History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 36

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814

USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I > Part 36

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It does not appear, however, that Fort Nelson was now abandoned. It became instead head-

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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

quarters for United States troops in this part of the valley, and will hereafter come again into notice.

A TROUBLESOME DISCIPLE OF PAINE.

Mr. Casseday has still another interesting inci- dent to relate of this year, nearly as follows :

The notorious Tom Paine had written a book in which he spoke with some ridicule about Virginia's right to this State, and urged Congress to claim and hold the territory entire. Two Pennsylvanians, Galloway and Pomeroy by name, were great admirers of the writer, and devoted disciples of all his doctrines. Pomeroy coming to the Falls just at this time, gave not a little annoyance to some of the landholders, for those whom he influenced had little regard for the titles of their neighbors. Such a state of things could not easily be met by law, for just what crime the man should be punished for it seemed difficult to decide. An old law of Virginia was finally found which enforced a penalty in tobacco upon "the propagation of false news, to the disturbance of the good people of the colony." In May of the following year, under this law, the man Pomeroy was tried and had to pay two thousand pounds of tobacco, besides paying costs and giving security for future good behavior in the sum of three thou- sand pounds.

Galloway, who had advocated the same doctrines in and around Lexington, met the same fate. Neither could pro- cure the required amount of tobacco, so acted upon a hint given them that they would not be pursued if they should attempt to leave the country.

SOME IMPORTANT LEGISLATION.

By this time Colonel Campbell had escaped from his durance vile as a prisoner of war in Canada, and had represented the danger to his vested interests at the Falls incurred under the act of 1780. In May of this year, therefore, the following act was passed by the Legislature:

An Act to suspend the sale of certain escheated lands, late the property of John Connolly.

WHEREAS, it hath been represented to this Assembly by John Campbell, lately returned from captivity, that in his absence an Act of Assembly passed in the year 1780, "for establishing the town of Louisville, in the county of Jeffer- son," whereby one thousand acres of land, then supposed to be the property of John Connolly, was directed to be laid out into lots and streets, and the money arising from the sale thereof to be paid into the treasury ; and whereas, the said one thousand acres was, at the time of passing the said act, under a mortgage to the said John Campbell and one Joseph Simon, as a security for the payment of £450, Penn- sylvania currency, due to them from the said Connolly; and whereas, other one thousand acres contiguous thereto, said to be the property of the said John Campbell, but then sup- posed to belong to the said John Connolly, together with the said one thousand acres on which the said town was estab- lished, were escheated while the said Camphell was in cap- tivity, and are now liable to be sold under the act concerning escheats and forfeitures from British subjects, whereby great injury may accrue to the said John Campbell.

SECTION 2. Be it therefore enacted, that all further pro- ceedings respecting the sale of the said lots and lands shall

be, and the same is hereby suspended until the end of the next session of the General Assembly.

The following is the act of Assembly so often referred to in the subsequent proceedings of the Board of Trustees of the town :

An Act repealing in part the act for establishing the Town of Louisville.

SEC. I. Whereas, Jno. Campbell and Jno. Connolly, being siezed as tenants in common of and in 4,000 acres of land lying at the Falls of the Ohio river, did, on the 6th of Feb., 1776, execute each to the other a deed of partition of the same land, whereby the said Jno Connolly was to take 1000 acres at the upper end, and one other 1000 acres at the lower end of said tract as his proportion ; and whereas, the said Jno Connolly, being considerably indebted to the said Jno Campbell and Jos Simon, and as a security for the payment thereof did, by deed bearing date the 7th day of Feby, 1776, mortgage to them the said 2000 acres of land ; and whereas, in May session, 1780, an act passed for laying off 1000 acres of land, then supposed to be the forfeited property of the said John Connolly, into lots and streets, and which was established a town by the name of Louisville ; and whereas, it is represented to this present General Assembly by the said John Campbell, that partition lines have not been run for ascertaining the bounds between his and the said Connolly's lands, and that the sum for which the said Connolly mort- gaged his moiety of the lands, together with the interest thereon, is still due to the said Jno Campbell and Jos Simon, and it being unjust to take from them that security of the land so mortgaged by the said Connolly for the payment of the debt and interest.

SEC. 2. Be it therefore enacted, That the act of Assembly for establishing the town of Louisville, at the Falls of Ohio, so far as it effects the property of the said Jno Campbell and Jos Simon, shall be and the same is hereby repealed, and that no act, matter, or thing had or done in virtue of said acts shall be construed, deemed, or taken to effect or prejudice the title of the said Jno Campbell and Jos Simon to the land aforesaid.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That the Surveyor of the county of Jefferson shall run the partition lines between the said Jno Campbell and Jno Connolly according to the division lines described in the said deed of partition.

THE PRICES

of some of the then-considered necessaries of life, as fixed by the County Court about this time, were as follow: Whiskey was $15 per half- pint, corn $10 per gallon, a diet $18, lodging on a feather bed $6, and stabling for a horse one night $4. Colonel Durrett thinks it likely, how- ever, that the traveler took care to pay his land- lord in Continental money, then depreciated at a thousand to one of coin.

COLONEL R. C. ANDERSON.

The most notable arrival of the year was Lieu- tenant-Colonel Richard Clough Anderson, a gal- lant officer of the Revolution, and now Surveyor- General of the Western lands reserved as boun- ties to the soldiers of Virginia in that war. He

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was grandson of Robert Anderson, supposed to have come from Scotland in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and settled in Hanover county, Virginia. From the union of his son Robert (born January 1, 1712), and Elizabeth Clough, daughter, it is somewhat doubtfully said, of a Welsh colonist, Richard C. Anderson sprang. He was born January 12, 1750; in early youth became supercargo for a wealthy Virginia merchant; January 26, 1776, was ap- pointed Captain of the Hanover county com- pany of regulars, and March 7th following, to the same grade in the Fifth regiment of Virginia Continentals; and took a conspicuous part with his company in the battle of Trenton, where he was wounded, and in the Philadelphia hospital to which he was taken he also suffered from smatl-pox, whose marks he carried the rest of his life.

He afterwards participated in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown; February 10, 1778, was made major in the First Virginia regi- ment, and with it took part in the battle of Mon- mouth ; accompanied the expedition of Count D' Estaing to Savannah in the fall of 1779, and was permanently injured in the charge upon the enemy's works; was captured by the British at Charleston, and remained a prisoner nine months; was then detached to service upon the staff of General Lafayette; assisted Governor Nelson, of Virginia, in organizing the militia dur- ing the siege of Yorktown; upon the disband- ment of the army was appointed surveyor-general of bounty lands; came to Louisville in the spring of 1783 and established his office; in 1787 mar- ried a sister of General George Rogers Clark, and the next year transferred his home to his "Soldiers' Retreat," in the comparative wilder- ness ten miles in the interior, where the rest of his life was spent. In 1797, his first wife having died, he married Sarah Marshall. He revisited Virginia in 1824 or 1825, and not long after- wards had the great pleasure of meeting his old companion-in-arms, General Lafayette, dur. ing the latter's visit to Louisville. Colonel An- derson died October 16, 1826, aged seventy-six years, nine months, and four days. He left six sons, all of whom attained greater or less distinc- tion-Richard Clough, Jr., a Congressman and Minister of the United States to Colombia ; Larz, long a Cincinnatian of much wealth and

prominence; Robert, of Fort Sumter fame; Wil- liam Marshall, a pioneer in crossing the Rocky mountains, and a scientist of some note; John Anderson, of Chillicothe, Ohio; and Charles, late Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio, and now an honored resident at Kuttawa, Lyon county, Ken- tucky. To the kindness of the last-named wc are indebted for authentic materials for this brief biography of one of the most remarkable men of Louisville's early day.

MAJOR HARRISON.

With Colonel Anderson, in a "broadhorn" down the Ohio, came to the Falls Major John Harrison, who had also served gallantly in the Revolutionary war. In 1787 he married Mary Ann, daughter of Dr. Benjamin Johnston, and the same year, when the inhabitants sought tem- porary refuge in the fort at Clarksville, during fear of Indian attack, his oldest child, who be- came Mrs. New, was born. He continued to re- side in Louisville, and died in 1821. Among his five children was James, born May 1, 1799, now the Nestor of the Louisville bar, and the sole living link of native residents connecting the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

1784-MORE LEGISLATION.

In October, 1784, still another act was passed by the Virginia Legislature, reciting the doubts which had arisen "in the minds of the purchas- ers of lots in the town of Louisville with regard to their titles," upon the construction of the act of October, 1783, that "the Trustees of the said town of Louisville know not how to proceed in executing the law passed in May, 1780, for es- tablishing the town of Louisville." It was there- fore enacted-

That the Trustees of the said town of Louisville shall, as soon as may be, give notice to the said John Campbell, and proceed to running the partition lines between the lands o the said John Campbell and John Connolly, according to their respective deeds of partition ; and, as soon as the said partition lines shall be run, the said Trustees shall lay off in- to convenient lots or parcels, not exceeding one hundred acres, and seil such of the escheated lands of the said John Connolly as remain unsold, and shall, in the first instance, after paying the necessary charges of surveying and laying off the said land, apply the money arising from such sales to redeeming the said land from the mortgage to the said John Campbell and Joseph Simon, and shall pay the overplus into the Treasury of this Commonwealth. And in case the said lines of partition shall have been run, according to an act en- titled "An act for repealing in part an act for establishing the town of Louisville," previous to the passing of this act, then the said Trustees shall proceed immediately to sell, in

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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

manner before directed, the said escheated lands of the said John Connolly, and to apply the money arising from such sale to the purposes aforesaid.

It was further provided they should receive and apply all moneys due for lots sold under the origi- nal act and that the titles of purchasers under that act should be deemed valid against the claim of Campbell and Simon, and their heirs or assigns, but that this should not be construed to affect the title of Campbell to such part of the town as had been laid off upon his share of the land.

Sundry other acts, passed from time to time by the Legislature of Virginia or Kentucky, as the dates approached when they were demanded, afforded relief to those purchasers of lots who had been unable to comply with the provision of the statute of 1780, prescribing the "condition of building on each a dwelling-house, 60 feet by 20 feet at least, with a brick or stone chimney, to be finished within two years from the day of sale." These acts extended the time from year to year, as much as was deemed necessary to secure all in their possessory rights. The Trustees were also changed by the Legislature at least once, as will be found hereafter, in the Civil List of the city.

THE FIRST LAND OFFICE.

Another important measure, in regard to landed property in this region and the Virginia Military District in Ohio, was undertaken July 20th of this year, in the opening of a land office in the little town of Louisville. All the terri- tory between the Cumberland and Green rivers, except the grant to Henderson & Company, but including, of course, the site of Louisville and the present Jefferson county, had been appropriated as bounty lands to the soldiers of the Virginia line, on the Continental establishment, in the Revolutionary war. If they should be exhausted, locations were then to be made for the same purpose upon the present soil of Ohio, between the Scioto and Little Miami rivers, in what is now known as the Virginia Military District. In 1783 Colonel Richard Clough Anderson, a Virginia officer of high reputation in the late war and a brother-in-law of General Clark, whose sister he married, was appointed principal surveyor of these military districts by the officers of the Virginia line, and his appointment was confirmed by the Virginia Legislature. His con-

tract with them, dated December 17, 1783, 1S still extant, and has been printed in McDonald's Sketches. He removed to Louisville, bought a fine farm in the neighborhood, which he named the "Soldiers' Retreat," from the character of his business, and opened his office, at which it seems that formal location or entries could he made, as later at the Government land-offices. The first entry was made in the name of William Brown, of land at the mouth of the Cumber- land. No location of the kind was made upon the Ohio lands until August 1, 1787, when Wace Clements entered 1,000 acres at the mouth of Eagle creek, above Cincinnati. The office was subsequently removed to Chillicothe, Ohio, upon the Military District in that State, when the increasing number of entries there demanded the change, for convenience' sake.

OTHER SURVEYORS.

The surveyor of Jefferson county, George May, also a Virginian, and appointed by the Governor, formerly surveyor of the county of Kentucky, had already opened an office, in November of 1782, at Cox's Station, now in Nelson county. The notorious Captain Gilbert Imlay, self-styled "commissioner for laying out lands in the back settlements," and author of A Topographical Description of the Western Terri- tory, belonging mainly to Kentucky, published first in 1792, is said to have been appointed a deputy surveyor in this county in 1784, and to have laid off many thousands of acres here. Mr. Collins, from whose history we have this fact, thinks that "probably he was agent for English land speculators." He was the same Imlay with whom the celebrated English woman, Mary Woolstonecraft, afterwards became involved, and to whom she wrote the remarkable letters that have recently been collected and embodied in a printed volume.

William Pope was employed in 1783 to make a fresh draft of the plat of Louisville ; but it also has gone the way of all the earth. The map of Imlay, deputy surveyor aforesaid, may have been made about this time. It appears in his Topo- graphical Description, published some years afterwards. Colonel Durrett adds:

It presents the same islands as shown by the map of Cap- tain Hutchins already alluded to. But the shores of the Ohio are altogether different from what they appeared in the chart of Hutchins. On the Indiana side the village of Ctarks-

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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

ville appears with a dozen houses, opposite the rapids, and a little higher up inclosed farms are seen in cultivation, with Fort Fenny at their eastern extremity, about where Jefferson- ville now stands. On the Kentucky side of the river not only farms and gardens are seen inclosed and in cultivation, but quite a town appears in front of Corn Island. The town lies entirely in front of this island, and the point where the pres- ent High street originally branched off from Twelfth seems to be its center. There are but three streets shown on this map, and these correspond to the present Main, Monroe and High streets. On Main street, beginning about where Fourth street now is and extending to about Twelfth, can be counted forty houses ; on Monroe street fourteen, and on High street twenty-eight. The space between the houses on the north side of Main street and the river seems to be laid out in gardens, and farms appear on the east side of Bear- grass creek and west of the houses on Main, Monroe, and High streets. South of Main street there were no doubt some houses on the streets now known as Market and Jeffer- son, but they are not exhibited on the map. To show that even at this early period the enterprising citizens of Louis- ville were thinking seriously of some way to get around the Falls with their loaded barges, the line of a canal is marked on this map from the mouth of Beargrass creek to the foot of Rock Island.

ARRIVALS.

Patrick Joyes came this year, and settled about the same time on the lot on the northeast corner of Main and Sixth streets, which continued in his family until the summer of 1882. An Irishman by birth, he was brought up in France and Spain and came to Louisville as an agent of a mercan- tile honse in Philadelphia. In those early days his knowledge of French and Spanish brought him in contact with all the prominent men of the valley of the Ohio who were involved in either commercial or political negotiations with Louisi- ana. His oldest son, Thomas Joyes, was born December 9, 1787, on the above-mentioned cor- ner, and inherited his father's talents for the ac- quisition of languages, having mastered by the time he attained his majority, or soon afterwards, French, German, and Spanish, and one or two Indian dialects, by picking them up from the few books that were accessible to him, and by receiv- ing oral instruction from any foreigner who could spare him a moment's time. Thomas Joyes's training was miscellaneous-in the clerk's office as a copyist, and in the field as a surveyor. He served in the Wabash campaign of 1812, and was a captain in the Thirteenth regiment of Ken- tucky militia at the battle of New Orleans. He was a deputy surveyor under General Rector in the West about the year 1816, and surveyed for the Government that part of Illinois of which Peoria is the center. In the well-known struggle

between the two parties that distracted Kentucky after the financial crisis that followed soon after the War of 1812, he was a zealons "new court " man, and represented Jefferson and Oldham counties in the Kentucky Legislature. As his native place grew from villagehood into cityhood he was frequently a member of the board of trustees and of the council, and represented it on two or three occasions in the Legislature, the last time having been in the winter of 1834-35. He died May 4, 1866, the oldest native of Louis- ville.

The second son of Patrick Joyes was John Joyes, born January 8, 1799, who, after com- pleting his academic education, studied law and was admitted to the Bar of Louisville. He was one of the early mayors of the city when it was raised to that dignity, and by executive appoint- ment was made the first judge of the city court when that court was created in 1835, which office he filled with success and ability until the year 1854. He also represented his native connty in the Legislature when quite young. He died in Louisville May 31, 1877. The other children of Patrick Joyes were Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. McGonigal (afterwards Smith), and Mrs. William Sale. The greater part of his posterity are still residents of Louisville.

In 1783 also came to Kentucky, by emigra- tion from Virginia, the well-remembered Alex- ander Scott Bullitt, who for almost a quarter of a century was a resident of Jefferson county. A full sketch of his life and public services will be given in a future chapter.

Colonel Armistead Churchill, of Middlesex county, Virginia, removed to the Falls this year, and settled on the estate ever since held by the family, three miles from the river. Here he died in 1795, aged sixty four; but Mrs. Churchill sur- vived until 1831, when she died at the age of ninety-one. They were parents of Colonel Sam- uel Churchill.

CREVECOEUR'S WONDERFUL STORY.

The most surprising account of the infant Louisville that has been preserved, is included in an elaborate letter written here August 26 of this year, by M. St. John de Crevecœur, a native of Normandy, who emigrated to this country at the age of sixteen, was a cultivator of the soil in Western New York at the outbreak of the Rev-

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olution, and subsequently French consul in New York city. This, with other letters of Creve- cœur, was published in three volumes in Paris in 1787, and elegantly translated in 1879 by Professor P. A. Towne, for the early numbers of his Louisville Monthly Magazine. We give but brief extracts from this most interesting old doc- ument:

After having remained twenty-two days at Pittsburg, 1 took advantage of the first boat which started for Louisville. It was 55 feet long, 12 wide, and 6 deep, drawing 3 feet of water. On its deck had been built a low cabin, but very neat, divided into several apartments, and on the forecastle the cattle and horses were kept as in a stable. It was loaded with bricks, boards, planks, bars of iron, coal, instruments of husbandry, dismounted wagons, anvils, bellows, dry- goods, brandy, flour, biscuits, hams, lard, and salt meat, etc. These articles came in part from the country in the vicinity of Pittsburg and from Indiana [the old district ol that name in Western Virginia]. I observed the larger part of the pas- sengers were young men who came from nearly all the Mid- dle States; pleasant, contented, full of buoyant hopes ; hav- ing with them the money coming from the sale of their old farms, or from the share received from their parents, they were going to Kentucky to engage in business, to work at their trades, to acquire and establish new homes. What a singular but happy restlessness that which is constantly urging us all to become better off than we now are, and which drives us from one end of a continent to the other. In the meantime we were kept busy catching fish, which are very abundant .* You can hardly imagine the singular charm this pleasure adds to this new mode of navigation. In the evening, after laying up, the more skillful hunters would go to the land to shoot wild turkeys, which, you are aware, wait for the last rays of the sun to fade away before going to roost on the tops of the highest trees.

Crevecœur's mention of green turtle in this part of the Ohio suggests that quite probably, like Ashe and other early travelers in America, he was capable of drawing a long bow when it would lend interest to his narrative. That im- pression, we suspect, will be confirmed upon perusal of some of the passages below :

At last, on the tenth day since our departure from Pitts- burg, we anchored in front of Louisville, having made seven hundred and five miles in two hundred and twelve hours and one-half of navigation. What was my surprise when, in place of the huts, the tents, and primitive cabins, constructed and placed by mere chance and sur- rounded with palisades, of which I had heard so much dur- ing the last five years, I saw numerous houses of two stories, elegant and well painted, and (as far as the stumps of trees would permit) that all the streets were spacious and well laid out !

Shortly after landing I learned that this platean belonged to Colonel Campbell, who had himself drawn the plan of the

new city, and had divided it into lots of a half-acre each .* The houses nearest the river were not only painted, but even had piazzas extending the whole length. Those more dis- tant appeared to me to be only enclosures without glass for the windows; the frame of others seemed to be awaiting a roof and planks; and those most distant were simple bark cabins covered with leaves, arranged in lines on the limits of the concession, Those citizens most easy in their circum- stances had already enclosed their half-acre, in which I saw the commencement of gardens, if that name can be given to cabbages, beans, potatoes, salad, etc., planted in the midst of stumps that they had not yet time to take up by the roots. Any one who could find a way to transport here a large nursery of fruit-trees would render an important service to this young colony.

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History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 36

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co. Number of Pages: 814

Author: Williams, L.A., & Co., Cleveland
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : L. A. Williams & Co.
Number of Pages: 814