USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I > Part 47
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
The seminary, which had been recently estab- lished, is described as a tolerably capacious brick building, under the direction of the Trustees of the town, wherein are taught the several branches of a regular and classical education. "This is not, I am sorry to say, so well patronized as it deserves, the clamors of Plutus devouring the modest accents of the muses, whose invitation to repair thither is seldom heard and still seldomer accepted."
Other notable institutions are described at some length; as the Hope Distillery, with its refrigeratory the largest in America, holding eighty thousand gallons at once, a productive capacity of twelve hundred gallons per day, with five thousand hogs fed upon the refuse; the iron foundry and engine factory; the sugar refinery; the soap and candle, and the tobacco manufac- tories, three of the latter being engaged upon the preparation of strips for foreign markets, and several others making chewing-tobacco, snuff, and cigars, all together producing $80,000 a year; the steam manufacturing mill, "a solid and handsome brick edifice five stories high, on Jef- ferson street, owned by John H. Clarke & Co."; the upper and lower steam saw-mills, and other works of importance to the rising town and the surrounding region.
Coal was coming rapidly into use, "owing to the discovery of a large body of coal that is said to be situated between this place and Cincinnati, as well as of the same substance on Silver Creek."
The Doctor had a word also upon the roads : "The roads leading from Louisville to the differ- ent parts of the country will shortly be as good as excellent turnpikes can make them. The one to Shippingport and Portland will be finished this summer, as will a considerable portion of the great Lexington road that leads through Shelbyville."
SOME OTHER VIEWS OF 1819.
We subjoin the observations of several other writers, who were visitors to Louisville and the vicinity this year.
In October Mr. W. Faux, who calls himself "An English Farmer" upon the title-page of his book, Memorable Days in America, took this locality in his tour through the Western country, and thus wrote of it:
In the evening I reached flourishing Louisville, a grand river town and port of Kentucky, on the banks of and oppo- site the big rocky falls of the Ohio, here a mile broad; seven hundred miles by water and three hundred and sixty by land from Wheeling, Virginia, and about midway between Wash- ington city and New Orleans. The land here and all round this town and in the valley to Shelbyville, is excessively rich and the finest in the State, but I fear is sickly to its inhab- itants. Louisville must become a place of high importance, if pestilence prevent not. Our hotel, called Union Hall, is very capacious and full of company, composed of polished military men and mercantile gentlemen of New Orleans, many of whom are waiting for the troubling or rising of the waters, and consequent movement of the steamboats. Board here, with five in a bed-room, is $2. 3, per day-a shameful piece of extortion, when it is remembered that provisions of all kinds here cost a mere trifle; yet in the hall an immense dining-table seems crowded with good company. Notices, however, are posted in several rooms by the landlord, saying that, unless gentlemen boarders pay up, further credit will be discontinued. Laborers and mechanics here are rather scarce, although so many are said to have re- turned home to England from New York. The former receive $11/2 to $2 a day, and the latter $212, with provisions very cheap. The steamboat Vesuvius, from New Orleans to Louisville, freighted in on one trip $47,000, and cleared half, that is $23, 500 net profit. Sixty or seventy of these fine boats are now on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
Mr. Adlard Welby, of Lincolnshire, England, also visited the place this year, and said of Louis- ville afterwards, in his Visit to North America:
A handsome town, of which the chief part is in one street. There are two good hotels, at one of which (Allen's, a good family house) we met with every attention on our return.
. The bed of the river is here of vast breadth, and dur- ing the spring must afford a grand view when the waters are struggling with and rushing over the extensive rocky falls. At present a very small channel is sufficient for its reduced stream. Travelers of curiosity can now traverse on wheels, with a guide, the greatest part of the rocks over which in a few months a mighty body of water will roll with tremendous force.
THE GAZETTEERS.
Dana's Geographical Sketches in the Western Country, published this year in Cincinnati, gives Louisville a notice of some length, but adds nothing to the information elsewhere accessible. The following remark, however, may provoke some amusement :
Although a company has been incorporated for opening a canal on the Kentucky side of the Rapids, there is not much prospect that such an undertaking will be effected, as it is generally thought by disinterested men that the formation of a canal there would be attended with a vastly greater expense than on the Indiana side; the latter having been already un- dertaken, and is now progressing under the direction of enter- prising, skillful managers
In the edition of Morse's American Universal Geography for this year, Louisville is remarked as "in point of wealth and consequence, the
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
second town in the State. The great command of water-power, and the other advan- tages of its situation, will probably make Louis- ville, at no distant day, the seat of extensive manufactures."
MORE NOTES OF THE SITUATION.
There were now in Louisville three banks, three bookstores, one nail factory, two hotels, ten blacksmiths, eight tailors, three watchmakers, one stonecutter, four turners, thirty plasterers, twelve lawyers, six brickyards, two breweries, one music store, thirty-six wholesale and retail stores, three printing offices, twenty-eight groceries, four good taverns, six saddlers, one silver plater, ten cabinet-makers, one upholsterer, five hatters, six shoemakers, twenty-two physicians, one air foun- dry, two steam saw-mills, five tobacco factories, fourteen wholesale and commission stores, three drug stores, two confectioner's shops, six bake- houses, two carriage-makers, one gunsmith, three chair factories, one potter, two hundred carpen- ters, one hundred and fifty bricklayers, one brass foundry, one steam engine factory, two distiller- ies, one sugar refinery. Lots of the best situa- tions in town were held at about $300 per front foot. The post-office received and dispatched nine mails weekly, and had a revenue, in round numbers, of $4,000 a year. The first steamboat mail was carried this year, by our old friend Cap- tain Shreve, upon his vessel, appropriately named for this service the Post-boy, between Louisville and New Orleans. The river trade to Cincinnati and Frankfort alone employed twenty- five steamboats, with a total tonnage of 6,050, exclusive of barges, keelboats, and the liks. The steamer Rifleman, of two hundred and fifty tons, was built this year at Louisville, for Messrs. But- ler and Barnes, of Russellville; and the United States at Jeffersonville, for Hart and others, with two separate English engines, of seven hundred tons' burthen-"doubtless the finest merchant- steamboat in the universe," says Casseday, "drawing but little water, and capable of carry- ing three thousand bales of cotton."
AN AMUSING INCIDENT.
Illustrating the primitive character of certain now familiar lines of trade at this period, was thus told some years ago, at a meeting of the Ohio Dairymen's Association, by Colonel S. D Harris, the well-known agricultural editor of that State :
I said just now that when Henry Baldwin [of Streetsboro, Portage county, Ohio, } was in New Orleans in 1818 he was told that the retail price of cheese was a dollar a pound, and, knowing very well that he could get any desired quan- tity of cheese at his home in Ohio for two or three cents a pound, he at once determined to supply the New Orleans trade with Western Reserve cheese. In the fall of 1819 Mr. Baldwin paid $14 for 700 pounds of cheese. He had this taken to the Ohio, at the mouth of the Big Beaver, in a wagon, and there, all alone in an open skiff, he took his stock and paddled down past Cincinnati and over the Falls of the Ohio, just below Louisville, and laid up at the town of New Albany, on the Indiana side of the river. Storing his cargo at that place as a base of supplies, he took a cheese in his skiff and paddled up to Louisville, tied up his boat, took his cheese under his arm, and went to the only grocery- store then kept in the place, by a Mr. Ferguson. The peo- ple of Louisville knew nothing about cheese, but Mr. Fergu- son, being a very enterprising Irishman, purchased one-half of the cheese which Mr. Baldwin had carried under his arm, paying therefor ten cents a pound in " cut money." This cut money (the only small change in circulation then) was made by cutting a Spanish dollar into equal pieces, just the shape in which a woman cuts a pie. One of these pieces was called " a bit," which was the name for the smallest silver coin which Southern people recognized in the way of making change. Mr. Baldwin had sold half a cheese by wholesale to Mr. Ferguson, the first sale of Western Re- serve cheese on record in the town of Louisville. With the other half-cheese under his arm, our Yankee cheese-peddler sallied forth to supply the people at their houses. He called at the mansion of Mrs. Prather, wife of a partner in the firm of Prather, Bullitt & Washburn, noted merchants of the city. Mrs. Prather met him at the door, where he told her he had cheese to sell. She said there had never been any of that article in the Louisville market before. While they were talking Mrs. Prather's two daughters (young ladies) came to the door, and one of them asked, "Ma, what has the gentleman got to sell?" "Cheese." " What is cheese ?' In the early and economical days of cheese-making in Ohio, with cheese at two cents a pound, the dairymen could not afford to pay cash for annotto while a cheaper substitute in the shape of Spanish-brown paint could be used. Mr. Bald- win's cheeses were smeared with Spanish-brown, and as he offered to let the young lady taste and see what cheese was like, she nibbed a bit of the smearing instead of the meat of the cheese. "Oh! how nasty !" said the Louisville belle. Mr. Baldwin saw the mistake she had made, and tapping the cheese in the centre, gave her a taste of the real stuff. "Oh ! I never did taste anything so good!" said she. So the in- dulgent mother bought a bit's worth to feast the household, and Mr. Baldwin told her that he had sold a half-cheese to Ferguson, where they could get more if they liked it. Other families took a bit's worth that day, and when the husbands came home to tea cheese was on the tables; the wives told of the supply at Ferguson's; there was a rush for more; one man, who had got the start of the others, took all that Fer- guson had, and the rest called for a division !
The next day Mr. Baldwin took up two cheeses in his skiff and went at it again with a cheese under each arm. That day Mr. Ferguson bought a whole cheese, and so it went on day after day, and thus our persevering young cheese-peddler spent three months in the streets of Louis- ville, in selling his seven hundred pounds of cheese. When his work was accomplished he found himself in possession of $60 in silver money, a horse, saddle, and bridle. He rode
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
the horse bome and sold him to General Simon Perkins, of Warren, for $110, making in all the sum of $170 for his in- vestment of $14 in seven hundred pounds of cheese and about four months' work.
A PRESIDENTIAL VISIT.
In June of this year Louisville had the great honor of a visit from the only President of the United States who ever touched the soil of Ken- tucky during his official term, except Jackson and Polk, when on their way to or from their homes in Tennessee, and General Grant, who visited his parents in Covington while President. The august visitor of this summer was James Monroe, who in 1785, when a young Virginia Colonel, had come down the river with the party of Generals Butler and Parsons, and left them at Limestone to make the horseback journey to Lexington, which he may have continued to Louisville. He was now, for the first time after the war, making personal inspection of the garrisons, fortifications, arsenals, and naval de- pots along the frontier, from Maine to Michigan. From the latter Territory, as it then was, he traveled through the wilderness on horseback with a merry yet discreet cavalcade, to the Ohio river and to Louisville, whence he proceeded to Washington, taking in Cincinnati, Columbus, and many other points, on the journey. He wore a semi military costume in which our Presidents would make a queer figure nowadays-the un- dress uniform of Continental officers in the Rev- olution, consisting of a blue military coat, made of homespun cloth, light-colored underclothing, and a cocked hat. He was suitably received at Louisville, and met here many of the old sol- diers of the great struggle for independence, among them some who had personally served with him, and who hastened to pay their respects.
General Jackson and suite were of the party, and shared fully in the honors of the occasion. The company arrived on the 23d of June; on the next day a grand dinner was given them by the Free Masons, and a brilliant ball closed the demonstration of respect to the Chief Magistrate of the Nation. On the 26th the President visited Jeffersonville, and was suitably received. Some further personal description and account of his visit will appear in the next volume, in our history of that city.
It is a little singular that by some writers (in- cluding Collins in two places) Madison, who was not now President, should have been substi-
tuted for Monroe. In the three places where Collins mentions this Presidential visit; he gives the date, upon the one page as 1817, upon two others as 1820. It was unmistakably 1819.
JOHN P. YOUNG.
This year also came, but to stay, a vigorous young man of twenty-nine, a native of New Jersey, who engaged at first as a pump-maker, and then as a sawyer, spending the rest of his life here, and dying May 5, 188r, in his ninety- first year. He became one of the leading men of Louisville in the saw-mill and lumber business, which he did not give up until about a year before his death. He had been a member of the Fourth Presbyterian church for thirty-two years.
CHAPTER VII.
THE FIFTH DECADE.
1820-Growth of Population-The Assessment Valuation- Obstructions to Progress-Branch Bank of the Common- wealth-A Fire Department-Affairs on the River-Gille- land's Notice of Louisville-Tarascon's Tariff of Wharfage, Etc .-- A Foreign Notice-Flint's Enlogium-Hon. James Guthrie - Edward D. Hobbs - Jesse Chrisler - River Steamers. 1821 -Local Valuation-The New Bank- Quick Trip of the Post Boy-Regulating the Watchmen- Mr. Ogden's Notice of Louisville-George Keats-Cold Winter. 1822-The Fever Year-Draining the Ponds-A Local Currency-Christ Church Founded-New Presby- terian Pastor-Mike Fink, the Boatman-A Louisville Story of Him-Judge Hall's Notice. 1823-The Pond Drained-Dr. Coleman Rogers-The Rev. John Johnston Another Gazetteer Notice - Beltrami's Notes. 1824 - Stage Line from Lexington to Lonisville- Erection of Christ Church Building-Powder Mill Built-Thos. Smith. 1825-The Ship Canal Again-More Local Legislation- Lafayette Visits Louisville. 1826 - Another Methodist Conference Here-The Focus Newspaper Started-Judge Henry Pirtle-Colonel Thomas Anderson-Visit of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar. 1827-A Local Census : Popula- lion Seven Thousand and Sixty-Three-Hence a City to-be -Pork-packing Establishments-River Matters-Mr. Bul- lock's Observations- Bishop Morris a Young Preacher Here. 1828-The City of Louisville Full-fledged - Its Boundaries - Synopsis of the Charter - The First City Officers-Growth of Business-Judge William F. Bullock -- Madam Trollope Here-What She Says of Louisville- A Rat Ordinance. 1829-New Business Enterprises- New School-house-New Methodist Church (Reformed)- Great Bank Robbery-First Steamer Through the Cana -Death of Dr. Joseph Buchanan-A Capital Notice by Caleb Atwater-George Seymour Comes.
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
1820-GROWTH OF POPULATION.
Louisville had almost exactly trebled in popu- lation during the last decade, rising from 1,357 to 4,012, by the returns of the United States census. Mr. Casseday furnishes the following analysis of the local return: Free white males to 10 years of age, 346; 10 to 16, 152; 16 to 26, 498; 26 to 45, 707 ; 45 and upwards, 121. Total white males, 1,324. Free white females to 10 years of age, 356; 10 to 16, 132; 16 to 26, 273; 26 to 45, 232 ; 45 and upwards, 69. Total white females, 1,062. Total white popu- lation, 2,886. Blacks, including free persons of color, 1,126; total population, 4,012. There were engaged in commerce 128, and in manu- factures 591; 94 were foreigners. The average yearly increase had been 265.5 persons. Louis- viile had not yet caught up with Lexington, but was destined, in a year or two more, to overtake and pass her, and become permanently the me- tropolis of the State. Frankfort had as yet but 1,617 people, Bardstown but 600-221 less than in 1810. Jefferson county had grown by more than 7,000 during the decade, and and now had 20,768 inhabitants, being surpassed by no county in the State except Fayette, the county of Lex- ington, while ten years before she had been led by Fayette, Bourbon, Shelby, Nelson, and Madi- son. The State had strengthened by 157,806 people, or 367/3 per cent., growing from 406,511 to 564,317-434,644 whites, 126,732 slaves (these having increased 57 7/3 per cent.), and 2,759 free blacks. She was now in population the sixth State in the Union.
THE ASSESSMENT VALUATION
of Louisville had increased enormously during the decade-nearly eight hundred per cent., or from $210,475 to $1,655,226. The town was already the center of considerable wealth and in- vested capital. Mr. Casseday says, nevertheless :
A number of causes were operating at this time to retard the prosperity of the town, and, but for the vigor with which it was endued, it must have sunk under the misfortunes which surrounded it. Evil reports, prejudicial to its health, garbled accounts from rival cities of the mortality here, a lamentably disordered state of currency, a board of trustees whose ineffi- ciency was constantly complained of, were all opposing the growth of the town; and had it not, as has been before said, inherently possessed the elements of its own progress, it must have faded, and might have been entirely destroyed by the pressure of these untoward circumstances. For about two years the Western country had been laboring under the oper- ations of shaving and brokerage; there was not at this time a single bank west of the mountains whose paper could be
passed at a fair value, except in the immediate neighborhood of the bank itself, and there were not more than three or four that pretended to pay their notes in money. The paper of the Bank of Kentucky was at a discount, and there was no hope of its improving. Tennessee and Ohio were in a simi- lar, if not a worse condition. The paper of the United States bank was alone merchantable at its value, and upon Louis- ville, as the great commercial mart of the Western country, must these circumstances weigh most heavily. Despite all these disadvantages, however, the town did progress, not so rapidly as its past course would have promised, but with a rational and steady improvement. One of the drawbacks mentioned above was beginning to be removed. The new trustees of the town began to prosecute their measures of im- provement with some degree of energy. Wells were dug, pavements laid, streets graded, ponds drained, and a general activity prevailed which showed some attention toward mak- ing the town more desirable as a residence, both in point of comfort and of health. The removal of the causes of dis- ease, however, could not be instantaneous, and even if they had been it would have required time to convince those dis- posed to emigrate hither of the fact.
NEW BANKS.
Among the banks incorporated this year by the State Legislature were the Bank of the Com- monwealth, at Frankfort, with $2,000,000 capital, and branches at a dozen leading towns in the State, including, of course, Louisville. Later in the session a supplemental act was passed, allow- ing the issue of bank notes by this institution to the amount of $3,000,000, and limiting any single loan to $2,000. The Commonwealth Bank bills, by the way, fell in less than two years to sixty-two and a half cents on the dollar, and were still further depreciated afterwards. In 1821 one-half of the net profits of this bank and its branches was set apart by act of Assembly as "a literary fund, for the establishment and sup- port of a system of general education." The shares derived from the branches at Lexington, Harrodsburg, and Bowling Green, however, were to be specially devoted to the benefit of local schools, as the Transylvania university.
A FIRE DEPARTMENT.
Another important improvement introduced by the trustees of the town this year was the creation of something like a fire department. Their first act of the year was to order the pur- chase of fire engines, warned thereto by the fre- quent recurrence of fires and the very indiffer- ent means of checking them at hand. Messrs. Thomas Brather, Peter B. Ormsby, and Cuth- bert Bullitt were constituted a committee for the purchase of hand-engines, and secured two or three of tolerable performance. The town was
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
then divided into three wards or districts, to which Messrs. Coleman Daniel, Daniel McAllis- ter, and Peter Wolford were severally appointed, each to recruit in his ward an engine company of at least forty members. The companies might each elect a foreman or captain of the engine, with any other officers thought necessary, and adopt their own rules. The beginnings of an efficient fire department seem to have been in this. Still, as Mr. Casseday says:
Public cisterns, or other like conveniences for the use of firemen, were then unknown. Each citizen was required to have two or more leather fire-buckets on his premises, while a large number of the same were kept at the engine-houses. These were taken to the fire, and two lines of men formed from the engine, which was stationed near the fire, to the nearest water. One of these lines was occupied in passing buckets filled with water, which, when they arrived at the engine, were poured into it, and the other in passing back the empty buckets to be refilled. It was by this tedious pro- cess alone that they were enabled successfully to combat a fire.
AFFAIRS ON THE RIVER.
The rates of fare on the Mississippi steam- boats, according to the Ohio and Mississippi Pilot of that year, were from New Orleans to the Falls of the Ohio $125; to Henderson (Red Banks), $110; to Shawneetown, $105; to the mouth of Cumberland river, $100; to the mouth of the Ohio, $95; way passengers, 12 1/2 cents per mile; children under two years, one-fourth apiece; children from 2 to 10 years old, and ser- vants, one-half price. Going down stream there was a difference of about forty per cent .- $75 to New Orleans; $10 from the Falls to Hender- son; $12.50 to Shawneetown, and so on.
A NOTICE OF LOUISVILLE.
The same authority, or rather, Gilleland's Geography, appended, contains a notice of Louisville, from which we extract the following :
The town had little trade for a long time, except what arose from the impediment of the river navigation at that point. The marshy lands in its neighborhood caused inter- mittent and bilious complaints. Of late years these evils have been removed, and the town has since exhibited tokens of prosperity truly astonishing. The common opinion is that it will henceforth be, of all the towns in the Mississippi Valley, second only to New Orleans.
There is a good boat harbor in the mouth of Beargrass creek, at the upper end of the town, and still water along the river shore as far as the town extends. Below the Falls, about a mile from Louisville proper, lie the towns of Ship- pingsport and Portland. Clarksville and Jeffersonville (in In- diana State), together with a fine expanse of water up and down the Ohio, and a flourishing country around, present themselves at once to the view from Louisville, and form a noble landscape.
TARASCON'S TARIFF.
After reciting the recent movements in behalf of a canal around the Falls, the author goes on to say :
The trade of this place will probably be greatly injured by the circumstance that its landing-places, both above and be- low the Falls, are private property, at which exorbitant charges for wharfage, etc., ale imposed upon all boats and other vessels mooring, loading, and unloading, while there are excellent landing places on the Indiana side, all public property and free from every charge.
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