USA > Kentucky > History of Kentucky, Volume II > Part 87
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Three years before the visit of Mr. Cuming, Col. Aaron Burr was a guest of Joshua Wilson's Inn; he entertained his beautiful daughter, Theodosia Burr Alston, and her distinguished husband, and Mr. Blen- nerhassett while there. His visit was not heralded abroad and an amus- ing story is told of how his presence in town was discovered by a small boy who recognized hin from a representation he had seen of him at an exhibition of waxworks showing his duel with Hamilton. Upon his wax effigy the showman had hung a placard upon which he had inscribed :
Vol. II-40
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"Oh Aaron Burr, what hast thou done! Thou hast shooted dead great Hamilton. You got behind a bunch of thistle And shot him dead with a big hoss-pistol."
Apropos of Colonel Burr, Mr. Cuming said, his trial was a frequent subject of discussion in the taverns he visited, and that the people were about equally divided in their opinion as to his guilt or innocence.
Joshua Wilson leased the tavern from Mr. Postlethwaite. His license in an old record book in the Fayette County Courthouse dated May 14, 1804, says: "On motion of Joshua Wilson, license is granted him to keep a tavern at the home lately occupied by John Postlethwaite one year from the date hereof, who came into court and entered into bond with George M. Bibb, his security, as the law directs."
Capt. John Postlethwaite, a Revolutionary soldier from Pennsylvania, who built the tavern in 1800, was the ideal tavern keeper of the early days; dressed in neatly fitted small-clothes and gray silk hose and im- maculate ruffles, he graciously greeted each guest, and, by his cordiality and dignified demeanor, won each for his friend. His advertisements were couched in chaste and elegant language, as the above transaction in the Gazette of June 5, 1804, will prove. It says: "I have rented the house and tavern lately occupied by me in this town to Mr. Joshua Wil- son, formerly of Bardstown. I beg leave to return my sincere thanks to my numerous customers for their preference in my favor, whilst in that house, and am happy and confident in assuring those who continue their favors to Mr. Wilson that they will find every accommodation that the house and situation is capable of affording, which I hope I do not pre- sume in saying will be equal to any in the Western Country."
Captain Postlethwaite was a prosperous, public spirited citizen, serv- ing his city as treasurer and banker, as well as tavern keeper, and Cap- tain Postlethwaite's Light Infantry Company was an important addition to all public functions. For a time he allowed the postoffice to be con- ducted at his tavern, which was a low, rambling log building on the corner of Main and Limestone streets, with the principal entrance on Limestone. Much of the furniture was made by local cabinet workers, of native cherry and walnut, which was fine and glossy, and the comfort of the corded four-post beds and the beauty of the Windsor chairs were men- tioned by more than one writer of the times. The rag carpets were as fashionable then as now, and while the guests had to be "lighted to bed by tallow candles," there was a small army of faithful slaves to render the gracious service. He conducted the tavern at various intervals until his death in 1833, during the cholera scourge in Lexington.
MONROE AND LAFAYETTE GUESTS
But Mr. Sanford Keen was conducting the tavern when the two great fires occurred, and it was he who, seeing it rise again and again from its ashes like the fabled Phoenix of old, conferred upon it the name it now bears and caused the sign of the Phoenix to be placed on both its Main and Limestone Street corners, as the picture of the original Phoenix Hotel plainly shows. After Mr. Keen's death his widow conducted the tavern and did it well.
During the Keen management the famous hostelry sheltered two of Lexington's most distinguished guests, President Monroe in 1818, and General Lafayette in 1825.
President Monroe and suite, and General Jackson and suite, who came to celebrate the Fourth of July, were escorted to the city by a committee of prominent citizens and by the Light Infantry and Rifle Company. A federal salute was fired as they entered the town and as they arrived at
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Mr. Keen's Tavern. They were extensively entertained and a public dinner was given at the tavern in honor of the President of the United States.
The visit of Lafayette occurred under the dispension of Mrs. Keen. The Nation's guest was met on the Versailles pike by various state and county committees and by the Fayette Hussars, under Captain Pindell, described as "striking and elegant in their handsome uniforms, mounted on blooded white horses and performing their evolutions with great ac- curacy and skill and grace." A picture in an old Gazette adds confirma- tion to the assertion, for it shows them at a full gallop and gaily bedecked in feathers, swords and gold lace. This imposing cavalcade escorted General Lafayette and his suite to Mrs. Keen's Tavern, where "his apart- ments were fitted up with great taste and elegance and adorned with a profusion of fresh flowers."
According to the Gazette, numerous addresses were made to him: a "Literary Repast" was provided for his entertainment to Transylvania University, where original odes were delivered by students in French, Latin and English; and entertainment was given him at Lafayette's Female Academy, which was named for him, at which the audience was "electrified and tears were brought to eyes unaccustomed to such emo- tion." After attending a "Military Review" he was guest of honor at a grand dinner at the Masonic Lodge, where he sat before a "castellated cake surmounted by the American flag and covered by numerous ap- propriate devices, the handiwork of Monsieur Giron and Monsieur Audin, who had paid great attention to emblematic painting ;" then followed the ball, at which wonderful costumes, still preserved in Lexington, were worn. He did not tarry long at that ball, but retired early, and when he returned to the Masonic Hall for breakfast next morning, he sat before the same "castellated cake," which was afterwards carefully preserved and exhibited in all its glory at the next Masonic Conclave.
After he sat to Jouett for his portrait, which now hangs in Frankfort, and had been wined and dined for forty-eight consecutive hours, "he ascended his barouche and departed amidst the acclamations of a free and grateful people."
There is neither time nor space to recount many of the interesting events that occurred in this noted old tavern, but the Gazette gives a de- lightful account of the dinner served there by Captain Postlethwaite in 1803, when prominent men were gathered from all parts of the state to celebrate the cession of Louisiana. At the dinner twenty-four brilliant toasts were delivered, most of them accompanied by three cheers.
THE GRAND BALL OF 1834
It also gives a dazzling description of the grand ball in the basement of the tavern in 1834, celebrating the opening of "The Pioneer Railway of the West from Lexington to Frankfort," at which more than five hun- dred persons, including the governor of the state, members of the legis- lature, congressmen and judges of the Court of Appeals were present. when "in the profusion of the supper and refreshments it seemed as if earth and sea and sky had been plundered of their sweets."
By this time, however, the famous old tavern was generally called a hotel, and we must go back to the beginning of things in Lexington to find the veritable old English inns with their quaint old signs that abounded in the early days.
The first one in Lexington was opened in 1785. The tavern sign bore the coat-of-arms of Virginia and its proprietor, James Bray, an- nounced "Entertainment for Man and Beast."
The sign of the second was the Sheaf of Wheat. The tavern was built and conducted by Robert Megowan and the first state treasurer's
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office was housed under its humble roof. John McNair kept the tavern at the sign of The Buffalo; Benjamin Kiser at the sign of The Indian Queen; Ayres at the sign of The Cross Keys; Satterwhite at the sign of The Eagle. We do not know who kept the tavern at the sign of The Side of Bacon. Cuming thought the Travellers' Inn as good as Wilson's; the Democratic Club occupied rooms at the Old Free and Easy and Elijah Noble advertised the virtues of Old Ironsides at length, claiming that he could accommodate travelers for private parties with no inter- ruption from strangers, liquors were excellent and the table always spread with the choicest of each successive season. The stable contained sixty horses under the personal supervision and care of Mr. Ballenger.
Luke Usher's tavern sign was "Don't Give Up the Ship." showing the ship at full sail.
It seems to have been a curious custom in those days to advertise in rhyme. Old Shaw, the well digger, and Cummens, the wig maker, often did, and one man even advertised that his wife had left his bed and board in rhyme, so we need not be surprised to find Luke Usher, the enter- prising Irish actor, advertising his tavern in the same curious way. In the Gazette of May 1, 1818, he says :
"DON'T GIVE UP THE SHIP"
"Who's not been in Kentucky hath not seen the world. 'Tis the state in which Freedom's own flag is unfurled. It is Plenty's headquarters and misery's grave, Where the Ladies are lovely and the Men are all brave.
When the weary and hungry to Lexington trip Let them stop and regale at the Sign of the Ship, Where I promise to treat them as well as I'm able With a larder well-stored and good liquors and stable.
"Those who've suits at the Court House may take ere they start A choice julip or cordial to gladden the heart, So that gaining their cause they'll look gaily and brightly Or if they lose it, they'll feel the loss lightly. I have Wine and I've Spirits for those who'd drink deep, And soft beds that might lull even Anguish to sleep. You'll live well at my Inn where the Travelers throng, And they who live well can't be said to do wrong. To keep peace with my guests and elude want and sorrow I would trust but one day, and that day's called tomorrow. Don't Give Up the Ship, make an Irishman Lucky. So, here's Erin Go Bragh-and Hurrah for Kentucky !"
OTHER BLUE GRASS TAVERNS
But enough of Lexington for the present. The history of the Old Tavern at Harrodsburg, which was so closely associated with Burr, Wil= kinson and Daviess, has been charmingly given by Miss Mary Stephenson, who told also the local tradition, that Lafayette, while a guest there, played a matched game of billiards with Richard Figg, who won the game, and that notable balls were given in honor of the nation's guest at the Old Tavern.
At the Eagle Tavern in Cynthiana, in 1795, the tavern rates were: For a dinner, one shilling and threepence; a breakfast and supper, each one shilling ; for a bed each night, sixpence; lodging in clean sheets, six- pence ; for whisky by the half-pint, eightpence ; for stableage and hay for one horse for twenty-four hours, one shilling ; for pasturage for one horse twenty-four hours, one shilling and eightpence; for corn and oats by the quart, tuppence.
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When Fortesque Cuming went to Paris on his tour in 1808, he stopped at Buchanan's Inn, where the hostler was a fine negro man, who had for- merly belonged to General Washington. He had accompanied and served the general in all his campaigns and as he learned farriery, cook- ing and hair dressing in England in his youth, and was such a faithful servant, Washington had liberated him and in his will had left him a piece of land near Mount Vernon.
Cuming also told of stopping at Daily's Inn on his way to Frankfort. Daily was a mulatto who raised his own garden and kept ice in the sun- mer time, an unusual luxury for those days. He played the fiddle to entertain his guests while they ate, and the fame of his good cooking, neatly kept house, good taste and anecdotes of noted men who had been his patrons drew many travelers to his door. Moreover, those who had
CROSS KEYS INN, NEAR SHELBYVILLE (Courtesy of The Filson Club)
once enjoyed his delicious fare thereafter gave his tavern preference over that of its white rival, which was known as Cole's Bad Inn.
Colonel Polk, a local historian of Lexington, told me that Cole was the grandfather of Jesse James, and that Mrs. James was raised in that tavern, which stood on the road between Midway and Versailles, about one mile from Midway. He says there was a tradition that skeletons were found in the cellar after the old tavern had been deserted, which were believed to be the remains of travelers who had been foully dealt with.
On his way to Frankfort, Mr. Cumning met three young men on horse- back just returning from Plympian Springs, "a place of very fashionable resort," where they had been on a party of pleasure and where they had attended more to cards, billiards and horse-jockeying than the use of the waters for medicinal purposes."
It was at the Olympian Tavern, when Mr. Gill kept it, that the famous blessing was asked by two intoxicated youths who had arrived too late for dinner. Realizing that Mr. Gill was within hearing distance, one of them reverently bowed his head and prayed :
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"Oh, thou Giver of the fowls and the fishes Look down upon these empty dishes, And with the power thou did'st them fill Bless both of us but damn old Gill."
At Frankfort, Mr. Cuming stayed at the sign of the Golden Eagle, where he sat down to "sumptuous breakfast with two green silk air-fans, kept in motion over his head by a little negro girl with a string from the ceiling." This commodious dining room was seventy-two feet long.
But the tavern has had its day ; its glories have faded as the stage coaches vanished, supplanted by railroad transportation. Now and then the travelers along the highways may discover some rambling, dilapidated old building, which upon investigation proves to be the ruins of an old inn, but even these are rare and fast disappearing.
It stands all alone like a goblin in grey, The old-fashioned inn of the pioneer day. In the land so forlorn and forgotten, it seems Like a wraith of the past riding into our dreanis. Its glories have vanished and only the ghost Of a sign-board now creaks on its desolate post. Recalling a time when all hearts were akin As they rested at night in the welcoming inn. Oh! the songs they would sing and the tales they would spin As they lounged in the light of the old country inn. But a day came at last when the stage brought no load
To the gate as it rolled up the long dusky road. And lo! at sunrise a shrill whistle blew O'er the hills and the old yielded place to the new.
And a merciless age, with its discord and din, Made wreck as it passed of the "Pioneer Inn." BY MRS. W. T. LAFFERTY.
CHAPTER LXXX THE CUMBERLAND GAP REGION
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE PEOPLE
Less than a century and a half ago that intrepid leader, Daniel Boone, led a band of bold pioneers into the vast wilderness country beyond the Alleghany Mountains. Just why he, of all the men that came, and, too, at a time when a fearful war was being waged for independence, should be the chosen leader for the extension of a vast empire-an empire that in time was to extend from ocean to ocean-is one of the unexplainable facts of history. Destiny in some way seized on this unlettered child of the forest and used him to perform one of the greatest feats of all time.
An intelligent historian has said: "Daniel Boone appears before us in these exciting times the central figure towering like a collossus amid that hardy band of pioneers who opposed their breasts to the shock of the struggle which gave a terrible significance and a crimson hue to the history of the old dark and bloody ground."
No nobler undertaking ever came to man Than came to Boone and his followers! They extended mankind's plan To a wider domain among the Powers ! When time enough elapses And history has been given her due,
The records of those great collapses Will give place to records anew. Then Boone's achievement will stand On the pages of history as actor, And mankind will read in grand Pageant the record of the benefactor To whom all mankind is debtor. Long may his memory live in her annals!
Long may his deeds become the better To shine in dark places like candles !
As early as 1773 Boone with his family and some others were on their way to Kentucky, by way of the famous Cumberland Gap route and just before they reached this Gap a party of young men in the com- pany who had fallen in the rear with the cattle were attacked by the Indians in a narrow defile of the mountain. A number of them were killed, Boone's own son, seventeen years old, being among the number. After this incident, at the insistence of the other members of the party, they fell back to a point in Southwestern Virginia. There they remained for a time, but in 1775, after Boone had completed the Wilderness Road and the fort at Boonesboro had been built, they made their way safely through Cumberland Gap to Boonsboro.
Mr. Shaler says: "Almost every part of the surface (that of Ken- tucky) had been traversed by other explorers before this man, who
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passes into history as the typical pioneer, set foot upon its ground." This is doubtless true, and yet he possessed such dauntless courage, such rare persistence, such gentleness of nature, such a vivid imagina- tion, such consummate skill and judgment, such lofty manhood, that he easily became the dauntless leader, the moving spirit, the very soul of the whole movement.
We owe much to Dr. Thomas Walker, the real discoverer of South- eastern Kentucky. He, the learned explorer from Virginia, in company with some others, came through Cumberland Gap in 1750. Collins, in his History of Kentucky, has this to say about them: "In 1750 a small party of Virginians from Orange and Culpeper counties-Dr. Thomas Walker, Ambrose Powell and Colby Chew among them-entered what is now the State of Kentucky at Cumberland Gap, being the first white men known to have visited interior or Eastern Kentucky. The date was pre-
THE CUMBERLAND GAP. VIEW FROM TENNESSEE SIDE (Courtesy of H. H. Fuson, Covington)
served by the distinct recollection and statement of Doctor Walker, the most prominent man of the party, and by the carving upon the trees, those silent recorders of Kentucky's early history. Isaac Shelby, the first governor of the state, stated that in 1770 he was on Yellow Creek. a mile or two from Cumberland Mountain, in company with Doctor Walker and others, when Walker told him of having been upon that spot twenty years before, and 'yonder tree contains the record of it; Ambrose marked his name and year upon it, and you will find it there now.' Colonel Shelby examined the tree and found upon it, in large. legible characters, A. POWELL-1750.'" 1
Walker gave names to the important streams and mountains of the region : Cumberland Mountain, Cumberland River, Cumberland Gap,
1 When the writer was just a small boy, several years before Middlesboro was laid out as a town, my father and I were passing through this valley, then owned by a man by the name of Jack Mealer and cultivated by him as a farm, and he pointed out to me the spot where this beech tree once stood and told me the story of the record on the tree practically as Collins has told it. Years afterward I read with great pleasure the confirmation of the story by Collins.
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and other points. The Cumberland Mountains were called by the Indians Waseoto, which name is retained by the present town of Wasioto, one mile south of Pineville.
Walker and his party traveled down Cumberland River, along the route later laid out by Boone in his Wilderness Road-through the Gap, down into Yellow Creek Valley, where Middlesboro is now located, down Yellow Creek to where it joins the Cumberland, and down the Cumberland, passing through the narrows at the upper edge of the town of Pineville, crossing Cumberland Ford in the center of the town-to a point a few miles below where Barbourville now stands. Here the party erected a log cabin,2 said to be the first building ever erected by white men in what is now Kentucky. A number of years ago this building was still standing, when a progressive farmer cleared it away to make room for a more modern structure. From near here the party turned from their northern course and went to the headwaters of the Kentucky River.
Isaac Shelby took up the land around Cumberland Ford (so called because Boone's Trace crossed Cumberland River at this point). The present Town of Pineville now occupies the original Cumberland Ford Settlement. The old Town of Pineville was in the Narrows, along the foot of the mountain. The title passed from Governor Shelby to James Renfro, whose family held it for a time, and finally came into possession of the Gibsons. The Gibsons today own a house, a small acreage sur- rounding this ford and a scattered acreage surrounding the town. The larger part of the original settlement was sold to a corporation for the site of the new Town of Pineville.
The Gibson residence, once the home of the Renfros, stands upon the bank of the river a few hundred feet below the bridge that crosses the river to the freight depot. The indentations in the bank of the stream where the old Wilderness Road crossed begin in front of this house, extend downstream about 150 feet, and enter the ford just above a recently built barn on the bank. The direction of the ford extended slightly downstream and came out on the other side where a small rivulet flows in from the mountain opposite the town.
The building is one of those large ones with a square effect, two stories in height and has two log cabins, probably smokehouses, to the right and well back. Situated as it is, on a large plot of ground over- looking the river, it presents the effect of one of those old English coun- try estates.
The Narrows, up the river at the edge of town, should share in the fame of Cumberland Ford in the lower part of the town. Here the waters of a thousand rills have cut a gorge through Pine Mountain, which im- posed itself as a barrier across the region, as wonderful as any of the famous passes of the Alps. Here rugged walls of rock 1,300 feet high rise from the water's edge on both sides and vie with each other in their perpendicular reach toward the sky. Here cliffs and rugged rock-ledges protrude from a most gorgeous foliage and, with a rapid river plunging among great boulders at their feet, Nature has formed a wonderful pass for the oncoming civilizations of men. Cumberland Gap, the Nar- rows, Cumberland Ford-the great trio-formed the outlet for the ex- tension of that vast empire known as the United States of America.
That the Indians visited this region, camped here for long seasons and left records of their civilization is evident in many instances. A mound in the present Town of Pineville, only a short distance from Cumberland Ford, on which Dr. W. J. Hodges built a residence a few years ago, appears to have been erected and used by the Indians as a burying ground. Collins says of this mound: "In the large bottom at
2 See articles of W. S. Hudson, 1905, Page 21. Scrap Book No. I of H. H. Fuson.
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Cumberland Ford is a mound 10 or 15 feet high and 100 feet in circum- ference. Bones, pots and other curiosities have been dug from it. It has evidently been a burying ground of the Indians or of some earlier and extinct race." Capt. William Bingham, of Pineville, the second man to start in business in Old Pineville and one of the oldest living men of this section, is authority for the statement that during the Civil war some rebels were hanged to cherry trees (wild cherry) on this mound and buried at the foot of them. But when Doctor Hodges excavated for the foundation of his house, the tombstones (plain stones with the names of H. K. Ruther and D. J. Pruitt, of the Forty-ninth Indiana Volunteers, carved on them) and the bones of these two Union soldiers were found.
In the Narrows, described above, a young man by the name of L. Farmer, at that time a laborer on the farm of Gabriel Lee, who lived in Pineville, found under a big cliff in the Narrows the bust of an Indian carved from yellow pine. Collins says of this image: "In the winter of 1869, L. Farmer, of Pineville, was hunting a fox (that had caught his turkey) among the cliffs that surround Pineville, and found a wooden
VIEW OF PINEVILLE, BELL COUNTY
image of a man, about two feet high, in sitting posture, with no legs. It looked as though it might have been made by the Indians centuries ago. It is a good image of a man, and is made of yellow pine. Some of its features, part of its nose and ears, are obliterated by time, although found in a place where it was kept entirely dry. One ear is visible, with a hole pierced in it as though once ornamented with jewelry. It is a great curiosity to travelers."
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