USA > Kentucky > Fayette County > Lexington > Historical address at the centennial celebration of the settlement of Lexington, Ky. [April 2, 1879] > Part 1
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Gc 976.902 L59rac 1705159
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01715 2478
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
https://archive.org/details/historicaladdres00ranc
HISTORICAL ADDRESS
BY
GEORGE W
RANCK.
1.1 THE
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION,
OF THE
SETTLEMENT
OF Lexington, Kentucky.
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MORRISON CHAPEL,
LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, APRIL 2d, 1879.
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ADDRESS.
MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS :
We have assembled here to day to celebrate the settlement of a city exceptionally rich in historic associations and honor- able memories, and it is well that we are here. If it is true that the civilization of a people may justly be measured by the at- tention and respect which they give their history, then the events of this, the Centennial anniversary of Lexington, may be remembered by us and our posterity with pride and satisfaction. We may congratulate ourselves that we have not exhibited our- selves as utterly destitute of that liberal, enterprising and appre- ciative spirit which has reflected so much lustre upon other cities ; that we have not neglected a sacred duty ; that we have not for- gotten the founders and benefactors of our city. The presence of this great concourse, the numberless sounds and tokens of rejoicing we have heard and seen, and the ardent enthusiasm which pervades the very atmosphere, declare the noble senti- ments which animate this entire community. For one time at least political divisions, religious dissentions, and prejudices of nationality and of race are ignored, and our whole people, re- gardless of age, sex and condition, meet as one harmonious brotherhood, on the common ground of a common history, to honor the memory of the virtuous and the brave. And now, while that mysterious hand which marks the Pras and the ages on the dial plate of time points to a century completed, let us call to mind the days and deeds of the settlers of Lexington.
The very first fact which presents itself to us is the remark- able one that our city was named nearly four years before it was settled. During one of those daring expeditions, which the hunters of Kentucky loved so much to make, a party of them found this fertile region, and upon the evening of the 5th of June, 1775, they camped upon a spot which afterwards became the home of William McConnell. Delighted with the virgin charms surrounding them, they resolved to make the site of our city their place of settlement, and then and there named it Lexing- ton, in honor of that glorious field where the "Rebels" of Mas- sachusetts had died but a few weeks before resisting the en- croachments of their . ing. Here, fellow citizens, in the heart of a Virginia wilderness, and by Kentucky pioneers was erected
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the first monument ever raised on this continent to the first dead of the American Revolution. But that memorable camp was soon deserted. The Northwestern Indians allied themselves with the army of England, roamed in raging bands throughout the length and breadth of Kentucky, and drove back to their securest stations all the hated settlers that they did not destroy. But that stout-hearted party of hunters never forgot through springs of misery, summers of tragedy, and winters of starvation the broad, rich acres they had named, and when that magnifi- cent soldier, George Rogers Clark, relieved Kentucky by his second brilliant capture of Vincennes, they resolved to go up and possess the land.
About the last of March, 1779, under the leadership of Col. Robert Patterson, they and others set out from Harrod's Station and were soon here inspecting the site of their future horne. The discovery of a fine spring determined the location of the garrison, and on the 2d of April, 1779, just one hundred years ago to-day, and on the ground now covered by the Carty Building, the built a block house, and the first permanent set- tlement of Lexington was made. In the midst of a revolution which has given hope to the world-in the centre of a country which Boone declared was a second Paradise, and watching with the rifle while they hewed with the axe-Robert Patterson and Wm. McConnell, Jno. Maxwell and Jas. Masterson, Jos. Lind- say, James Lindsay, Alex. McConnell and their comrades erect- ed and defended that solitary post around which the events of a century have clustered. And thus at last, in spite of savage butchery and British arms, it strangely came to pass that the very men who had named our city became its settlers.
We need not blush for our settlers. Patterson, who has been called the founder of three cities, Lexington, Cincinna- ti, and Dayton, was born near Cove Mountain, Pennsylvania, March 15th, 1753. He came to Kentucky at an early date, was conspicuous for his military talents and for gallant services against the common foe. He was the commander and leading spirit of the Block Hous ; he headed the desperate forays of its little garrison, and was bullet scarred and battled gashed be- fore the age of thirty. He owned, and subsequently occupied a large tract of land, a part of which is now the property of the presiding officer of this occasion. William McConnell, a Virginian, the chief of McConnell's Station in 1783, the friend of Boone, and one of the most energetic and prominent of the garrison, was the right hand man of the commanding officer. John Maxwell, the sturdy Scotchman, who came to Kentucky
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before it contained a single station, was the proprietor of a great portion of the land now included in the city limits. His spotless name still lingers around the spring that he loved, and the neglected place where he sleeps.
James Masterson, whose capacity to endure and to suffer, is a matter of record, was married in the fort, which soon en- closed the Block House. He was a hunter, heart and soul, and dressed as a pioneer, and carried a powder horn and rifle to the very end of his lengthened days.
The Lindsays, who were among the most noted and most sagacious of the early scouts, who did such inestimable service to the settlers of the dark and bloody ground, came from Vir- ginia. They were men born for pioneer times, and sudden emergencies, and figured with signal ability and honor in most of the important expeditions against the Indians and British. Alexander McConnell, who is known to every reader of Ken- tucky history as the hero of one of the boldest and most thrill- ing exploits which the annals of the West contain, was the brother of Patterson's trusted subaltern, and died at the battle of Blue Licks a victim of the rashness of McGary.
Such were the men who, with their dauntless companions, guarded that lonely outpost with their flint lock rifles until the boldest of the immigrants with their devoted wives and mothers ventured through the blood stained wilderness and joined their cabins to its protecting walls. The settlement soon reached the dignity of a station, and by the close of the year 1779 the now historic fort enclosed within its tall stockade "the big spring," and a goodly portion of Main Street between Mill and Broadway. .
From the building of the Block House, until the close of the war for Independence, the exasperated Indians struggled for the possession of their ancient hunting ground even as the chivalric Moors struggled for the possession of old Spain. This is the most intensely interesting period of our city's history. Pioneer Lexington knew all the alarms and dangers and mise ries that Jamestown aud Plymouth knew, and age will soon surround it with a golden halo no less attractive than theirs. It was Lexington's founders and early settlers who followed barefoot the Napoleon of the West, when he swooped down like an eagle upon the savages of Ohio; who stood freezing at their posts during the terrible winter of starvation which suc- ceeded Byrd's invasion ; who charged through twenty times their number to the rescue of the heroic garrison at Bryan's Station ; who felled for us the forests and cane brakes where
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captivity and murder ever lurked ; and who marched under the gallant Colonel John Todd to the battle field of Blue Licks to meet defeat and slaughter in the most disastrous conflict in which the hunters of Kentucky ever took a part. And the women of that forest fort! Who can tell how they toiled and what they endured? how they shuddered at the distant warwhoop? how they cared for the wounded ? prayed for the dying and mourned for the dead ? And often during all of this they did the h inters' part, and twice while the garrison was gone, and with but feeble help they guarded the station by day and by night. All honor to their memory to-day ! Faithful even unto death t e sublime women of the old stockade stand side by side with the undaunted women of the Revolution.
Mr. President and fellow-citizens, the true greatness of a man is not to be found in the abundance of his wealth, in the vastness of his power, nor in the glory of his ambitious achieve- ments. It is to be found in the nobility of his soul,
Measured by this standard, Boone was greater than the hero of Australitz, and the men and women of pioneer Lexing- ton, clothed in buckskin and linsey, and honesty and virtue, were greater than the cultivated, the elegant and the corrupt, who made brilliant the famous court of Louisthe Grand. But the heroes and heroines of a hundred y cars ago have gone from our sight with the block house and the fort. Their dust lies mingled with the soil of their old Kentucky home, and the blue grass that they loved grows forever where they sleep.
Fellow-citizens, in marching to this place to-day, you paid special and appropriate honors, with flags, with banners and with music, not only to the spot where the first settlement of Lexington was made, but to other places memorable in the annals of our city. One bore the inscription "Mckinney's School-House," and reminded us of the fact that the history of education here dates from the com . encement of the city itself. Many of the settlers of Lexington came from the polished circles of Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. John McKin- ney was one of these. He settled and taught in the fort at the solicitation of Colonel Patterson, the very year that Transylva- nia Seminary was chartered by the Legislature of Virginia, and his log school-house, which was one of the first buildings erected outside the stockade, stood about where the office of Mr Gratz now stands. It was in this cabin in June, 1783, that Mckinney's desperate and celebrated struggle with the wild cat took place, and the alarm occasioned by it was the last one that ever brought the garrison together in arms.
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Lexington was the first Capital of Kentucky. It was here, on the 4th of June, 1792, that General Isaac Shelby took the oath of office as Governor, and here was held the first session. of the Legislature of this Commonwealth. The Capital build- ing, plain and unpretentious, stood where Scott's Block stands. James. Brown was appointed Secretary of State, and George Nicholas Attorney General. On the 6th of the same month, after both Houses had assembled, Governor Shelby addressed the Legislasure in person, and this courtly example was fol- lowed in Kentucky until changed to the present one, in accord- ance with a precedent established by President Jefferson. The organization of the State Government was made the occasion of a grand celebration by the citizens of Lexington, and was hailed by the people throughout the Commonwealth with heart- felt satisfaction. Nine conventions, pre-eminent for the great minds engaged in them, met and toiled before this much-desired result was obtained, and nothing but the most disheartening ob- stacles were encountered from the time Kentucky was a district of Virginia, until she became a member of the Union.
There was another place whose associations claimed your respect to-day --- the house now owned by Mrs. Ryland-for in it was married, ith of April, 1799, the then rising young lawyer, Heury Clay, to Lucretia, daughter of Colonel Thomas Hart. He was a man sublime-she was a woman truc. He panted in the hot sun-light of fame -- she knew but the cool star- light of duty. Eighty years have flown since those young hands were clasped together, and since the life of the one was interwoven with the existence of the other, but their names uni- ted, have become again the signal of rejoicing, and many of those who knew them in the beautiful days of Auld Lang Syne, have once more paid, with hearts and memory both aglow, the tribute that is due to greatness and to worth.
And now weare here, in Morrison College, founded through the wise munificence of that broad-minded promoter of letters, Col. James Morrison. We are assembled amidst the scholarly and illustrious associations of oid Transylvania University, the first regular institution of learning established in the mighty West, and the most notable memorial of the enterprise and culture of Virginia during the Revolution, and of Kentucky, during the days of savage warfare. We remember to-day with the pro- foundest feeling of veneration, admiration and gratitude, the master spirits of Fransyivauia University, who are gone, but not forgotten. We think of those eminent teachers, who not . only opened to their pupils the store houses of knowledge, but
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also exerted in society and upon the people, a liberalizing and elevating influence; who did so much to make our city the lite- rary and intellectual centre of so vast a region, and whose powerful but noiseless work mainly caused her name to be re- spected throughont America and Europe. Her sons have oc- cupied the highest places in the nation, and hosts of them are now among the leading spirits of the country. All around me are men with silvered heads; men that we respect and love, who either claim old Transylvania as their Alma Mater, or have been called by her to places of dignity or of trust. We can say of them this day that they have reflected back upon her in no little measure the honors she bestowed. Kentucky Uni- versity, which succeeded Transylvania, is now in her early youth, and has a history yet to make. Let us hope that she will be all that she should be, and that coming generations will have cause to bless her abundantly for the abundant blessings she will have bestowed.
It will be impossible for me to speak of a hundred other subjects which should have received our attention on this Cen- tennial occasion, but there are things which, from their age, to say nothing of their importance, must be noticed. Christian services were held in Fort Lexington from the time it was found- ed, but the first church regularly established here, was orga -. ized in 1784, by the Presbyterians, who were more numeroi in the settlement at the time than any other religious people. After Mckinney's school house came this church, a log building which stood where City School No. I now stands. It was orig- inally called Mt. Zion. Its first pastor was the Rev. Adam Rankin, and among its members were Patterson, and Maxwell, and Robert Megowan.
Freemasonry in Kentucky, and in all the region west of the Alleghany Mountains, had its commencement in Lexington Lodge. No. 25, established in Lexington, District of Kentucky, November 17, 1788, by the Grand Lodge of Virginia. "Mason's Hall" stood on the same lot where the "Masonic Hall" now stands The ground on which it stood was donated to it by Wm. Murray, the First Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky, which was opened in this city on the 16th of Octo. ber, 1800. At their first session the seal of No. 25 was adopted by the Grand Lodge, and used by it for some time. "No. 25" was also placed first in the Order of Subordinate Lodges in defer- ence to its priority of age, and then became Lexington "Lodge No. 1," by which title it has been known ever since, and to- day, after the lapse of so many years, it has again been signally
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honored, and for the same reason as of yore. I have spoken of this Lodge to the exclusion of other Lodges and Orders sim- ply on account of its superior claims to antiquity.
We turn now from peace to war. The settlers of Lexing- ton not only fought in the earliest expedition against the North western tribes and with Russell, Wilkinson, Scott and Wayn- in 1791 and 1794, but some of them, with i any of the next generation, devoted their lives to their country both in the the battle of Tippecanoe, where the great Joe Daviess fell, and in the war of 1812. The feelings of the people of Lexington in regard to the outrages committed by England on American rights and property on the ocean is evidenced by the fact that as soon as it was made known that a requisition had been made upon Kentucky for troops, and even before the Governor's orders reached this city a company of volunteers had been formed and its services tendered to the State. Six companies were raised at once in Lexington and Fayette county, and five others were organized soon after. The first troops, under Col. Wm. Lewis, left this city on the 14th of August, and marched to Georgetown, where Mr. Clay, the leader of the war party, de- livered before them a stirring and inspiring address, and where President Blythe, of Transylvania University. whose son had en- listed but to die, preached a sermon full of animation and the deepest feeling. The new soldiers went through heavy rains to Cincinnati to receive their arms, pressed forward under the gloom of Hull's surrender to the seat of war in the Northwest, and after months of hard service reached, on the 22d of January, 1813, the frozen banks of the Raisin, only to be devoted by Gen. Winchester to defeat and destruction.
The soldiers of Lexington and Fayette county seemed des- tined to reach victory at last, only through repeated baptisms of blood. Another disaster awaited them. On the 5th of May, 1813, Dudley's defeat occurred. Again were our soldiers shot down, tomahawked and scalped, the number of the men who were massacred after the fight being equal to the number of those who fell in the fight. But an end came to defeat and massacres at last, and at the glorious battle of the Thames, our troops played a most distinguished and important part in a vic - tory which sounded the death knell to British power in the great Northwest.
It is impossible for me to compress into a page facts that would fill a volume. It is impossible on this occasion for me to give more than a brief and most unsatisfactory glance at things that should be treated in full, and treated philosophically. It
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is fortunate that gentlemen who participated with distinction in the disasters and the glories of 1812 have told in full the story of the men of Lexington who died with Hart, and Dudley, and Edmonson, and Graves, and have recited the heroism of those who with themselves braved the tomahawk and endured the torture of their savage foes. I allude to the veterans who are with us to-day-General Combs and Uncle Tommy Dudley.
If "history, " as Carlyle says, is "the essence of innumerable biographies," then the Lexington of the past can claim a para- graph at least in that ever swelling volume. The sum of the ideas and the efforts that have signalized a number of our citi- zens is not to be utterly despised. Dr. Samuel Brown intro-
duced vaccination into this country. Rafinesque was probably its greatest carly scientist, and Dr. B. W. Dudley astonished the surgeons of Europe with the wonders of his skill. Bascom, Menifee, and Thomas F. Marshall enriched the field of elo- quence, and Edward West claimed in 1793 to be the inventor of the first steamboat that ever successfully moved upon the water. Joseph M. Daviess, John Pope, William T, Barry, and Robert Wickliffe were peers of power in politics and at the bar. Dr. Charles Caldwell was the first prominent champion of phrenology in the United States. Dr. Holly was one of its
most brilliant scholars. George Nicholas and John Breckin- ridge contributed to the statesmanship of the land, and the pencil of Jouett and the chisel of Hart gave it creations on canvass and in marble that will live no brief life in the realm of art. Thomas H. Barlow invented the wonderful planetarium, and Andrew McCalla projected that noble public charity -- the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, the second institution of its kind es- tablished in the United States, John C. Breckinridge, the sol- dier and the beloved of the people, needs no eulogy, and Henry Clay in the greatness of his gifts and in the grandeur of his character stands alone. We can claim, I think, with some degree of confidence, that the essence of these biographies has formed a p .rt of the history of this country. In fact, Lex- ington has in times past exerted such an influence that we stop to ask ourselves if there might not have been something more than the love of adventure and the desire for a fertile homestead which brought Patterson and his followers here. A storm drove the Cavaliers into Chesapeake Bay, and dis- couraging brekers caused the Puritans to land at Cape Cod. These were ordinary things, apparently, but their effects were not. Were the men who founded Lexington a hundred years ago sent here simply to hazard their lives for land which slipped
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from their possession ? Did they only drift with Boone into this strange country, which the Indians themselves regarded with superstitious dread, a neutral ground where the tribes came to fight, but never to reside; a country where one race, without a history, had exterminated another race without a history and where a race with a history, was destined to conquer the con- querors. It was to the center of this region that the founders and settlers of our city penetrated, bringing unconsciously along with the axe and the rifle the germ of a civilizing power, which was so greatly exerted here, and which had so much to do with the development of that magnificent domain, which Vir- ginia, with a more than imperial generosity, presented to the nation. Whether called or not to a mission, the pioneers of this city accomplished a mighty work.
Kentuckians are said to be given to bragging, and we do brag sometimes, but the difference between a boast and a fact can easily be determined. I have aimed to state facts, and if the pic- ture I have tried to draw seems overdrawn to any one, let him in- vestigate, and he will find that the history of Lexington for a long time after its settlement was substantially the history of Kentucky herself, and that the benefits she bestowed upon the great Northwest and upon the country have not been over- estimated.
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