of Virginia and put the matter before him. He started October i, 1777, and it took him a month to reach Governor Patrick Henry. AN OHIO RIVER FLATBOAT OF 1788 He began his tale to Governor Henry by saying that the Kentuckians were out of gunpowder, and that they had use for it every day. He asked for five hundred pounds. He had trouble in getting it. Then he poured out his story of what Kentucky meant to Virginia and to the seaboard colonists — what she was doing to protect them from Indian raids. He said that if Virginia owned Kentucky and 18 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE wanted to hold it, she had better safeguard it; that if she persisted in neglecting it, she might expect Kentucky to look elsewhere for mothering; and he hinted that such mothering would not be far to seek. He pointed out that so long as the English held the lands north of the Ohio they were a perpetual menace, not only to Kentucky but to all the frontiers. If Kentucky should be captured — so he told Patrick Henry — Virginia would be the next point of exposure and attack, and would soon feel the bitterness of savage warfare at her own back door. Clark finally got all he asked for, including the right to fit out an army against the English in the Northwest. He was made a colonel of militia at this time, and afterward (in 1781) was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. He set about raising troops wherever he could find men to be soldiers. But men were hard to find for this purpose. Each place had troubles of its own and its men were needed at home. After much exertion three companies, of fifty men each, agreed to meet Colonel Clark at the point on the Ohio River where the Kanawha empties into it. Here a few other men also joined the army. Here, too, Colonel Clark found a number of families (about twenty) who wished to make their homes in Kentucky, and who begged him to let them go with his party, for protection. He refused at first but finally took them in his flatboats, and afterward was very glad he had done so. George Rogers Clark was thinking more of build- ing up a great American nation than of settling 20 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE families. His first need was to discover some place where he could organize and discipline his ragged army. It must be a place so situated that they would find it hard to desert if they got homesick or weary, or disliked the stern rules which he knew he must make. He writes in his ''Memoirs": ''After careful note of the land I observed a little island of about seventy acres, seldom or never entirely covered by water. I resolved to take possession and fortify, which I did on the — th day of June (1778), dividing the land among the families for gardens. On this island I first began to discipline my little army, knowing that to be the most essential point toward success." (The date was probably May 27th instead of in June.) This "little island" — this little Western frontier station in the river, over whose fortunes Colonel Clark felt himself called to preside — was the founda- tion of the city of Louisville — its very beginning. Note that the location was not purchased from any one; that no one asked permission of any one to live on it. Clark simply "took possession" of it and settled the families on it, and there was no one to say he must not. The "little island" — a long, narrow strip of land, standing many feet out of the water, opposite the Falls of the Ohio — lay about three hundred yards from the Kentucky shore, and was sixty or seventy miles from the nearest settlement. It began about one hundred and fifty feet east of what is now Fourth Street, and ran to a point nearly opposite to what is now Fourteenth Stree:. On it were magnificent THE SETTLEMENT AT THE FALLS 21 primeval forest trees, and underneath them in most places grew thick masses of cane, so dense that they had to be chopped away with axes before the men could make a fort or the families could build cabins or plant their gardens. Colonel Clark found that the fact of having families on the island made it necessary to have better living quarters than would have been necessary for the soldiers alone. But then the families made it possible the sooner to have home life and its civ- ilizing influences for all. When Colonel Clark left the island to go and fight he put the women in charge of the island and of the supplies, leaving with them only ten men. Pioneer women were as brave as soldiers, and could shoot as well in times of danger. The day the little company landed on the island the soldiers and citizens began to build a fort, or stockade. It had twelve cabin homes in the center and blockhouses at the ends. The cabins were one story high. The blockhouses were two stories, had places for an outlook so that the enemy could not creep up unawares, and had portholes for guns. To build, in those days, meant to cut down trees for wood, and to shape the house and all its furniture with such rude tools as the ax, saw, auger, and adze. There were no nails to be had, so the ends of the houses were fitted together in such a way as to make them lap and hold. Doors were cut out of slabs of trees. The hinges were not of metal, but were shaped on to the door when it was hewed out. Roofs were not shingled — they, too, were made of boards, and as 22 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE the pioneer had no nails the roofs were tied together in a curious way, as you may see in the illustration of a round-log house which is printed here. Why was it called "Corn Island"? There are several answers to this question. One is that soon after landing, the families planted among the stumps some seed corn which they had brought from their old homes, and the fertile virgin soil produced such a fine crop that the glad people named their new home ''Corn Island." Another story is that as they planted they had to carry a gun in one hand and a hoe in the other, which made the corn so precious that they called the land "Corn Island." A third tale — and it seems to be the best one — relates that some Indians who had been on a hunt in Kentucky chanced to drop corn kernels all about through the island on the fertile soil. When the whites came, in June, the corn was growing vigorously. The islanders were so glad to see fresh, green, and abundant food growing and nearly ready to eat that they at once named the blessed place "Corn Island." Corn had not been known in all the world until it was found in America. This crop alone sometimes saved a colony from starvation. Corn Island has disappeared from the face of the earth. Colonel R. T. Durrett, historian and founder of The Filson Club, tried hard to save it from destruc- tion. He made special pleas to Mayor Speed, Mayor Tomppert, and other mayors, telling them that even a few willows planted along the banks would save the island from the wash of the waves and the wastes of time, and not a foot' of breakwater be necessary. THE SETTLEMENT AT THE FALLS 23 But none would heed. It is to their shame that they did not. Those seventy, or less, acres of green island at the city's edge would have served as a pleasing memorial of the early days of our forefathers and be a continual monument to their triumph over all sorts of difficulties and denials. Every time Ken- tuckians saw it, it would remind them of Colonel Clark AN EARLY TYPE OF HOME and his poorly equipped little band of soldiers, less than two hundred, who marched out from this island against a powerful kingdom and its savage allies. It was largely Colonel Clark's Kentuckians, and other men that afterward became Kentuckians, who wrested from English rule the land that lay between Kentucky and the British possessions in Canada. Out of the area thus saved to the United States have since been formed the States of 24 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE Michigan and Wisconsin and large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and IlHnois. The term ''Falls" appears hardly justifiable to the people of to-day. There seem now not even to be the rough and roaring eddies which danced in the sun- light before the eyes of the writer when, as a little girl, her geologist brother used to take her over the Falls at low water, his hammer in his hand and a bag for rare specimens of corals and shells slung over his shoulder. Wonderful and beautiful and curious were the fossils he collected from that old Devonian sea, which once so teemed with life. From all over the civilized world men of science used to come to Kentucky and to Louisville to study the fossil remains on the Ohio Falls. Even that great man, Alexander von Humboldt, wrote autograph letters on the subject to that same brother, one of which still remains in the family. Even now at lowest water, when the Kentucky chute is dry or very nearly so, one can see an ancient coral reef made of fine- textured "coral sand" about twenty feet in thickness and filled with fossiled corals exquisitely preserved. Louisville children should visit the Falls and see conditions there for themselves. Major W. J. Davis, of Louisville, who is an high authority in matters geological and who owns a noteworthy collection of Ohio Falls specimens, which he himself gathered, tells that ''at one time, not less than nine thousand years ago, the Ohio River did not flow in the channel it has at present, but followed a channel from northeast to southwest, through what 26 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE is now the very heart of the city. Its northern bank was near what is now Main Street, while it spread southward to 'Buttonmould Knob,' near Jacob Park." Major Davis further says that at one time "the Ohio River had a cataract which fell from a height of thirty-five feet and was more than six hundred feet wide. The walls of this cliff . . . were composed of harder and softer alternate strata. The softer, crumbling and falling away, little by little, would in time break off under the pressure of the waters, and thus present new faces, to be beaten up in the same way. Thus the cascade receded gradually and was converted into 'rapids,' as those who came later saw them." CHAPTER V WHY THIS SITE WAS CHOSEN The Spot selected for building Louisville was marked out by Nature for the site of a city. In the hands of wise and far-seeing trustees it should have risen quickly to the highest prominence. It lies midway between the North and the South, and holds the best customs of each. Theodore Roosevelt once called it a ''gateway of the nation." North of it rolls the twisting, winding Ohio River, forming, in a horseshoe bend, both its northern and western boundaries. South of it lies a broad plateau, stretch- ing for six miles or more to the foothills of a low range. Eastward there is a plain which has space for another London. In 1780 a dense forest of oak, beech, walnut, hickory, ash, maple, buckeye, flowering poplar, sycamore, and other trees covered its soil. This forest furnished both soft and hard woods for every sort of use to which men put wood. The clays of its earth, the lime and sand of its rocks, and the gravel of its river-bed made, with its various woods, a combination which could not fail to change the site rapidly from a struggling frontier settlement to a busy center of commerce. Above the Falls the Ohio widens, gentle and lakelike, and is almost without a current for six miles. In 1780 islands dotted these waters and were (27) 28 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE the homes and nesting-places of innumerable wild fowl and birds. The writer's mother has told her of trips she took in 1815 from the shore homes to the islands in search of eggs, great basketsful of which she helped to gather from the nests of wild ducks, wild geese, and wild turkeys. At that time Beargrass Creek poured its waters into the Ohio at a point about midway between what is now Third and Fourth streets, forming a safe and convenient harbor for barges and smaller boats. The Ohio, connected by easy portages with the Great Lakes and greater seas, offered the city-to-be almost the advantages of a coast town. Coast towns are centers of commerce for all bordering lands, as well as storehouses for goods awaiting trade. At Louisville's front gate the Ohio flowed to the Mississippi, and the Mississippi to the sea. And, as though this were not enough. Nature had further decreed that here a city must be, for the Falls broke up the river, so that when it was low, barges, flatboats, and all river craft had to be unloaded at the head of the Falls and reloaded at the foot. It was of course necessary to haul the unloaded freight or passengers around the Falls and then reload into other boats waiting at the foot, where there was a town which rivaled Louisville in those days — Ship- pingport. This town, called at first Campbelltown, stood at the head of travel for the lower Ohio, just as Louisville was at the foot of it for the upper Ohio. The necessity for hauling goods around the Falls made business for horses, men, wagons, drays, inns, clerks, and roustabouts. Added to these good WHY THIS SITE WAS CHOSEN 29 things for this new town, and more valuable than any one of them, was the advertisement it got from people who passed through it or who traded within its borders. Then as now, Louisville was noted for its cordial hospitality. Almost every day flatboats filled with home-seekers landed at the Falls, while pack-horses brought another stream of people over Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road from Cumberland Gap and beyond. THE TRAIL CHAPTER VI THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND But we have strayed from our story. We left Colonel Clark and his men and the pioneer families on Corn Island, some trying to get the homes and gardens in order, others building a fort against attacks of Indians, and Colonel Clark drilling his soldiers for the British and Indian campaign. It was a bright June day in 1778 when Colonel Clark's little ''band of nation-builders," less than two hundred strong, filed into their frail boats to go and win the Northwest. In order to catch the current they had to row a mile upstream and then row down again in the current. To have a boat in just the proper angle for clearing the Falls was called ''shooting the falls." On that June morning the sun went into a total eclipse just as the boats "shot the falls." The soldiers, especially the superstitious ones, were greatly frightened, and so were the women and children on the island. The story of Colonel Clark's campaign does not belong to Louisville's history, so we may not at this time tell of it. It was well planned, quickly executed, and notably successful. A more brilliant campaign has seldom if ever been conducted by any general. Colonel Clark has been called by historians "the man of destiny," but his "destiny" was made up (30) THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 31 largely of pure grit, real determination, faith in himself and in God, and true patriotism. As he does not again enter largely into the story of early Louisville, we will say here that his country did not appreciate him or his great service to the young nation. Before he died a tardy recogni- A MIDNIGHT RAID ON A LONELY HOME tion was offered him by Virginia, but he died a broken-hearted man. His last embittered days were not pleasing to himself nor to those who must love and honor him for his high character as a man and a soldier. He became paralyzed and died on February 13, 1 81 8, at the home of his sister, Mrs. Croghan, at Locust Grove, near Louisville. He was buried 32 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE in the family burying-ground on the place. His body rested there for fifty-one years. Then it was taken up by grateful citizens of Louisville and placed in our own beautiful Cave Hill cemetery, where it lies to-day. All about him — south, north, east, and west — long streets roar with commerce where was once the wilderness which he so bravely entered and won for us. When loving and grateful Kentuckians went to Locust Grove to find his remains and bring them to Cave Hill, there was no mark on his grave to distinguish it from others in the same family lot. Nine graves were opened and closed before the respectful seekers were able to identify the body of General George Rogers Clark. It is essentially fitting that the citizens of Louis- ville should honor the grave and revere the memory of George Rogers Clark, for he was never so busy as to forget, in all his brilliant career as soldier and leader, the little band of settlers on Corn Island. As soon as he "could spare the men he sent Major Linn with a body of discharged soldiers back to the Falls to tell the islanders that it would be safe for them now to move from the island to the shore, or mainland, if they would build a fort there before they moved. They were very glad of this news, for they had begun to feel very much cramped on their island since many other people had come to share it. People in those days had not learned to live on small areas. They wanted big gardens, big yards, big farms. On the mainland, at the foot of what is now Twelfth Street, there was a ravine, just opposite to the cabin homes on the island. In this ravine was THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 33 a spring of clear, cold water. Because of the spring and of the shelter of the ravine, the islanders resolved to build the fort there. The settlers could row back and forth easily from the island to the shore while they were erecting the fort. This fort was tw^o hundred feet long by one hundred feet wide. The CEMETERY WHERE GEORGE ROGERS CLARK WAS FIRST BURIED name has been forgotten, but it was probably called Fort Finney. In June, 1912, the Sons of the American Revolu- tion, a patriotic and historical society formed of men whose ancestors had fought in the wars of the Revolution, erected a fountain on the site of this old fort, and it was dedicated, through the president of the society, Mr. R. C. Ballard 34 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE Thruston, to the memory of those soldiers. We now call it "The Fort-on-the-Shore." It was oc- cupied by troops of the American Revolution for four years. By Christmas (1778) the fort was nearly ready, and the pioneers made up their minds to move into it for a Christmas dinner— the first Christmas dinner in the little settlement, which at this time did not even have a name. It was to be a sort of Thanks- giving dinner too. You might think it a strange Christ- mas dinner, but the men and women and little chil- dren of the settlement thought it very fine. I will tell you what they had: Fish, of course — one could get delicious fish easily from the nearby river, and the islanders knew delicious ways of cooking it. They had pigeons, venison steak, buffalo hump, wild turkey, grouse, and opossum. They had hominy, corn bread baked in the ashes, pumpkin pies, and nuts. And they had vigorous appetites. After they had eaten all they could, the young folks wanted to dance. The only musical instru- ment on the island was an old fiddle. The fiddle belonged to negro Cato, and Cato belonged to Captain Donne. Cato used to play it by the hour under the shade of a great sycamore tree. No one thought of him as idling while he was playing, for the people could drill, or hoe, or build, all the bet- ter for the music. It served to make the days less monotonous. But Cato had broken or worn out all his fiddle-strings before Christmas, and, as you know, there was no place where he could buy others. Just when things looked blackest for the dance. THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 35 a boat came along with a Frenchman on board. He was heard to say something about his fiddle, and the girls in the fort gathered about him and begged him for some dance music. He was willing enough, but he did not know their kind of dances or the sort of music they could dance to. He tried a minuet. The girls had never heard of it. He tried a Branly. It was too stately for these girls. He then played for the French dance, pavane. But he was disgusted at the rough way the settler boys and girls romped in their dancing, and he quit. In the meantime, by some means best known to himself, Cato had gotten hold of some new fiddle-strings and he appeared, grinning, and sawed out an old Virginia reel. Then out scampered our ancestors and danced and ''jigged it off " until break of day. Thus happily, with thanks- giving and joy, with music and dance, began Louis- ville's settlement on the mainland. Louisville was not commenced, as has been generally thought, under an act of the Virginia Legislature. This Christmas dinner was eaten in December, 1778. The Virginia act, establishing the town, was passed more than a year later. May i, 1780. On April i, 1779, the Virginia authorities sent out letters to Kentucky garrisons and towns, advising them what to do about buying and building homes in Kentucky County. They asked Louisville, among other things, to choose three or more of ''the most judicious of their body" and intrust to them the rules for the town. The Louisville people chose seven. The letter thus sent will be found as Appendix Num- ber I at the end of this book. 36 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE These citizen-chosen trustees at once began to study the conditions under which the town was formed, and the study made them uneasy about their right to the land upon which the town was built. They found that it was on the one thousand acres which had been granted to Doctor Connolly, and that it had not been bought from him nor had he deeded it to them. Connolly had taken up arms against the colonies, and so his lands were considered no longer to belong to him. But the new trustees knew that before they could get a clear title to them the Virginia Legislature must legally say that Connolly could make no claim on them and that they belonged to the Beargrass Settlement. So the citizens petitioned the Legisla- ture, and the Legislature then created the town. May I, 1780. The petition may be found as Appen- dix Number II at the end of this book. Appendix Number III is the act of legislation which created the town. In this act the Virginia Legislature appointed its own trustees, and the citizen-chosen men went out of office. While the town was being thus legally established Colonel Clark asked that it be named after Louis XVI, King of France. So it was then named Louisville. Before that it had only been known as the Beargrass Settlement. After General Clark came back to Kentucky from the wars, in 1782, this fort on Twelfth Street was given up for a new and very strong fort which was built along the river front, on the north side of Main Street and immediately upon the "second bank" of the river. It occupied the space just south of where THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 37 the Union Depot now stands.. The entrance to the fort is thought to have been where Seventh and Main streets now intersect. The fort was named Fort Nelson, in honor of General Thomas Nelson, third governor of Virginia. On this spot the Kentucky Society of the Colonial Dames of America have lately honored themselves in honoring the heroes of that day by erecting a monument to their memory. It was unveiled with sweet and tender ceremony on Novem- ber 7, 1913, having this wording: To the glory of God and in grateful remem- brance of these our ancestors who through evil report and loss of fortune, through suffering and death, maintained stout hearts and laid the foundation of our country, we, the Ken- tucky Society of Colonial Dames of America, have built this monument. Colonel Richard Chenowith, whose descendants are still a part of Louisville life, was the architect of the first fort, the one probably named Finney; but the second one. Fort Nelson, was much stronger. It was surrounded by a ditch eight feet wide and ten feet deep. In the middle of this was a row of sharp pickets. There were breastworks of log pens filled with earth, and on top of these, pickets again, ten feet high. On the river side they needed no breastworks — the long slope of the river bank stood for defense on that side. Inside the fort was a double fortified six-pounder which Clark 3S THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE had captured in his campaign. The Indians stood in great awe of this fort and of General Clark, who they, had good reason to know was a very stern and severe commander and showed little compassion to- ward his foes. We have an American saying, "In time of peace, prepare for war." General Clark had perhaps never heard it, but he acted as if he had, GENERAL GEORGE ROGERS CLARK and no doubt he averted much bloodshed by being always ready against possible trouble. There was another station commenced in the immediate neighborhood of the Falls in 1779. Colonel John Floyd, one of the most notable men of that period, had been appointed by the Virginia Legislature as Colonel of Jefferson County when the County of Kentucky was divided into three counties. Colonel Floyd was not only a fine survey- or, but he also took a great share in the defense of the settlements and in their development. THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 39 Seeking these things, he built a blockhouse and started a station near what is now Third and Main streets. For good reasons he soon abandon- ed this and erected another, about six miles farther away, on Beargrass Creek — one that bore his name and became well known as a wilderness station. In August, 19 13, the same patriotic society, the Sons of the American Revolution, erected a memo- rial of this station and of Colonel John Floyd at Third and Main streets. The memorial tablet is inscribed thus: Erected in August 1913 BY THE Ky. Society OF THE Sons OF THE American Revolution, ICO Yards Southeast OF THE Station Erected in 1779 BY Col. John Floyd CHAPTER VII HOW LOUISVILLE APPEARED AT THE BEGINNING In 1780 the small town called Louisville was not very pleasing to the eye. The land was honey- combed with ponds and with stagnant pools, left by the receding waters of the river. This made the village both unsightly and unhealthful. It was then almost as necessary for people to get used to the climate here as it now is for people to get used to the climate of Africa. Mosquitoes and flies abounded, and all sorts of fevers took possession of the inhabi- tants in summer. In fact, Louisville was once called "the graveyard of the West." Now it is one of the most healthful cities of the United States. The largest of the ponds was called "Long Pond." It began at what is now Sixth and Market streets, turned a little to the southwest, and ended at Six- teenth Street. It was for many years a fashionable place for skating. The pond second in size was "Grayson's Pond." It was a rarely beautiful pond, fed by a fresh, clear spring and stocked with fine fish. It began at a point just back of the present jail and extended westwardly halfway to Seventh Street, in the form of an ellipse. All around it were great forest trees, and circling it was a rich turf of Kentucky blue- grass and white clover. (40) HOW LOUISVILLE APPEARED AT THE BEGINNING 41 On the border of this pond was a mound which had been raised in prehistoric times by the ancient Mound Builders. On the mound, years after the time of which we are teUing, John Gwathmey built the queer house still standing there. He sold it to Colonel Grayson, and the pond was so beautified by Colonel Grayson that it came to be known as "Grayson's Pond." It was the scene of many bap- tisms by immersion, as well as of many skating parties and ice dances. Another big pond was at the intersection of Fourth and Jefferson streets. A creek ran through what is now York Street. Ben Casseday tells that "the face of Louisville resembled an archipelago, so full was it of 'land surrounded by water'." Besides the ponds, there were many deep mud-holes. It was not until 1824 that the Kentucky Legisla- ture took definite action on this state of affairs and appointed a Board of Health, with authority to examine into the causes of the epidemics that were ravaging Louisville. Then, instead of imposing a tax to secure funds for drainage, the Legislature authorized a lottery for that purpose. Colonel Durrett tells that there was some queer building done in Louisville in its early days. James Patton bought a lot at Eighth and Main streets that had a hollow tree on it. The tree was of unusual size, and he built his house around it so as to include the hollow trunk as a room. Squire Boone, brother of Daniel Boone, determined to build a house that would outshine all others, so he got long boards from a disused flatboat in which a 42 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE family had come to Louisville. These boards he set up endwise, using wooden pegs to fasten them to cross-pieces, for nails were very scarce and costly. The house looked all right at first, but when the water-soaked boards began to dry in the sunshine they warped and twisted in every direction, and the roof turned up and down as if it were crazy. Squire was actually laughed out of town. He was glad enough to leave and make his home in the fort at Shelbyville. Early log houses had no window-glass. They had solid wooden shutters, fastened with a hasp. A little lad in Louisville who saw the first house with glass windows ran home to his mother with all speed, shouting ''Oh, Ma, come see a house with specs on!" The solid wooden doors, swung on wooden pegs, were fastened on the inside by a wooden latch. Through a hole in the latch a string was passed, so that by it the door could be opened from without. If a visitor found the string on the outside of the door he was welcome to pull it and enter. If the family did not want visitors they simply pulled the latch-string inside. From this came the expression, "My latch- string is always on the outside for you." Just at the right of the door, on the inside, were the great horns of animals such as elk, deer, or oxen. These were used as rests for rifles, which were always kept close at hand. But if the houses were queer, the streets were queerer. They were not streets at all, only country roads — muddy in winter, dusty in summer, and full of tree-stumps. Cows and chickens and hogs wan- HOW LOUISVILLE APPEARED AT THE BEGINNING 43 dered over them at will, making unsightly tracks through the mud or dust, and leaving trails of flies and dirt. Hog-pens were allowed in the public streets. Any one that wanted to could dig clay from the middle of the road for brick-making. Sidewalks were boards taken from the discarded FIRST LOG CABIN IN KENTUCKY boats which had brought families down the river. Half-logs were thought to be all right for crossings over pools or mud-holes. Houses were not com- pelled to be built in line; every man built just where it pleased him. No one could enforce sanitation on his neigh- bor. It is no wonder that a terrible scourge of disease broke out in the place and took a big per cent of the townspeople. This bad condition of 44 THE MAKING OF LOUIvSVILLE things lasted from the time that the town was first settled, all through the days of the Virginia trustees, and down to 1792, when Kentucky be- came a State and Louisville, Virginia, became Louisville, Kentucky. In fact there was no really great change for the better until after the- epidemic of 1822. No one could now identify the boundaries of Louisville as recorded in 18 19 by Doctor McMurtrie, for the "oak tree" and the ''flat rock with a square hole in it," which he mentions, have long since dis- appeared. But it is known that the town ran from the river to Chestnut Street and from East Street to Twelfth. In 1789 the w^hole of the town was within these limits. East Street is now called Brook Street. Nearly every street is now differently named from what it then was. The first streets cut through southward were East, West, and Center. The first survey of the town was made by Captain Thomas Bullitt, in August, 1773. No record of it has been preserved. The second survey, made by Colonel Pope in 1780, laid the town off in half-acre lots as far south as Jefferson Street. Then another man, William Shannon, platted the rest of it, in 1788. He divided it in this way: all lots between Jefferson and Walnut streets were five-acre lots; between Walnut and Chestnut streets the lots were all ten acres; Broadway was the limit of the- town. Be- yond that was dense forest. These deep lots were auctioned off at prices varying from tw^enty dollars to fourteen hundred dollars. A lot on Main Street near Fourth was auctioned off for a HOW LOUISVILLE APPEARED AT THE BEGINNING 45 young horse. The horse was afterward sold for twenty dollars. Just to compare that day with the present time, it is interesting to know that in 1912 a lot on the corner of Fourth and Walnut streets was sold for $350,000. The building occupying it — a church building, beautiful and impressive — was torn down and sold for junk. This was not a five-acre lot — it was sold by the foot. The building permits for the same year (1912) amounted to $7,945,091. CHAPTER VIII HOW THE PIONEER LIVED AND LOOKED Pioneers are the people who go first into a new and strange country to settle it. The men and women of whom this book tells were Kentucky pioneers. At the time of which we are writing there were no railroads, no steamboats, no telegraphs, in all the world. There were no good roads in Kentucky. The only highways were the streams or their dry beds. Now and then one came upon wide and well- trodden paths which had been made by the feet of thousands of wild animals that went tramping up and down the wilderness in search of salt. Even Daniel Boone's famous "Wilderness Road" would not now be thought good at all. It was simply a blazed trail, with the undergrowth cut away, the holes filled up or else bridged over with logs, stumps and rocks taken out of the way, and the earth beaten down by the restless feet of pio- neers and pack-horses. It ran from Cumberland Gap, in the southern corner of Kentucky, through Crab Orchard in Kentucky. Louisville was its western extremity. There was, too, a ''Warriors' Trace": a good path for Indians, but not safe for white people. Roads, in our sense of the term, there were none. Travel meant days of solitude in unbroken forests; it meant nights of loneliness without shel- (46) HOW THE PIONEER LIVED AND LOOKED 47 ter, and within call of nothing except wild beasts and redskins. The only comfortable way to travel was on horseback. Sometimes a long trip would be made by two persons with one horse. The man first to mount would ride ahead for a certain distance that would be agreed upon ; then he would get down and tie the horse. The second man, who had walked the distance, would reach the horse about the time it had rested ; he then got on and rode, tying the horse, in turn, for the other "man. People called this method ''ride and tie." The Kentucky pioneers lacked almost everything we now think we could not do without. Their rude homes were cabins. Their walls had no plaster and their windows no glass. When darkness came down the better houses might be lighted with homemade tallow candles, but poorer people had to be content with a bit of loosely woven cloth burning in a cup of grease. Some used sticks of pitch-pine, lighted at the hearth fire. There were no stoves and no grates. The pio- neer built huge cavernous fireplaces, which occu- pied nearly half of one side of the room. A long iron rod, called a crane, was hinged to the side wall of the fireplace in such a way that it could be turned outward over the coals or back against the wall. The crane was hooked at the end, and on this the cook hung pots or used it for roasting meats. In the winter, huge logs were kept burning in the far end of this fireplace, while smaller logs and light sticks were at hand, ready to be thrown on for a blaze or to secure redhot coals for baking purposes. The bake-kettle 48 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE was a sort of deep skillet on tiny pegs or feet, with a lid like an inverted saucer. One could pop corn in it, or roast meat or bake bread. Apples were roasted by hanging them on a string above the redhot coals. As the apples got hot they would spin around and around, the skin would pop, and delicious juice sizzle and boil out of them. The fine odor would fill the house. Sometimes children roasted eggs, or toasted corn in the shuck, over the red coals. Corn was made into many forms of food, such as hominy, mush, johnny-cake, egg pone, hoe-cake, and batter-bread. Corn w^as a great blessing to the early settlers. Johnny-cake was first named journey-cake, from the fact that it was so much used by the pioneers when they went on journeys or hunts. The pioneer's dress was very picturesque. It consisted of a loose hunting shirt, made of homespun cloth or deerskin. This garment reached halfway to the knees, and was wide enough across the breast to form a pouch into which he could put many and divers things — a gun rag, some journey-cake, cooked meat, or anything he might need on a long tramp. His cap was oftenest a coonskin, wdth the head left on for an ornament. The tail was left on too, and hung down behind over the man's neck. His legs were covered with leggings of deerskin, which the young- er men ornamented with fringe. Every man wore a l)elt around his waist, over his hunting shirt. In this belt hung a dirk, a bullet-bag, a powder-horn, and a knife or tomahawk. The dress of the women was not so picturesque. A PIONEER IN FULL DRESS 50 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE But it followed as many fashions in cut and color as there were individual tastes, or as they could find dyestuffs in the wilderness. Women generally wore a homespun linsey-woolsey petticoat, and over this a short dress of some other material. If linen was wanted, ''the flax was sown and weeded, pulled and retted, broken and swingled." This process took nearly a year before the flax was ready for spinning for weaving, next for bleaching on the grass, and then for making up. When men wanted woolen goods, sheep were sheared and the wool was dyed and spun and woven into cloth at home. The pioneer's wife was a busy woman. She knew how to make cloth from nettle leaves, sugar from maple-tree sap, tea from sassafras roots, thread from wood fibre, soap from wood ashes. She and her children learned to make horse-collars, shoes, and mats. They made rope out of corn shucks, shoes and moccasins out of deer hides. If the pioneer woman led a busy and useful life, so did her husband. He entered the wilderness almost entirely without tools. He had to build his house without nails; to make brooms without broom- corn; to shape beehives and the baby's cradle out of hollow trees ; to carve the family furniture with an ax, an auger, and an adze. The man was the hunter for the family. He trapped fur-bearing animals and sold the pelts by exchanging them for other things. There was no coin in the country. Men traded hides and meat and salt for goods. Enough linsey-woolsey for a dress was worth two beaver and two mink skins. A HOW THE PIONEER LIVED AND LOOKED 51 dressed buckskin equaled in value two wildcat, two fox, four coon, or eight mink skins. Any of these things could be traded for sugar, flour, tobacco, dry goods, etc. By way of comparing those days with ours, the price paid for some skins in the spring of 19 1 3 is here quoted in the following telegram from Seattle to a New York paper in September, 191 3: ''Twenty-five hundred dollars for an undressed black fox skin was the record price paid here last week." The children of the early settlers of Louisville soon got to be as helpful as grown folks. It was their duty to go into the woods with the men and find the best back-logs for the big fireplaces, and to bring in great armfuls of light wood. A fire once lighted on the family hearth was never allowed to go out, for the pioneer had no matches. The writer of these sketches knows of a cabin in the woods of North Carolina where the fire on the hearthstone has been burning for more than sixty years. She has heard old people say that if by any chance, in those early days, a fire in a country home did go out, a little darky was put on horseback and sent to the near- est neighbor to "borrow a chunk of .fire." When he got it he dashed back home as fast as his horse could go, before the coal died out. Out of this custom came the expression sometimes used to a hurried visitor, "Have you just come for a chunk of fire?" Kentucky was early noted for its great salt licks. In pioneer days it used to export salt. In order to get a bushel of salt it was necessary to boil down about eight hundred gallons of salty water. "Salt licks" 52 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE were places where this salty water oozed up out of the earth. Where the sun evaporated the water the salt formed a white powder on the surface of the earth. The name "lick" came from the fact that wild animals would travel in herds for many miles to lick up the salt they needed. Long before white men came to Kentucky there were broad trails trodden and beaten down hard by buffalo, elk, and deer on their way to the licks. Making salt was a thing involving much risk. The Indians well knew that the settlers must have salt, and they were nearly always prowling about among the trees to kill the white salt-makers. The white men used to go in large companies to the licks, where they formed a camp and set a watch as a lookout against the Indians while the water was being boiled down. This is what they were doing when Daniel Boone was captured and carried off by a war party, from which he afterward escaped. The pioneer boy soon became very quick-witted as to things in Nature. He knew in which direction he was traveling by the bark on the trees. It was denser and rougher on the north side of the tree, and moss grew thicker on that side. He could tell the hour of the day by looking at his own shadow. He guessed whether the winter was going to be a cold one or a mild one by the depth of the fur on the ani- mals, by the feathers on the wild goose, or by the thickness of the shuck on the corn. In stormy weather his woodcraft taught him to hunt for deer in sheltered places, and he did not waste time in searching for them where they w^ere not likely to be HOW THE PIONEER LIVED AND LOOKED 53 found. In rainy weather he looked for them in high lands in the woods. The pioneer boy learned to judge the course of the breeze by putting his finger in his mouth until it became quite warm, then holding it high above his head. The side of his finger which soonest grew cool showed him which way the air was moving. BUFFALOES Hunters came to know certain gangs or herds of deer in their ranges. The cunning of the old buck and the cunning of the hunter were often pitted against each other. A child soon learned the call of certain birds for their mates, and could by mocking them lure the birds within gunshot. All children could hoot like an owl, or gobble like a turkey, or honk like a wild goose. The acts and signals now being learned by Boy Scouts were a regular part of the pioneer boy's training. CHAPTER IX LOUISVILLE UNDER VIRGINIA RULERS It was out of such conditions, and by such mighty wrestlers at close grip with their environment, that Louisville came into existence. Whatever were the terrors of the road or the defects of the immature town, people came pouring into it, nothing daunted. In the spring of 1780 no less than three hundred family boats came to the Falls, bringing in them over seven hundred people. They came from the east and the southeast. None came from the west. The western limit of United States territory at that time was the Mississippi River. Beyond that were regions of unbroken forest or illimitable prairie, seeming to our ancestors farther away than now seem to us the heart of Alaska or the snows of Siberia. Of the inhabitants of the United States in 1790, about one seventh were negro slaves. They were in every State except Massachusetts. Into Louis- ville they came trooping with their owners, and great comfort their owners found in them. Cheerfully and loyally they bared their backs to the burden, shoulder to shoulder with the white men, and their sunny, mirth-loving natures gave a touch of gayety to the blackest hours. They were joyous, courageous, and faithful. They would sell their lives for their masters in battle, or would stay patiently at home with the (54) LOUISVILLE UNDER VIRGINIA RULERS 55 women and children, unhesitatingly risking their own lives for them against the attacks of the redskins. No one ever heard of a breach of trust on the part of a negro slave of the olden time, if his master reposed trust in him. When Virginia established the town by law, some of the people here were still living on Corn Island. Others were housed in the fort at the foot of Twelfth Street. Still others were building homes wherever they had lots, but always within sound of the fort guns, for people were really more exposed on the mainland than they had been on the island. Just beyond Louisville things were still very dangerous. Once those living in the fort at Shelbyville became alarmed and resolved to come to Louisville for protection. On the way they were surprised by Indians. There was a fight; some were killed and scalped, and only a few reached the town in safety. The first winter in Louisville (1779-80) was a terrible one for the poor settlers. It was so cold that the river froze solid from shore to shore, and ice cakes were heaped up in it here and there as high as the tops of the cabins. Fowls and birds froze on their perches. Wolves and panthers forsook the forests and trooped through the town after nightfall, howling with hunger. Bears trotted up and down the river's edge, seeking food. Mothers were afraid to let their children out of their sight. The log cabins had not been built for such cold weather, and the people had all they could do to keep from freezing to death. No one slept well. Collins says of this time: ''All through the hours of the night the slumbers of 56 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILIvE the suffering pioneers were disturbed by the roaring and struggHng of herds of distressed buffaloes and other wild animals who fought and bellowed and strove to reach positions of shelter from the winds and of warmth against the chimneys of the rude log cabins." But, for all that, as soon as the snows began to melt, the river brought fresh boatloads of people and the Wilderness Road brought new pack-horses laden with goods for the little town by the Falls. The men named by the Virginia Legislature to have control over Louisville seem to have been neither very wise nor very courageous. They made some good resolutions, but they did not have the backbone to see that they were carried out. For example, they resolved that each lot-owner on Main Street should be required to donate thirty feet off the front of his lot, so as to make Main Street one hundred and twenty feet wide. It is now ninety feet wide.- Broadway is one hundred and twenty feet wide. How much better it would be if Main Street were as wide as Broadway is. It would have meant much to the commerce of the town at a time when all commercial transactions were centered on Main Street and the whole street was full of drays and carts and wagons and barrels and hogsheads and trucks and horses and men — as this writer has often seen it in the busy season of steamboat days. The next thing which the Virginia trustees resolved was that a canal should be cut around the Falls. But it was 1830 before any canal was ready. Even then it was not constructed by those Virginia trustees. They resolved, too, that one half of Doctor Connolly's LOUISVILLE UNDER VIRGINIA RULERS 57 forfeited land should be laid off into lots and sold at public auction in April, 1780. But before April the Indians came, murdering and stealing and caus- ing so much terror that no one thought of going to an auction. They resolved to have a grist-mill put up, so as to use the water-power wasting at the Falls: but it was thirty years before any mill was erected, and then it was built by the private capital of the Tarascon brothers, who lost heavily by it. The lack of wisdom and the greed of the Vir- ginia trustees may be seen to this day in the short block between Jefferson and Green streets and the long block between Green and Walnut. The early survey provided that ''a slip of land begin- ning 180 feet from the south side of Green Street, from First to Twelfth," should be reserved from sale and kept for a public promenade and park, its original forest to be left standing as far as possible and its grounds to be kept in order by the town. General Clark no doubt foresaw the need for these breathing-places, for his map of the town shows all the ground between Main Street and the river from First to Twelfth streets marked "public"; it also shows two whole squares, where the courthouse is now standing, marked ''public." But the trustees sold this reserved area. It is told that they sold it to pay their whisky bill at the tavern. This is probably not true, but that the tradition exists is significant. Certainly they were much blamed for selling it and an effort was made to set the sale aside, but nothing ever came of it. When we to-day observe the number of people 58 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE who now use and enjoy Lincoln Park, the tiny park by the side of the post-office, we may reaHze what such a sHp of land through the heart of the overcrowded city would mean to the masses of peo- ple, who can but rarely get out to the remote parks. When the Virginia trustees held their second meeting, on June 4, 1783, they found they had four vacant seats to fill in their board and a wonderful condition of affairs to untangle. This is how it came about: In 1783 John Campbell, now a colonel in the American army, escaped from his Canadian prison and came to Louisville to see about the lands that he and Doctor Connolly had held in partnership. He found a good-sized town built up on them; so he brought a suit at law to recover his property. His suit demanded a great deal of land that had never been his. He brought in old requisitions which he claimed he had against Connolly, and demanded that the trustees give him the money for them. The trustees resisted him, but Virginia set them aside and appointed commissioners in their stead for this suit. Campbell seems to have had some sort of power over the Virginia Legislature, for they unjustly passed act after act in his favor, and the laws were so interpreted that orders were given to sell the town lots on which men's homes were built and pay Camp- bell's claims, with interest. Nearly the whole of the town was sold to. pay the money Campbell claimed and the interest on the debt! After he had been paid, in money and town lots, more than four hundred and fifty English pounds, the Virginia Legislature passed another act which ordered the Virginia LOUISVILLE UNDER VIRGINIA RULERS 59 commissioners to sell any unsold lots in Louisville and with the money pay Campbell a debt due him from Alexander McKee — a debt which had no relation whatever to any lands in Louisville. The end of the matter was the sale of the whole one thousand acres of land originally escheated and dedicated to Louisville, except the courthouse square and the old graveyard on Jefferson Street, the first public grave- yard in Louisville. This outrage and the consequent loss of property greatly crippled the little town, and, it would seem, should have forever discouraged its inhabitants. But the early Kentuckians were a people quick to think, brave to act, and full of enterprise. Close contact with Nature had prepared them for emer- gencies and had taught them wisdom, stripping away all trifles. With splendid resolve they rose above their officials, and things soon began to right them- selves. The town recovered from this setback much sooner than could one less favorably located. The big fo/ests almost within its borders provided wood for plows, for tools, ax-handles, wagons, furniture, houses, and for river craft of all kinds. The demand for these things was strong from the very first. The pioneer himself needed every sort of thing, and stations up and down the rivers gladly took all the surplus. In this way commerce began. CHAPTER X STEAMBOAT DAYS ON THE OHIO One of Louisville's earliest industries was boat building. Before the coming of steamboats, many keel-boats, barges, and flatboats were needed for passengers and for freight. The Ohio was the gate- way for the Northern fur trader. Louisville-built boats took downstream to New Orleans furs for the London market, flour for the West Indies, and lead, salt, cordage, and roots and herbs to stations along the lower Mississippi. They returned to Shippingport from New Orleans laden with sugar, coffee, and other merchandise. River traffic was slow traffic. A boat leaving New Orleans on, let us say, the first of March, rarely reached the Falls earlier than July; sometimes not until October. At present a barge goes to New Orleans in eight days and returns in sixteen. A fast passen- ger steamboat of the present time takes six days to go to New Orleans and eight to return. The way boats developed is very interesting. First came the Indian's canoe, made of birch bark, light, swift, easily carried overland from water to water. Next came the Frenchman's pirogue, a big tree chopped down and clumsily hollowed out and then burned to shape. It was slow-moving, but strong for carrying cargoes. Last, before steamboats, came the flatboat, called the ''Kentucky ark," built (60) STEAMBOAT DAYS ON THE OHIO 61 to carry the pioneer himself, his family, their house- hold goods, and his livestock. This "Kentucky ark" could float with the current from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in seventy-five days. Men go around the world in less time now. THE DIZZY WHARF AND TYPES OF BOATS The river men of that period had happy, careless times as they floated down the stream in the southern sunshine; but they had their troubles, too. The rivers were infested with a lot of restless, adventurous fellows who owned their own boats and who lived 62 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE by trickery and thievery — regular river pirates. They would follow a boatload of furs for miles, hallooing to the hands, swapping jokes with them or furnishing them with whisky. Sometimes the pirates would persuade the river men to tie up all the boats and have a good time on shore. While they were occupied in playing cards or in drinking, the boat- wreckers would have their ''pals" sneak off to the fur-laden boats to bore holes in their bottoms or to set them on fire. When the river men discovered their misfortune the wreckers would offer ready help in rescuing the goods. But instead of helping they would slip away with most of the goods and hide them until the men were off, when they could sell them without being found out. After steamboats came into use this low business was broken up. The first steamboat to come to Louisville was Robert Fulton's Orleans. As there were then no telegrams nor daily newspapers, nor daily mail to Louisville, few persons knew that there was such a thing in all the world as a boat run by steam. Ful- ton's were the first in the world. In fact almost nothing was known about steam. But late one fine October night, in 1811, after everybody had been in bed for hours, there fell upon the silence a shrill, unearthly scream. Such a sound had never before been heard in the wilderness. It seemed to come from the river. Everybody sprang out of bed and rushed to the river bank. What they saw was more fearsome than what they had heard; for there, coming to- ward the town, was a huge monster (or, you may STEAMBOAT DAYS ON THE OHIO 63 be sure, they thought it huge and a monster) full of yellow eyes, snorting down stream and rounding in to shore. The negroes thought the Judgment Day had come and fell on their knees in prayer. Others thought a comet had fallen into the water and was hissing and moving in the stream. It was a big sensation for everybody. FULTON'S STEAMBOAT The Orleans could not go over the Falls, nor could she be carried around them. So she was compelled to give up her intended trip to New Orleans until high water could float her over. She plied for weeks between Louisville and Cincinnati, and was a never- failing curiosity to every soul along the banks of the Ohio. It was December before a rise in the river allowed her to proceed on her southern trip. No steamboat that ever sailed the Western waters had such an experience as did the Orleans after she left Louisville for the Mississippi River. If she had 64 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE frightened the townspeople by the Falls, she certainly had reason to know the terror of abject fright herself. At two o'clock in the morning of December i6, 1811, while the Orleans was in the vicinity of Fulton County, Kentucky, there came a great earthquake. The winter air was hot and sullen; the earth rocked to and fro; vast chasms opened on the shores, throwing out columns of sand and water with a hissing sound.. Every one crowded on deck in solemn silence and awe. As they looked they saw the shores of the river tremble. Great sections of bank, forest-clad, quivered a moment, then fell into the boiling waters. The earth quaked, opened, and within a tract of solid land there came into being a lake, twenty miles long, ten miles broad, in some places very shallow, in others from iifty to seventy feet deep — Reelfoot Lake, partly in Fulton County, Kentucky, and partly in the two neighboring counties in Tennessee. The writer of this book has often heard old people tell of this 1 811 earthquake as it occurred in Louis- ville. Shock followed shock; a dense black cloud overshadowed the city, through which no beam of sun penetrated to cheer the heart. The rumblings were like a constant discharge of artillery. They said that the stars seemed to fall out of the sky; that they saw the earth crack; that one gentleman, walking on Grayson Street with his little son, whose hand he held, heard the well-known rumble and jerked the little lad to his shoulder and ran with him just in time to save the boy's legs from a rift in the earth, which quaked, opened, and then closed again. Shocks continued every day from the sixteenth until STEAMBOAT DAYS ON THE OHIO 65 the twenty-first day of December; then, at intervals, until February of 1812. The Orleans was a surprise to Louisville men. But they were quick to realize the possibilities of river traffic by means of steamboats, and they had at hand the very materials for making such boats. In a short while steamboat building became a leading activity around the Falls cities. The old coves for flatboats and keels, near Shippingport and Louisville, were quickly turned into yards for boat-building. In 181 8 Louisville had made four of the fourteen steamboats built around the Falls. In 18 19 she built twelve of the twenty-three. Of the first forty-one steamboats on Western waters, seven were built around Louis- ville and twenty-four were owned by Kentuckians. By 1848 there, were twelve hundred steamboats on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Fulton's patent rights on his steamboats included the exclusive right to navigate the Western rivers. This did not please the people of the West nor of Louisville. So a Louisville man. Captain H. M. Shreve, put the matter to a test in the courts, and secured such a defining of the laws that not only Louisville-built, but all other steamboats, had liberty to go and come at will on Western rivers. At a dinner given to Captain Shreve in 181 7, in honor of his having made the ''very quick voyage" from Louisville to New Orleans and back in ''the brief period of forty-five days," he uttered the prophecy that the time might come when this voyage would be made in ten or twelve days. He was laughed at as an enthusiast, though he was 66 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE complimented on ''the celerity and safety" of the trip. Steamboat building, steamboat furnishing and cordage, its manning, and loading and unloading made employment for quite an army of people in Louisville until 1836. When the railroads came, much of the energy and capital of the city, so long devoted to river commerce, was turned in other directions. Besides the shipyards there were large foundries and machine shops, where boat engines were made; and boiler works, and plants devoted to woodwork for interior finishing. Many of the skilled workmen were experts in their lines. The steamers built then were the finest that have ever been operated on Western waters. At one time (in 1870) there was a great race on the Mississippi River, from New Orleans to St. Louis, between two of the finest and fastest passenger boats that ran on Western waters — the steamers Natchez and Robert E. Lee. Thousands of dollars were wagered on the result. The contest grew so close that, on one of the boats, after the fuel began to give out, a large consignment of fat hams and shoulders was put into the furnace. The race was won by the Robert E. Lee, the trip being made in a little less than four days. This boat was built in New Albany, just across the river from Louisville. CHAPTER XI I.OUISVILLE A KENTUCKY TOWN UNDER KENTUCKY TRUSTEES As there were no fast mails in the early clays, it was the spring of 1783 before the people heard that Cornwallis had surrendered his army to General Washington, and that the last hope the English had held of subduing America and making the colonies return to British rule was taken from them. Word came to Kentucky that the colonists were to become a nation among nations, free and equal. Messengers on horseback brought the news, and at their heels came tidings of the treaty of 1783. Joy knew no bounds in the length and breadth of Kentucky, for with all her causes to be dissatisfied with Virginia's treatment, the Kentuckians were loyal to the heart's core. Many temptations had been offered them to sever connection with the other Americans and help build up a foreign government in the center of the new land. The British offered both General Clark and Colonel Floyd great sums of money and titles of nobihty if they would induce the Kentuckians to betray this country and ally Kentucky with England. Both Spain and England knew what such a barrier in the heart of the New World would mean to America's aims and growth. Kentucky held the key to the situation: but she held it loyally. All the time that the thirteen original colonies on the Atlantic coast were fighting against (67) 68 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE England for personal and political liberty, the pioneers of Kentucky, shut in from that combat by a wall of mountains, were doing their full share toward the making of a nation — doing it by standing fast and true, as well as by conquering and retaining a region to the west of the Alleghanies far larger than all the thirteen States put together. The very interesting and instructive story of the separation of Kentucky from Virginia, and the moving causes which led up to it, form a great chapter in Ken- tucky history. But it belongs to Louisville's story only in that when it was accomplished Louisville was controlled by a Kentucky Legislature instead of by the Legislature of Virginia. It was in February, 1791, that the Congress of the United States passed a law to admit Kentucky as one of the States of the Union. Kentucky, though the first State to be ready in population and strength, the first to apply for ad- mission to the Union, and the first recommended to Congress for admission by President Washington, was the second State admitted, Vermont being the first. The act took effect June i, 1792. From that date Louisville became a Kentucky city, free from Virginia rule. Either by some oversight or some lack of wisdom it came about that after Louisville came to be under a Kentucky Legislature the old \'irginia trustees were continued in office for five years, doing prac- tically nothing for the town. Finally the Legislature passed an act by which the men of Louisville had the right to vote for trustees from among their own citizens: men who lived in the town, owned LOUISVILLE UNDER KENTUCKY TRUSTEEvS 69 property in it, and were interested in its develop- ment. The Legislature also authorized a tax for city improvements. It seemed that at last intelligent attention was to be given to the little settlement at the Falls, which had so bravely weathered storms of neglect, of un- favorable legislation, and of misgovernment. From this time affairs in Louisville moved on, surely if slowly. Efforts were made toward cleaning up dirty and unwholesome places ; mud-holes were filled ; board walks were laid ; cross-streets were opened ; houses which had been built on the roads were moved back to line ; weeds which had grown so tall that fowls roosted in them were chopped down or rooted out. The place began to have the appear- ance of an orderly and well-appointed town instead of an overgrown frontier station. One of the first recorded acts of the new trustees was the improvement of ''Main street, from Major Harrison's to William Johnston's." This meant Main Street from Sixth to Third. It was 1812 before streets were regularly named. At that date Chestnut Street, being the southernmost limit of the town, was called South Street. Where Broadway now runs was Dun- kirk Road. Its earliest name as a street was Prather Street. Walnut Street got its name from a large grove of walnut trees which grew in the family burial- ground of Thomas Prather, on Walnut Street near Fourth. Magazine Street derived its name from a powder magazine which occupied part of the block between Eighth and Ninth streets on Chestnut, the lot running back to what is now Magazine Street. 70 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE This lot now has on it the administration building of the Board of Education. St. Catherine Street had for its early name Churchill Street. Colonel S. B. Churchill owned at that time a large tract of land where he had his "town residence." St. Catherine was cut right through the middle of his grounds. Just when the trustees began to pave the streets and curb them is not recorded, but it was probably about 1811. Main Street was the first to be put in order. Others were improved as the number of their residents increased. No attempt was made to drain the ponds until the townspeople got a good scare when so many died during the epidemic of 1822. After that there was a great cleaning up, and a Board of Health was appointed. There had been a scourge of smallpox in 181 7, and Doctor McMurtrie, in his History of Louisville, had predicted that there would soon be some great illness because of the ponds, dirt, and general want of sanitation. During the smallpox scare a large hemp factory was hastily fitted up for a hospital, so that the diseased people would be isolated from the well ones. It was at this date that Cuthbert Bullitt gave three acres of land and Thomas Prather five acres, for a public hospital. This was the forerunner of the present splendid hospital on Chestnut Street. It is a matter for great regret that the whole eight acres was not reserved for hospital purposes. While the 1822 epidemic was still raging, the Ken- tucky trustees, now thoroughly frightened, began to realize that the ponds were really only disease-breeders and must be made away with. Such a cleaning up LOUISVILLE UNDER KENTUCKY TRUSTEES 71 and sanitation as was at once begun has never been needed since. From then until now the city of Louis- ville, long known as ''the graveyard of the West," has been notably healthful, full of sunshine and air, and thoroughly drained. The first Sunday law of the city was enacted under authority of the Kentucky trustees. It declared that all labor and traffic must cease on the Sabbath day. Boats might put off freight and go on their way; but stores, factories, music-halls, and all such places must clor? up on Sunday. The convention which passed this good Puritanic law passed also an act "to pre- serve the breed of horses." They were Kentuckians, after all. There were other transactions of the Ken- tucky trustees which are of interest. A few of these are listed in another chapter of this book, under the heading "Some Earliest Things in Louisville." The last act of the Kentucky trustees will bring a smile to our lips. At the very end of their term of office, on the 15th day of February, 1828, they made a law offering one cent each for the scalp of every rat with its ears on, killed within the town limits. Big Norway rats had come into the United States in for- eign vessels about the year 1775. New Orleans boats brought them into Louisville in such numbers as to threaten much valuable property. Besides this, the physicians of the town thought the Norway rats were disease-carriers and should be exterminated. One man, owner of a tavern on the river at Fourth Street, poisoned, trapped, or otherwise killed one hundred and sixty rats in one night. He got one dollar and sixty cents for them the next day from the city 72 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLR authorities. The Norway rats completely and forever drove away the little blue rats which were Louis- ville's first rat inhabitants. Here follow the names of Louisville's first Ken- tucky trustees; they were elected in May, 1797, and held their first session June 5th of that year: Archibald Armstrong, Evan Williams, Gabriel J. Johnston, Reuben Eastin, John Eastin, Henry Duncan, Richard Prather, Worden Pope, Clerk. Louisville should honor her Kentucky trustees.. They served her from the year 1795 until the city got its first charter, in 1828. They gave of their time and energy to the public welfare, w^ithout other reward than the joy of seeing the town progress to power and wealth; and they wrought under conditions which might well have disheartened men less courageous and loyal. When they undertook the city's affairs they found nothing organized. What need there was for organization may be inferred from reading some of the earliest laws the trustees passed. They declared that hog-pens, dead animals, stable manure, kitchen- wash, and shavings must be removed from the streets. They made Evan Williams desist from running the slop from his distillery into the public streets. They arranged for the erection of a public market-house in the center of ''the first street south of Main." Thus Market Street got its name, and for many years its main employment. The trustees now began in earnest to drain the ponds. A good many were turned into wells. One, however, could not be gotten rid of in LOUISVILLE UNDER KENTUCKY TRUSTEES 73 that way. It extended from Fifth to Fifteenth streets, following the line of the present alley between Jefferson and Market, and it was deep enough for horses to swim in. This was later drained by a ditch down Twelfth Street to the river. Pages could be written of the improvements that were made under the Kentucky trustees. By 1828 the town had arrived at an importance of its own, and was adorned with buildings that would have graced New York or Philadelphia. Population had increased to 7,063— nearly double what it was in 1 82 1 — and a committee was appointed looking to- ward a ''larger Louisville" by asking the coopera- tion of Portland and Shippingport in the passage of an act by the Legislature to incorporate Louisville. Under the Kentucky trustees the area of the town was widened from its original limits. A new survey put the limits thus: ''Beginning at the stone bridge over Bear Grass Creek, near Geiger's mills, thence on a straight line to the upper corner of Jacob Geiger's land on the Ohio river, and thence by a straight line down the Ohio, so as to include Corn Island and the quarry adjacent thereto, and thence to the upper boundary of Shippingport to the back line thereof," etc. It is not very intelligible to us now. When at last the Kentucky trustees turned the town over to its new form of government, with a mayor and a city council, it had a courthouse, jail, schools, churches, hospital, foundries, post-office, engine house, market houses, theater, and other buildings. The straggling log homes were fast disappearing and had been largely replaced by brick or stone houses, two 74 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE Stories high and with attractive flower-beds and shrub- bery. A new style of architecture had come, dis- placing the old. One of its early types yet remains on Sixth Street near Walnut. It was long known as the "Grayson house." In its day it was considered a palace, and it was perfectly kept. The Graysons were a family of the highest social distinction. When Mrs. Grayson sold a part of her large apple orchard to the city, the street built through it was named in her honor — Grayson Street. Four years after the trustees took office, Congress made Louisville a port of entry and established a col- lector of customs here. Such were our forefathers. Some of them were educated gentlemen from France, England, Ireland, and Germany. Some came to these Western wilds from pure love of travel; some were exiles from their own country; some, like Colonel Clark, were true patriots who offered as a sacrifice their quiet homes in more prosperous regions to help maintain liberty in the land; some were ''simple, rude, perhaps un- couth, men and women, who followed the trail of the buffalo until civilization overtook them. After their noiseless moccasins came the heavy tramp of busy thousands," and the song of wild birds was succeeded by the hoof-beats of mules and horses and the per- petual roar of commercial industry. The making of Louisville has not been the work of a single people, nor of a people of a single creed or race. Into its melting-pot there came men and women of many motives and many beliefs, diverse races with diverse ideals and manners. How they have fused, THE GRAYSON HOME 76 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE here as elsewhere, is one of the marvels of the American Republic. The progress of Louisville has been, in the main, the progress of a single high ideal. He who would understand the spirit of to-day must reach a clear idea of the conditions under which the pioneers lived and wrought. They dug deep in the heavy soil, toiled and moiled with spade and trowel and laid solid foundation-stoneS^ — rough and inartistic, perhaps, and hew^n with rude tools. But they set them square and level, and on them it behooves us to build fearlessly a superstructure that will reach far toward the stars. Under the gnarled brown hands of the pioneers of Louisville, order and beauty grew out of confusion. It is ours to see to it -that spiritual harmony be wrought out of the discord of our composite and tumultuous population. It is a man's task! A STYLISH PIONEER HOME CHAPTER XII SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE We have now taken a bird's-eye view of the be- ginnings of Louisville, We have told how the land was explored, surveyed, inhabited, and then estab- lished as a town by law. We have traced the homely little village at the Falls until it was ready to be turned over by the town trustees to a form of government which called for a mayor and a city council. While Louisville is adjusting herself to her new mode of political life, let us go back and note some of the earliest things in the pioneer settlement. The earliest homes were built of logs. Sometimes these were round logs, just as they were chopped from the woods; oftener they were logs that were rudely squared on one side and fitted into each other at the ends. Roofs were not shingled or tinned or tiled, as we have them now. They were made of wide boards and pinned on to the house with wooden pins. John Campbell's tobacco warehouse had on it the first shingle roof in the town. Mr. F. A. Kaye built the first brick house in Louisville, in 1789. No one here had ever seen bricks put into a house before, and half the town took a day off and watched the masons as they laid the bricks in the wall. It was on Market Street, near Fifth. When this old house was torn down many of its bricks were carried away by relic-hunters as souvenirs. (77) 78 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE There was a large rock quarry in the river, above Corn Island. From this the earliest rock house was built, in 1 79 1. It was an attractive one-story square building, with a turret and an observatory, and was on the corner of Main and Eighth streets. The owner called it a fort. He was very proud of his home. A wealthy Mississippi planter, Ben Smith, who made Kentucky his summer home, built the first stone mansion. It is still standing, on Jefferson Street be- tween Brook and First, and is now used by the Union Gospel Mission. One may yet note the handsome spiral stairway, the massive hardwood doors, the fine hardware, and the big rooms. Where Southern beaux and belles used to dance and flirt, one now nightly hears the tender appeal of holy men and women for better and purer lives. John Gwathmey, the architect of this house, was also architect of the courthouse. The earliest really beautiful residence in Louisville was built by our first postmaster, Michael Lacassaque. Its beauty was increased by a lovely garden full of rare plants and flowers, and by window-boxes with their hanging drapery of ferns and climbing plants. These and other early well-kept homes created for Louisville an ideal which, never retreating, finds ex- pression in the present age in countless beautiful and elegant homes such as we have pictured here. Our city well deserves the title bestowed upon it by appre- ciative guests — "the City of Homes." Its fame for the elegance of its residences and the hospitality of its citizens is nation-wide. SOME PRESENT-DAY LOUISVILLE HOMES 80 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE The first white child born on Corn Island was Isaac Kimbly, whose father and mother came over with General Clark and the families when the island was settled. He was born early in 1779. The first Louisville-born child to live and grow to manhood was Thomas Joyes, born December 9, 1787. His de- scendants still live among us, and are prominent in Louisville's social and political life. We have told that corn was already found on the island and was the first crop of our ancestors. A patch of wheat was sown near the stockade in the ravine when the settlers came to the mainland. Fear of Indian raids kept people from doing much farming, and this wheat was carefully watched and tended. When the crop was ready it was cut down with knives and husked by rubbing the grains between the hands. The grains were ground in a hand mill and sifted through a gauze neckerchief that some one owned. Then it was made up into bread, shortened with rac- coon fat. It was baked over red coals, and everybody in the station was invited to feast off it. We may be sure they were glad to get wheaten bread, even if it was shortened with ''coon fat." Daniel Brodhead was the man who opened the first store in Louisville. In 1783 he went on horseback to Philadelphia, about eight hundred miles distant, and bought a stock of such goods as would be needed in a frontier town. He had them "wagoned" across the mountains and then floated down the river in a flat- boat. After this he went to New Orleans, which was then a Spanish possession, and bought for the men and women of Louisville their first finery — calico and SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 81 jewelry and combs for the belles and wool hats, ban- danna handkerchiefs, and clothing for the men. Be- fore this store was opened, the citizens had for wear only such things as they themselves could manufacture in the settlement — linsey-woolsey for dresses, coonskin caps and deerskin or bearskin gar- ments for the men. After the store was s.et up, Louisville was famed all over the lower valley as the only hamlet that had a store. By 1788 there were a goodly number of houses and people here, and Mr. Brodhead got rich off his venture. The first silver money used in Louisville to any extent came in exchange for goods sent in keel-boats to the cities along the Mississippi River. Louisville and Kentucky had a good trade in pelts, or skins of deer, bears, beavers, otters, wolves, and other wild animals. Until silver money came into use, goods and products were bought and sold entirely by exchange or barter. Shut up as the Kentuckians were at first from the outside world, they learned to grow or to make everything they had use for. Food was to be had for the taking, so plentiful were game and fish. Corn grew almost of itself in the virgin soil; hemp, nettles, and flax furnished linen and clothing; sugar burst out of maple trees; and Kentucky was the great salt center of the South. The few things that were needed from beyond their own bounds the Ken- tuckians easily secured by exchange. But after a while a need for small coin began to be felt, and the townspeople met it by simply cutting the Spanish silver dollars that came up from the South into halves, quarters, and eighths. "Two bits" made 82 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE a quarter. This cut coin was used in Kentucky long after the government mints began to supply small currency. Even to-day there are places in Kentucky where a quarter is spoken of as "two bits." Up to 1784 Louisville's chief trade with the out- side world was in furs and horses. The goods were sent either to Alexandria, in Virginia, or to Philadel- phia. In either case they were taken on pack-horses over the Wilderness Road and across the mountains. At the end of the journey the horses were generally sold, as well as the goods. No road was safe from Indians, so the frontiersmen would agree to meet at Crab Orchard, and would set out from there in com- panies. Sometimes there would be a hundred pack- horses laden with pelts. The men who conducted these caravans were armed with guns and carried powder and bullet pouches. At that time it was safer and easier for a Kentucky planter to ship his products to Philadelphia by way of New Orleans than by way of Pittsburgh. It was in 1795 that the earliest tax was imposed for public purposes. It was limited to $116.66. Prior to that, if the town trustees needed money for town improvements it had to come from their own pockets or from personal gifts. The quick growth of the town and its large ship- ping interests soon called for rope and bagging. In 1820, Patrick McFarland and Benjamin Dunn, brothers-in-law, operated the first ''rope-walk." They bought a tract of land running from Market to Walnut streets and from Sixth to Twelfth. On SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 83 part of this they built a long, narrow wooden house, "with its port-holes all a-row," and made rope and bagging in it for many years. Mr. McFarland's daughter married Samuel Casseday, and to this couple was born the second historian of Louisville, Ben Casseday. Doctor McMurtrie was Louisville's first historian. Another historian of Kentucky was an offspring from that wedding — Robert McNutt McElroy, author of ''Kentucky in the Nation's History." He is a grandson of Mr. Casseday. Louisville did not have a policeman before 1810, and then they were not called policemen, but "watch- men." Every hour of the night these watchmen cried what hour it was. They would call, "Two o'clock, and all's well!" or whatever hour it might be. If there was great news, they would call that. For example, when the British surrendered at York- town to General Washington, fast riders hurried to all the towns and stations, shouting the glad tidings. Philadelphia, like Louisville, had a night watchman, and he was the first man to hear the news as it came to that town, which was then the capital. Off he rushed through the sleeping streets, calling, "Past two o'clock and Cornwallis has surrendered! Corn- wallis has surrendered!" Out from their beds and forth from their doors sprang every inhabitant, and there was no more sleep that night. The doorkeeper of Congress died of joy. The earliest schools in Louisville were neither pub- lic nor free, although as early as February, 1798, while Louisville was yet a Virginia possession, Thomas Jefferson induced the Virginia Legislature to make 84 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE extensive grants of lands to Kentucky County for educational purposes. The share of these received by Louisville was six thousand acres. Trustees were ap- pointed to attend to the matter of the school, which was named Jefferson Seminary after Thomas Jeffer- son. It was a grand property, but the trustees did nothing but disagree among themselves, and it was really 1813 before they bought land from Colonel Richard C. Anderson, on Eighth Street between Green and Walnut, and built a brick schoolhouse on it. The house was sixty feet long and twenty feet wide, one and a half stories high, and had two big rooms on the ground floor and four rooms in the half-story. This school was opened in 1816 with Mann Butler as prin- cipal, at a salary of five hundred dollars a year. Then, although it was a State school and public, it was not free, for a fee of twenty dollars for six months' tuition was charged. This seminary struggled on poorly enough until it became the Louisville College, and finally became the basis for the present Male High School. The makers of Louisville did not, however, wait for free schools for their children, nor for public moneys to establish them. Very early in the town's life there were excellent private schools all through the city, taught mostly by French and Irish gentle- men of learning who were exiled from their own countries and were glad to find such pleasant occu- pation as teaching in the new land. The earliest of these private schools was opened at Market and Twelfth streets, in 1783. It was taught by Mr. George Leech, an English gentleman. Another was SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOULSVILLE 85 on the corner of Seventh and Market streets, taught by Mr. Dickenson. One on Market Street between Fourth and Fifth was taught by an Episcopal min- ister, the Reverend Mr. Todd. There were many other such schools here. The usual fee was two dollars and a half a quarter. Out of these little log schoolhouses, shutterless, comfortless, with board roofs and puncheon floors, trooped the Kentucky boys of the period — boys who were to make Louis- ville and Kentucky famous in the annals of law, politics, religion, and literature. The schoolboys of those early days were not very different from the schoolboys of to-day. In 1807 a man came along with an elephant. It was the first elephant that was ever brought to America, and the man was showing it in all the cities and towns of the United States. The schoolboys begged a holiday that they might go to see it. The trustees needed money for the fire companies, so they charged the man ten dollars for every exhibition of his elephant; with the money that came in this way they bought ladders for use at fires. The fires which occurred within the limits of Louis- ville and its suburbs were at first put out by what was known as the ''Bucket Brigade." When a fire was seen, the man who first noticed it ran as fast as he could through the streets and yelled ''Fire! Fire!" with all his might and main. Then the men of the town flocked out on the streets and learned as best they could where the fire was burning. The first man to reach it took his stand next the burning house, and the next man stood a foot or so in a line from him to- 86 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE ward the nearest well or pond. They had no fire- cisterns in those days. The town owned a lot of buckets, and the man nearest the well or pond filled the buckets as fast as he could and passed them on to the man next to him. From hand to hand they were rushed until they reached the men close to the fire, who poured their contents on the burning building. They were returned down a second line of men. There was never an empty hand after the first bucket was filled. In 1 8x2 house-owners were compelled by law to supply two fire-buckets for each house renting at forty dollars a year or over. The Bucket Brigade was organized as early as 1798-9. We are not sure just when hand-engines for extinguishing fires came into use in Louisville. We know that in 1820 the trustees ordered Thomas Prather, Peter B. Ormsby, and Cuthbert Bullitt to purchase five hand-engines. After that things got to be a little better when a fire occurred. Not so very much better, however, for as there were no fire- cisterns the engines had to be filled by buckets. But the bowls of the engines were always kept full when not in use, and so they were partly ready when they reached the burning building. Each engine had its company of firemen, and these firemen were the wealthy and prominent men of the city as well as the laboring men. No one was paid. Indeed, if any man was absent while a fire was burning he had a fine to pay. The fines went to. keep up the engines and engine-houses. The writer's mother was once present at an evening party when a fire cry was sounded. Instantly the music stopped, SOME EARLlEvST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 87 and every man in the parlors disappeared. In a few moments they reappeared on the street, in full evening dress, tugging at one or other of the ropes of the engines. It may not be generally known, but the successors in direct line of that early ''Volunteer Firemen's Association" still exist, and have their headquarters AN EARLY FIRE ENGINE at the old engine-house on First Street near Green. They are now known as the "Veteran Volunteer Firemen's Association," and Mr. George Looms is president. The youngest man on the rolls is over seventy years old. One of the early engines was rescued from a junk-pile in Jeffersonville and Mr. Looms had it put in first-class order, exactly repro- ducing the old engine. It was last used when Theo- dore Roosevelt visited Louisville. The old firemen, filled with pride in their engine, marched with the SR THK MAKING OK LOUIvSVILLE other fire companies and threw from the nozzle of their beloved machine a stream of water eighty feet high. The earliest theater in Louisville came three years before the first church was built, though not so early as the first sermon was preached here. The honor of the first ministration of religion to the little settle- ment on the island belongs to the Episcopal Church. The Reverend Ichabod Camp, whose parish in Virginia had been decimated by the Revolutionary War, came with Colonel Clark and the soldiers in 1778 and preached the first sermon ever heard at the Falls of the Ohio. His text was, "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me" — the inspired words of the Psalmist. It is told that it was a most inspiriting and comforting sermon. Mr. Camp moved on with missionary intent, but he left his hearers something they never parted with. The earliest theater was erected in 1808. Doctor McMurtrie tells us that it was but ''little better than a barn." But in 1818 it came into the hands of a noted actor of the time, Mr. Samuel Drake, who ''established in Louisville the golden era of the drama in the West." The building was on the north side of Jefferson, between Third and Fourth streets. It burned down in 1843. The Drake family was very distinguished. Samuel, the father, and his two sons, Samuel and Alexander, and his daughter Julia, were star actors of their day, while another son was a poet. Alexander Drake married Frances 90 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE Ann Denny, who had rare gifts as an actress and who acquired a national reputation. John Howard Payne and Washington Irving were correspondents of hers, and some of their letters to her are still preserved. She died in 1875, aged seventy-eight. Julia Drake became the mother of William Fosdick, a Kentucky poet, and of Julia Dean, one of the most beautiful and classic-faced women that ever graced the stage. A lovely small marble bust of Julia Dean is yet in Louisville, given by her to Ben Casseday, the historian, and now in possession of the writer. A noted favorite on Mr. Drake's stage was Mr. Caldwell, w^hose handsome son mar- ried a Louisville girl, Miss Eliza Breckinridge. From that union came the Misses Caldwell (Gwendolin and Mary Elizabeth), whose early property-holdings in Louisville made them very wealthy. Saints Mary and Elizabeth Hospital is named for their mother, in whose m.emory the building was erected by the Misses Caldwell. The religious sect first to have an organization in Louisville, though not by any means the first to have a church building, was the Baptist, which held serv- ices in the forts. A Baptist organization came to Louisville in a body, ''singing its way into the hearts of the pioneers, preaching its way into their minds, and praying its way into their souls, preserving, through a wilderness of over five hundred miles, church government and Christian discipline." The first denomination to build a church here was the Roman Catholic. In 1811 a chapel was built with funds contributed by citizens generally, but SOME EARUEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 91 largely by money contributed by French Catholics living here. They were cultured men and women whom the misfortunes of France had led to take up a new life in the new country. This chapel was on the corner of Main and Tenth streets. The first Methodist church, built also by public subscription and open to all denominations, was erected in 1 812. It was originally on Market Street between Seventh and Eighth, but the building soon grew too small for the congregations who came crowd- ing in, so it was sold to Patrick McFarland and another church w^as put up on the corner of the alley on Fourth Street between Market and Jefferson. The body now worshiping at Sixth and Broadway is, we believe, the "direct apostolic successor" of that congregation. There is a tradition, not very well founded, that in 1803 there was a log church building close to the old Twelfth Street fort. This was eight years before the Roman Catholic chapel was built in 1811. It is not definitely known what denomination controlled it, claims being made both for the Episcopal and the Methodist. According to the tradition, the father of Bishop Kavanaugh was in charge. The first Episcopal church to be erected in Louis- ville is now known as Christ Church Cathedral. Its inception was entirely a lay movement. On May 31, 1822, a public meeting was held in Washington Hall (predecessor of the present Gait House), when it was "resolved to open books of subscription for building a Protestant Episcopal church . . . under the direction of Peter B. Ormsby, Dennis 02 THE MAKING OF LOUIvSVILLE Fitzhugh, Samuel Churchill, James Hughes, W. L. Thompson, Richard Barnes, and W. A. Atkinson." Mr. Ormsby, who proposed the erection of the church, donated the land upon which to build it. He owned a fiv^e-acre lot on Second Street near Green, and he told the wardens to fence off as much as might be desired and he would make a deed for the amount. But the senior warden delayed this important matter until, by a financial revolution, the whole of Mr. Ormsby's estate passed into other hands. When the deed came to be executed all that could be secured to the church was the portion now occupied by the main building. Its early form can not be recognized in the stone structure which now occupies the lot. The Parish House and office buildings were added in 1912. The church was originally a square house with its windows arranged in two stories. It is, we believe, the only Protestant church whose site of that date is still used as its church home. The first Presbyterian church was erected on Fourth Street between Market and Jefferson, directly opposite the Methodist, on the alley where a drug store now stands. It was organized in 181 5 with sixteen membsrs, four of them belonging to the McFarland family. This church, built in 1816, was of brick, having a tower and a bell. This bell was singularly sweet-toned, and was the delight not only of the Presbyterians but of the whole town. It hung high in its belfry, and was the bell used at ten o'clock every night to warn all negroes that the time had come for them to be at home. No slave was allowed to be out after ten o'clock without a permit from his SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 03 master. The writer has made out dozens of such permits for her father's slaves. They ran somewhat thus: ''Permit Dolly Houston, slave of Samuel Casseday, to pass and repass until one o'clock to- morrow morning. (Signed and dated.)" The ten o'clock bell for slaves was the origin of a bell which was rung in Louisville every night at ten o'clock for many years after all slaves were freed. This bell set a standard of time in Louisville, and watches were regulated by it. The Presbyterian church took fire one Sunday during evening service. It was soon emptied, and it was seen that the old building was doomed. No one left the grounds, but all eyes turned toward the silver- throated bell which had so often rung for weddings and funerals, for slave calls and gatherings, in the twenty years. Nathan Hale was the sexton, and he stood at his post, clanging out the loud alarm of the bell for more assistants. A thousand forms faced the gray, square turret as the flames crept closer and closer to the belfry. Not a voice broke the stillness of the night, except now and then the sob of some church woman. The heat finally drove Hale from his post. For a while the leaping fires sent the brazen tongue on in a frenzy; then the wheel on which it hung was wrapped in flames, and as spoke after spoke dropped away the old bell tolled its own death-knell, slower and slower, until, with the last stroke of its hammer, dome, tower, and bell came crashing to the earth amid a million sparks. The women turned away weeping, and the men went silently back to their combat with the red embers. 94 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE The bell was taken from the ruins the next day and carried away by relic-hunters. Louisville's first and probably its only giant was "Jim" Porter. He was brought to the town as a baby in his mother's arms, in 1811. He was small until he was seventeen years old. Then he took a sudden shoot upward until he gained a height of seven feet and nine inches. When as a lad he first went to work it was in a cooper shop, but he soon grew too tall to bend over in that trade and had to give it up. After that he drove a hack awhile and then became a saloonkeeper. When Charles Dickens came to Louisville, in 1842, he went to see Jim Porter, and was greatly amused at Jim's account of his own growth. He told Dickens that while he was shooting up into the air his mother had to sew a foot to his trouser-legs every night. Porter's cane was four and a half feet high and his rifle was eight feet long. It must have been a queer sight to see that immensely tall man sitting on the driver's box, even though the carriages of that period were much larger than any we have now. Streets were first named in Louisville in 18 12. Earlier than that they were known by the name of people residing on them or by some well-known object near them, as "the big elm," "Colonel Anderson's," etc. The first cross-streets to be cut through from the river to the city limits were East, Center, and West. The first iron foundry was owned and operated by Paul Skidmore, in 181 2. He employed no man who drank whisky or who was worthless in any way. His SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 95 shop WEvS a success from the very first — steamboating, among other industries, creating a demand for his goods. The many foundries in Louisville at the present time make the city one of the foremost pig- iron consumers of the United States. It was many years after the town was established before Louisville had its first market-house. In earliest times the farmers brought their truck to town in wagons and sold it from door to door. Besides green foods, they brought in wild birds and deer which they had shot in the woods. Where the George Rogers Clark schoolhouse now stands, in Crescent Hill, was at that period dense woods, full of deer, foxes, bears, and other wild animals. The first public market-houses were built right in the middle of the street. One of them ran from Fourth to Fifth streets. There was a wide, clear, paved space at each end, and on this space the fish- dealers sold fish. Each year on New Year's Day the spaces were rented to slave-owners who had slaves to sell or to rent out for the coming year. An oak stump was used as a display block or auction block, and often slaves were put up on this block so that the would-be employer might see them over the heads of the large crowd which was sure to gather. The writer remembers one sad New Year's Day, on which she was permitted to go to market with her father. It was then the custom for the father of the family to do the marketing, followed by a slave to carry home the purchases in a market-basket. On coming near the market-house on this particular day the little girl saw a sight never to be forgotten. On 96 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE the auction block stood a gigantic slave — brawny, coppery, with naked muscular chest and arms bared to view. He was exposed for sale to the highest bidder. The auctioneer cried out his skill and his faults. He said that the man was a wonder for work, and he pointed to his muscles; said that he had a fierce temper, hated white folks, and was very hard to manage; that he could keep up work for twenty- four hours if necessary. The little girl gazed with awed wonder and tender pity upon the sinewy giant standing in sullen silence on the auction block. Then she burst into tears — a flood of tears which neither candy nor toys could check. To this day she hopes the negro saw the loving pity in her little face and was soothed by it. She is glad to tell that her father freed every one of his slaves long before Mr. Lincoln became President of the United States and abolished slavery by his "Proclamation." Banking in Louisville in early days was not con- ducted through regular banking houses, but by certificates of deposit, inspectors' receipts for furs, tobacco, hemp, whisky, salt, etc. The late Colonel R. T. Durrett owned a very interesting specimen of one of these. After the flood in 1780 John Sanders, who was a famous hunter and trapper, found on the corner of Main and Third streets a big flatboat which had been left high and dry by the falling waters. No one knew to whom it had belonged, but Sanders got permission from the trustees to use it as a store- house for the hides and goods which were brought to him to sell on commission. Here he stored bales of yellow elk, brown buffalo, black bear, and gray deer SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 97 skins. On these, and on other vakiable little parcels of furs which had been floated down the rivers and lakes from the north country, he issued certificates of deposit. These told the number of the package and its contents, adding a promise to pay when it should be sold, less charges for sale and storage. In 1784 such a certificate was made out to Daniel Boone for six beaver skins. Boone transferred it to Mr. Brodhead and from there it finally reached the hands of Colonel Durrett, who valued it both for its autographs and as a sample of the earliest banking methods of Louisville. Pioneer Louisville, as we have told, had no banks. Early in 1800 there was an unsuccessful private bank- known as the Bank of Louisville. In 1812 this bank united with a new corporation which was a branch of the Bank of Kentucky, that was then stationed at Lexington. This union was not, however, a success, and one day the directors said they would stop payment. Then up rose Mr. Prather, the president, and said, ''Gentlemen, if such is your intent, I resign here and now my oflice and my salary. I can preside over no institution which fails to meet its obligations promptly and to the letter." The first Presbyterian church, the first public library, and the first whisky distillery were organized in the same year, 18 16. The church and the library are still in existence. The distillery is dead, though it had the advantage of owning $100,000 in money and one hundred acres of land. The books of the library, numbering in 18 19 five hundred volumes, were bequeathed to the Kentucky Historical Society. 98 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE This society passed out of existence in 1842, leav- ing all the books it owned to the Mercantile Asso- ciation. The Mercantile Association, passing away in 1847, gave the books to the new Louisville Library. In 1854 this lot of books was transferred to the Kentucky Mechanics' Institute. The next organization to fall heir to them was the Young Men's Christian Association, in 1867. The Louisville Public Library claimed them in 1870. The Poly- technic Society displaced this library and received the books in 1873. The Polytechnic merged with the Louisville Free Public Library in 191 2, and the original books of the first library are now shelved in that building. Their greatest interest by this time, after passing through so many hands and be- ing duly ''culled," is probably in the numerous tags adorning them. The first court of Jefferson County was not held in a courthouse, but in the fort in the ravine. It was not thought safe to be very far from the protec- tion of the guns of the forts in those days, so early courts wandered from fort to fort. In 1782 land was granted to Louisville for a county courthouse, and the trustees put up a log building of one and a half stories in height, with a board roof and a puncheon floor. It cost $309.79. It burned within three years, and a large part of the city's early records were burned up with it. The county court of 1787 next authorized Richard Taylor — father of Zachary Taylor, who was later President of the United States— and Richard Eastin to contract for a second courthouse, to be ready by SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 99 August. It is probable that it was never built, for there is no record of it and it is recorded that on March 7, 1788, Richard Eastin, Alexander Breckin- ridge, and Ben Johnston were appointed by the court to prepare a plan for a courthouse of stone or brick, to be let to some contractor who would get his pay ''in salt, corn, pork, tobacco, beef, livestock, flour, or any kind of country produce." vSome con- tractor must have accepted this queer pay, for the records tell of a pretty building with square walls, little windows, and a spire. This was used until 1 8x1, not only for a courthouse but also for a town hall and for religious gatherings. In 18 II a new courthouse was planned by John Gwathmey. It was a very handsome building for its day. It stood in the center of a large area now bounded by Market, Jefferson, Fifth, and Seventh. It was in the second story of this courthouse that our first public library was placed. You can see from the picture of this 181 1 courthouse that it was very attractive. The grounds around it were eight of the half-acre lots. This space was sold off in small parcels by the unwise trustees until to-day only the present grounds are left. The land should never have been allowed to pass from its original use. In the midst of the busy city such an open space would have been a charming feature, providing air and sunshine to the commercial district surrounding it. Small and formal as it is, the courthouse lot even now draws to its borders the unfortunate men of the city who are "down and out." They may there be seen any pleasant day on its curb, basking in the 100 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE sunshine. The present courthouse was not begun until 1835, and so does not come into this part of Louisville's history. Louisville leads the world as a tobacco market, yet its first growth and sales began in a small way. As early as 1783 small tobacco-growers began to bring their surplus crops to town along the old buffalo trails. They formed a queer procession. A hogshead was fitted with an axle, running directly through the center of the hogshead and sticking out a foot or so. To these ends rope shafts or long hickory poles were fastened, and the farmer's old horse was hitched in. Along came the procession, the farmer walking and driving the horse, the hogs- head rolling over and over along the trace or road. John Campbell owned the first tobacco warehouse in Louisville. But the citizens had little cause to love John Campbell, and his warehouse was closed in 1795 and a new one built at the mouth of Bear- grass Creek. He had no ownership in the new one. From such small beginnings Louisville has grown to her present leadership in the tobacco world. On April I, 1913, there were 93,305,635 pounds in the hands of dealers in leaf tobacco in this, the Fifth District of Kentucky. The storage capacity of her warehouses is now the largest in the world and her facilities for handling the weed are the greatest. Foreign tobacco buyers maintain permanent head- quarters in this city. Whisky was one of Kentucky's earliest products, and Louisville is to-day the largest whisky market in the world. Good corn first began to be made into SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 101 whisky in 1783, in a little distillery at Fifth Street and the river, by Evan Williams. He had no license to make it, but (like the moonshiner of to-day) he liituiiirj THE JEFFERSON COUNTY COURTHOUSE OF 1811 considered that the corn was his, the land on which it grew was his, the distillery was his — then why not the finished product? He carried on his business in this unlawful way for some tim.e before he was caught up with and sued. Williams was a member 102 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILlvE of the very board of trustees whose duty it was to enforce the suit, and since he saw to it that the other members were kept suppHed with plenty of his very best whisky he escaped heavy fines. The beginning of this whisky trade was very small, but it has grown to gigantic proportions. On the last day of October, 1913, 74,887,697 gallons of whisky were in bond in this district. Louisville's first cemetery received its first occu- pant in 1786. Baxter Square now occupies the site. It was at that date a few feet larger than it is now, and was enclosed with a "worm" fence. A worm fence is a wooden fence made of rails piled on each other in zig-zag fashion. One has now to go far into the country to see one. This graveyard was the only bit of land except the courthouse square which was saved from John Campbell's greed. By 1820 it was filling up so fast that the law forbade any more burials in it, and a new cemetery was opened on Jefferson Street from Sixteenth to Eighteenth, the western end of which was reserved for colored people. That end now has on it the Jefferson Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library — a beautiful new building. The Roman Catholics bought the eastern end of the cemetery for their dead. The earliest cemetery, where Baxter Square now is, lay untouched for a long time after it was abandoned for burials. Then most of the bodies in it were removed, the space was shortened, and the land was given over for a public park. The present writer knows of one little five-year-old baby boy whose body lies hidden beneath the western curb of the pavement outside SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 103 of that cemetery, his Httle grave lost sight of in the absence of the family from the city. Hotels in early Louisville were called taverns. The first tavern was built on a lot facing the river and between Sixth and Seventh streets. It would not be thought to look much like a hotel now. It was a double log house two stories high, but some of A WORM FENCE the most famous men of the nation stopped there in their travels. Doctor McMurtrie, writing in 1819, tells that in 18 16 Louisville had two hotels and several taverns. He says the hotels were "conducted in a very superior style." What this ''superior style" was we may gather from a letter written, in 181 6 by a Mr. Fearon, who was sent to America by thirty-nine English families to learn whether any parts of the United States would be agreeable to them for a residence. Mr. Fearon visited Louisville, and the following is a part of what he wrote back to England : 104 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE "I boarded at both hotels, Allen's Washington Hall and Gwathing's [Gwathmey's] Indian Queen. They are similar establishments and both on a very large scale; the former averages 80 boarders per day; the latter, 140. The hotels here are conducted differently from those with which you are acquainted. The place for washing is in the open yard where there is a large cistern, several towels, and a negro in attend- ance. The sleeping rooms commonly contain from four to eight bedsteads, having mattresses upon them, but frequently no feather beds, sheets of calico, two blankets and a quilt. The bedsteads have no cur- tains, and the rooms are generally unprovided with conveniences." No first-class hotel was built in Louisville until 1832, when the Louisville Hotel came into existence. Louisville's first City Directory was issued in 1832. It has some amusing statements in it. For example, the address of the residence of ''Thomas Joyes, Gentleman," is given as "Fifth Street between Main and Chestnut." We suppose "Mr. Joyes, Gentle- man," had "some" front yard. Evidently his children did not have to play in the streets. In the 1832 Directory the population of Louisville in 1788 is put down at thirty; in 1800 at six hundred; in 1820 at 4,012; in the succeeding ten years the population figures had moved up to 10,336. The first newspaper published in Louisville was issued in 1801 — "The Farmers' Library," owned by Samuel Vail. It never amounted to very much. The first really valuable newspaper was issued in 1 81 7 — "The Public Advertiser," founded by Shad- 106 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE rach Penn, who was an able editor. The newspapers now leading in politics and current events did not come into existence during the period of which this volume treats. Early Louisville had notable men and women as guests, and men and women of shining mark as residents. If, as Buret says, "the strongest nation is that which counts the most robust men interested in its defense, animated by its spirit, and possessing the feeling of its destiny," a roster of Louisville's citizens, from George Rogers Clark on Corn Island to the men who gave freely of their brains, fortunes, and time as trustees before the city was turned over to its new form of government under a mayor, would bespeak for our city a peculiar strength. Among the distinguished residents of 1819 was J. J. Audubon, the world-renowned ornithologist. He had an adver- tisement in the Courier of February 12, 1819, offering to teach a class in drawing or to paint portraits, which he declared ''shall be strong likenesses." Audubon's son was for many years a clerk in the store of Mr. Berthoud, at Shippingport. A distinguished guest of Louisville in 1825 was, like Audubon, a French- man — Lafayette. The first President of the United States to visit Louisville while in office was James Monroe, fifth president. He came on the 23d of June, 1819, accompanied by General Andrew Jackson. Monroe wore the undress uniform of an officer of the Revo- lutionary Army — a blue military coat made of home- spun goods, light breeches, and a cocked hat. These distinguished men, with their retainers, were the SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 107 guests of Alexander Pope at his home on Jefferson Street between Sixth and Seventh. It was in Mr. Pope's house and during this visit that Andrew Jackson was determined upon as a candidate for the presidency, to which office he was first elected in 1829. To us of to-day, who regard the original bounds of the town as wholly business territory, it seems strange to think of homes worthy to shelter a President existing within the area of First to Twelfth and the river to Chestnut Street. But we must remember that in our forefathers' day the town extended hardly at all beyond these limits. The residence of Alex- ander Pope took up a whole block on the south side of Jefferson between Sixth and Seventh streets. At the time of Monroe's visit Louisville had passed from the ugly log-cabin town of pioneer days to a city of fine houses and large estates. Most of these were north of Walnut Street. The Preston family lived on Jefferson near First; the Bullitt family on Jefferson between First and Second ; Harry Weissinger's father on Jefferson between Second and Third; James D. Breckinridge lived at Fifth and Breckinridge; the Prather estate ran from Green to Walnut and from Third to Fourth streets; Willis Ranney and John Thompson Gray had homes on Jefferson Street. Judge S. S. Nicholas built a palatial home on top of one of the mounds of the Mound Builders. This was on the corner of Fifth and Walnut streets, running back originally some three hundred feet. The top of his place was reached by a high stone circular stairway. His grounds were kept in beautiful fashion. Samuel Casseday owned his home where the Paul Jones 108 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE building now stands, at Fourth and Jejfferson. Here Miss Jennie Casseday, the invalid philanthropist, was born. William Garvin and James Anderson had homes on the same block. James C. Ford, a Southern planter who made his summer home in Louisville, had a fine home on Jefferson Street between Seventh and Eighth. He was the grandfather of Miss Helen Dinsmore Huntington, who lately married Vincent Astor. All of these homes, and many others not mentioned, were homes of noteworthy people, and were kept in a style to make the little city famous for its beauty and attractiveness. A very notable house, which was so near town as to be considered a part of Louisville, was erected in 1804 or 1805 by French residents. It was just off the Bardstown Road, and was for some time the resi- dence of Louis Philippe, exiled King of France. It stood in a tract of about sixty acres. The house was a two-story stone front, with long French windows reaching to the floor, and there was a little stone chapel at the side, which was for the use of the king. In the spring of 1913 five acres of this tract were sold to Mr. J. G. Hager, who tore down the historic building to make way for three modern residences. The old house attracted the attention of visitors from far and near. Some years ago a representative of one of the Paris papers came over to write it up, and took back with him pictures of the house, chapel, and the beautiful French gardens surrounding the place. The house at one time had the reputation of being haunted, as doors would unexpectedly fly SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 109 Open with no one near, and mysterious noises were heard. But in later years all was peaceful. Judge Fortunatus Cosby, an early resident, had his home on Seventh Street between Main and Mar- ket. It is said that his cabin home had no door, and that Mrs. Cosby was sometimes compelled to make a great fire inside the cabin and hang blankets across the doorway, to keep the wolves away. Mr. Cosby later built a home on the ground now occu- pied by the Evening Post newspaper, occupying the entire square. It had an orchard in the rear, where Macauley's theater now is. This property afterward became the Prather home. Opposite it, where the Pendennis Club now stands, was the fine residence of Mr. John I. Jacob, taking in all the space from Walnut to Chestnut and from Third to Fourth streets. Adjoining this was James Guthrie's home, running to Chestnut Street and to Second on the east side. Mr. Guthrie was Secretary of the United States Treasury under President Pierce, in 1853. We believe only one of the early stores of Louis- ville has had a continuous existence on the same spot up to the present day. This is the book and stationery store of John P. Morton & Company. For nearly ninety years the splendid record begun for it by Mr. John P. Morton has been maintained. It is a record of fair and honorable dealing, of business ability and commercial success. Until a few years ago this firm stood to the book-making and book- selling world as the American Book Company stands to-day. The men who are now conducting it began in the store as lads and have grown gray in its no THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE service. It Is unique in Louisville life, and deserves special mention in any history of early Louisville, for it began its public service before the city got its first charter. Between 1803 and 1828 forty books and pamphlets were printed for their authors in Louisville. Of these, more than one fourth bear the imprint of John P. Morton & Company. No other printer of these forty books has now a commercial existence. It is amusing to tell that when this house of Morton's was being erected it was considered a skyscraper, and men quit business to go and watch its progress upward toward the stars. It is a four- story building. The bricks came from Philadelphia in wagons by way of Ligo and Cumberland to Red Stone Old Fort and Pittsburgh, thence down the Ohio in a Kentucky "broad-horn." Such in barest outline were the actors, and such the train of actions, that formed the beginnings of the city of Louisville and that have set its face toward progress among the cities of the nations. Nature had fitted it to take first rank, and before sixty years had passed it had sloughed off the crudities of pioneer times; forests had been felled, the clink of the builder's trowel was a familiar sound, and there had arisen on the spot where lately wild things had roamed, a civilized town, possessing the luxuries and best usages of good society. It was inhabited by a people cultured, refined, and attracting to themselves the best men and women of other commonwealths. It is a far cry from the howling wilderness, the SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 111 beast, and the savage foe, to orderliness, purpose, and erudition. But Louisville passed from the one stage to the other with a stateliness and rectitude which few other cities in the nation can parallel. The cities which preceded her and those which came after THE FIRST SKYSCRAPER SOUTH OF THE OHIO RIVER began their civic life for the most part with leaders already trained in the art of politics, in schools of learning, and in centers of order and beauty. Ken- tucky began with that roving, errant, restless emi- grant, Daniel Boone; and Louisville began with the rough soldiers of fortune following General Clark to the dim West. 112 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE Account for it as we may, the spontaneous, unaided movement of people into Louisville, pouring into it like a flood in its rude beginnings, and their swift organization of a city under appalling adversi- ties, well emphasizes the prepotency of that people, and gives us a basis for understanding the strength of Louisville men and women of this day. A LOUISVILLE HOME APPENDIX APPENDIX I RECOMMENDATIONvS OF THE COURT OF KENTUCKY TO THE SEVERAL TOWNS AND GARRISONS On December 31, 1776, Fincastle County was divided by the Virginia Legislature into three coun- ties, one of which was named Kentucky County. It embraced ''all that part thereof which lies to the south and westward of a line beginning on the Ohio river, at the mouth of Great Sandy creek, and running up the same and the main or north-easterly branch thereof to the Great Laurel Ridge, or Cumberland mountain; thence southwestwardly along the said mountain to the line of North Carolina." In May, 1780, Kentucky County was divided into three counties — Jefferson, Fayette, and Lincoln. In 1792, after Kentucky became a State, Washington County was its first-born. On April 7, 1779, the County Court of Kentucky County sent a letter of advice to the different stations regarding the laying out of new towns within the bor- ders of Kentucky. As this first piece of official advice is a matter full of interest to Louisville citizens, a copy of it is here recorded for preservation : The Court of Kentucky doth recommend to the inhabitants that they keep themselves as united and compact as possible one other year, settling them- (115) 116 APPENDIX selves in towns and forts; and that they may for their greater encouragement procure therein a permanent property to the soil and improvements, they recom- mend that the intending citizens choose three or more of the most judicious of their body as Trustees, who shall be invested with authority to lay off such town with regularity, to prescribe the terms of residence and building therein, to adjudge adequate and just compensation to any person who may necessarily be aggrieved thereby, and to determine all disputes among the citizens in consequence thereof; that they return to this court, to be recorded, a fair plan of their town, with their proceedings as soon as may be. And whereas the new adventurers may be tempted to run too great risques in making new settlements under the resolve of the assembly made the 24th day of January, 1778, the court doth recommend that they make on their new^ Claims only some moderate im- provements, registering such place with the Surveyor of the County or in the Court thereof; they further recommend to the new adventurers that they be cau- tious of encroaching upon the right and property of the old Settlers who have in an exemplary manner de- fended that property during a bloody and inveterate war. The Claims of members who have long ago deserted their claims and in an unfriendly manner left but a few to bear the burden of the war, will be more than sufficient for all the adventurers. And we recommend the old settlers that they give advice and assistance to the new adventurers in exploring the country and discovering unappropriated lands. A Copy, Teste. Levi Todd, CI. Court. APPENDIX 117 II THE PETITION OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE COUNTY OF KENTUCKY The petition for incorporation, signed by thirty- nine citizens of the town and sent to the Virginia Legislature: The petition of the inhabitants of the County of Kentucky, Hving at the Falls of the River Ohio, hum- bly showeth : That your petitioners have at great risque and expense removed to this remote part of the State and from the advantageous situation of the place both for trade and safety were induced to settle here and hav- ing laid out a town under directions of persons ap- pointed for that purpose by the court of Kentucky (a plan of which we have sent to be laid before you) and when laid out we cast lots for the choice of the lots in said town have improved and settled on some of the lots and some have sold their houses and lots to persons who have come here since the town w^as laid out who are still adding to our improvements; but the uncertainty of the title thereto prevents some from settling here that are inclined, thereby making less secure from any attack of the Indains for w^e are informed that the land we have laid out for a town at the mouth of a gut that makes into the river oppo- site the Falls, was surveyed and patented for Connolly, who we have understood has taken part with the enemies of America, and agreeable to a late act of Assembly, the land we expect will be escheated and sold. We are well assured that a town established at this place will be a great advantage to the inhabitants of Kentucky, and we think the plan on which the town 118 APPENDIX is laid out will conduce towards its being a populous town and of great advantage to us, as many of us have built houses according thereto and will render us secure from any hostile intentions of the Indians, and will induce merchants to bring articles of commerce that the inhabitants of this western part of the State stand much in need of. Therefore pray that an act may be passed to establish a town at the Falls of the Ohio River, agreeably to the plan sent, and that the present settlers and holders of lots in the said town may have them confirmed to them on paying a com- position that may be thought reasonable to any one having the right thereto (if thought requisite) or to the Commonwealth; and not let us be turned out of houses we have built and from lots we have improved and are about to build on, and thereby lose the labor we have performed at the risque of our lives. All these several matters we your petitioners beg leave to lay before your Honorable House and hope you will comply with our request in adopting the prayer of our petition, or some other method that you in your wisdom may think proper that will con- duce to the interest and security of this exposed part of the State, and we as in duty bound shall ever pray. May 1st 1780. John Hawkins, jr. Jos. Archer. Nicholas Merriwether. William Linn. William Pope. John Crittenden. John Helm. William Kinchloe. Benjamin Roberts, jr. John Fleming. WiUiam Toole. James Withers, jr. Edward Bulger. Charles Curd. Thomas Christy. Squire Boone. James Harris. Jonathan Boone. William Helm. John Conaway. Marsham Brashears. Geo. Payne. George Hartt. Waller Overton. APPENDIX 119 Josiah Phelps. Jas. Patton. John Townsend. Thomas Hughes. Abraham James. Hen French. John Tewell. Samuel Harrod. Mer'th Price. Joseph Roberts. William Marshall. Wm. McBride. Alexander Cleland. Thomas Whiteside. James Kenny. 120 APPENDIX III ACT FOR ESTABLISHING THE TOWN OF LOUISVILLE AT THE FALLS OF THE OHIO Whereas, sundry inhabitants of the county of Ken- tucky have, at great expense and hazard, settled them- selves upon certain lands at the falls of the Ohio, said to be the property of John Conally, and have laid off a considerable part thereof into half-acre lots for a town, and, having settled thereon, have preferred peti- tions to this General Assembly to establish the said town. Be it therefore enacted, that one thousand acres of land, being the forfeited property of John Conally, adjoining to the lands of John Campbell and Taylor, be and the same is hereby vested in John Todd, junior, Stephen Trigg, George Slaughter, John Floyd, William Pope, George Merriweather, Andrew Hines, James Sullivan, and Marshall Brashiers, gen- tlemen, trustees, to be by them, or any four of them, laid off into lots of one half acre each, w^ith convenient streets and public lots, which shall be and the same is hereby established a town by the name of Louisville. A nd he it further enacted, that after the said lands shall be laid off into lots and streets the said trustees, or any foUr of them, shall proceed to sell the said lots, or so many of them as they shall judge expedient, at public auction, for the best price that can be had, the time and place of sale being advertised two months, at the court-houses of adjoining counties; the pur- chasers respectively to hold their said lots subject to the condition of building on each a dwelling-house sixteen feet by tw^enty at least, with a brick or stone chimney, to be finished within two years from, the day of sale. And the said trustees, or any four of them, shall and they are hereby empowered to convey the APPENDIX 121 said lots to the purchasers thereof in fee-simple, sub- ject to the condition aforesaid, on payment of the money arising from such sale to the said trustees for the uses hereafter mentioned, that is to say: If the money arising from such sale shall amount to thirty dollars per acre, the whole shall be paid by the said trustees into the treasury of this commonwealth, and the overplus, if any, shall be lodged with the court of the county of Jefferson, to enable them to defray the expenses of erecting the public buildings of the said county. Provided, that the owners of lots already drawn shall be entitled to the preference therein, upon paying to the trustees the sum of thirty dollars for each half-acre lot, and shall be thereafter subject to the same obligations of settling as other lot-holders within the said town. And he it further enacted, that the said trustees, or the major part of them, shall have power from time to time to settle and determine all disputes concerning the bounds of the said lots, to settle such rules and orders for the regular building thereon as to them shall seem best and most convenient. And in case of death or removal from the county of any of the said trustees the remaining trustees shall supply such vacancies by electing others from time to time, who shall be vested with the same powers as those already mentioned. And be it further enacted, that the purchasers of the lots in the said town, so soon as they shall have saved the same according to their respective deeds of con- veyance, shall have and enjoy all the rights, privileges, and immunities which the freeholders and inhabitants of other towns in this state not incorporated by charter have, hold, and enjoy. And he it further enacted, that if the purchaser of any lot shall fail to build thereon within the time before limited, the said trustees, or a major part of them, may thereupon enter into such lot, and may either sell 122 APPENDIX the same again and apply the money toward repairing the streets or in any other way for the benefit'of said town, or appropriate such lot to public uses for the benefit of said town. Provided, that nothing herein contained shall extend to affect or injure the title to lands claimed by John Campbell, gentleman, or those persons whose lots have been laid off on his lands, but their titles shall be and remain suspended until the said John Campbell shall be released from his captivity. [Campbell was at this time held as a prisoner by the British in Canada.] •i