History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 55

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 55

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The fine building for the Bank of Louisville, which was already in course of construction on Main between Third and Fourth streets went on to completion. It had elegant Ionic columns, "but the facade is too much compressed to show its proportions and beauties." The City Direc- tory of 1838-39, passing this criticism, proceeds also to say: "Such a person as a professional architect was unknown in this place until lately, and architecture had neither professors, pupils, nor subjects."

The new First Presbyterian and St. Paul's Episcopal churches were also among the im- provements of the year.

The following estimate of articles handled at Louisville this year was made by the compilers of the Directory for 1838-39: 14,000 cubic feet of stone used by the stone-cutters. "It is estimated by those acquainted with the business that 100,000 cubic feet could be used. 3,200 tons of iron of all descriptions ; 16,000,000 of brick ; 39,000,000 feet of lumber made use of and sold for lower markets ; 700,000 bushels of coal ; 2,500 hogsheads of tobacco ; 200,000 bushels of domestic salt ; 10,000 cords of wood by river ; 20,000,000 shingles.

EDUCATION.

The Louisville Medical Institute was re-organ- ized and reopened this year. The celebrated Dr. John Esten Cooke came from Lexington, to unite in the management and instruction of the institute.

The Collegiate Institute of Louisville was established November 27, by ordinance of coun- cil, in the buildings of the old Jefferson Semi- nary.

Much more will be said of these, and of the status of education in the city at this time, in a future chapter.

OTHER NEW THINGS

in this year of general disaster were the incorpo- ration of the Louisville Manufacturing Company

and the establishment of a periodical called The Western Journal of Education, edited by the Rev. B. O. Peers, Rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, and issued from the office of the Daily Journal. Like most ventures of this kind, it was destincd to an early grave.

BARBECUE TO WEBSTER.

Kentucky was visited this year by the celebra- ted Daniel Webster, who was then in the prime of his magnificent powers. The Great Ex- pounder was received, of course, in the State of the Great Commoner, with boundless enthusi- asm. He accepted public dinners at Maysville, Lexington, Versailles, and Louisville, the last of these occurring May 30th. A large deputation of citizens rode to a point twelve miles from Louisville, where Mr. Webster, his family, and other traveling companions, were met and es- corted to the city. Here the Mayor delivered an address of welcome, and invited the distin- guished guest to attend a barbecue in the vicinity the next day. Nearly four thousand persons as- sembled to see and hear the city's guest, and the occasion was one of exuberant joy and festivity. Casseday records that " Mr. Webster addressed the citizens in his usual felicitous manner."

GOOD TYDINGS.

This year and the next the Methodist people of Louisville were favored with the ministrations of the Rev. Richard Tydings, for the long period of sixty years a useful and finally eminent travel- ing preacher in the Methodist Episcopal connec- tion. During the later years of his life he held a superannuated relation to the Louisville Con- ference, doing such clerical work as his waning strength would allow. He died on the banks of Salt River October 3, 1865, but his remains, with those of his wife, rest in the Eastern Ceme- tery of this city.

BALLOON ASCENSION.

The first particularly notable balloon ascension, from any point on Kentucky soil, was made at Louisville July 31, by Richard Clayton, an aeronaut from Cincinnati. He had ascended from Lexington in 1835, but only made a trip of fifteen miles ; this time he accomplished a voy- age of at least one hundred miles. His ropes were let go at ten minutes before 7 P. M., and he came down three-fourths of an hour afterwards four miles south of Louisville, where he spent

HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

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the night. Ascending again in the morning, he journeyed over Louisville, down the Ohio to the mouth of Salt river, in the interior to Shepherds- ville, and landed for dinner seven miles from Bardstown. Taking to the air again, he sailed for several hours in sight of that place and of Shepherdsville, Taylorsville, Fairfield, and Bloom- field, making his final descent at 7 P. M., on Cox's creek, in Nelson county, five miles from Bardstown. His three ascents and descents in this tour were accomplished without accident.

INTELLIGENT TRAVELERS.

Captain Maryatt, the celebrated writer of sea- tales, made this city a point in his journey up the Ohio, and gave it the following paragraph in his Diary in America :

Louisville is the largest city in Kentucky. The country about is very rich, and everything vegetable springs up with a luxuriance which is surprising. It is situated at the Falls of the Ohio, which are only navigable during the freshets. There is no river in America which has such a rise and fall as the Ohio, sometimes rising to sixty feet in the spring; but this is very rare, the general average being about forty feet. The French named it La Belle Riviere; it is a very grand stream, running through hills covered with fine timber and underwood; but a very small portion is yet cleared by the settlers. At the time that I was at Louisville the water was lower than it had been remembered for years, and you could walk for miles over the bed of the river, a calcareous deposite full of interesting fossils; but the mineralogist and geologist have as much to perform in America as the agriculturist.

In June of this year Professor Frederick Hall, M. D., of Washington city, a garrulous but rather interesting writer, was here, and subse- quently published some notes of his visit in his Letters from the East and from the West. We extract as follows :

Louisville is spread over a large area, and is inferior to no town on the river in the amount of its commercial transac- tions. There is much regularity in the plan of the city. Streets parallel with the river are crossed by others at right angles, commencing on the water's edge and gradually as- cending, on an inclined plain, to a horizontal one, on which some of them extend back to the distance of a mile or more. The buildings are handsome, and many of them elegant, par- ticularly the court-house, theater, and a number of the churches. The streets are straight, broad, and airy, and in some parts ornamented with shade-trees. The market is spacious and well supplied with good-looking eatables. This being market-day, the place was crowded with buyers and sellers. I elbowed myself through the throng, and, being by birth a Yankee. thought myself privileged to ask questions. Peas are sold shelled. The price was twelve and a half cents a quart. A common-sized pig, for roasting, sold for a dollar; beefsteak from six to eight cents a pound. The prices of articles here, so far as I could learn, are quite as low as they are in Baltimore markets.

Much of Professor Hall's time was passed at a

country-seat called " the Crow's Nest," the resi- dence of a Mr. and Mrs. S., of whom and of which he has some pleasant things to say. Sun- day morning, June 18th, he writes .

In the evening I am to go to the city, in company with Mrs. S., to hear a discourse from the Reverend Mr. Hum- phrey, son of the Reverend President of Amherst College, in Massachusetts. This young preacher you have seen at our house. He is now one of the Presbyterian clergymen in Louisville, and is said to be effecting much good in his con- gregation.

1838-POPULATION.

Mr. Casseday writes: "A glance at the popula- tion of the city for this year will show that in spite of the commercial difficulties of the time, the city grew with astonishing rapidity. It had now reached a population of twenty-seven thou- sand, showing a gain of seven thousand and thirty- three in three years." It is sad to take the ex- aggeration out of this statement, but the official figures of the census taken two years afterward leave us no option. The actual number of in- habitants was probably about twenty thousand.

LIQUOR SHOPS.

Statistics more reliable, but hardly more satis- factory, in a moral point of view, are those which give the liquor-dealing establishments in Louis- ville this year as follow: Coffee-houses, one hun- dred and twenty-seven ; groceries retailing liquor, one hundred and three; groceries and coffee- houses combined, forty-nine ; total, two hundred and seventy-nine. There was at this period one liquor-shop in Louisville for about every seventy men, women, and children in the place. The river-trade naturally accounted for a large share of them.

EDITORIAL MATTERS.

A hopeful sheet of the highest order, starting under the name of The Literary News-letter, was published this year in December, and thence- forth for about thirty months, from the Journal office, by Mr. Edward Flagg. Mr. Casseday thinks "it was eminently deserving of a much greater success than attended its issue."

Mr. Prentice, of the Journal, fought another pistol-battle August 14th-this time with Major Thomas P. Moore, at the Harrodsburg Springs, both parties coming out of the conflict without physical injury.

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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

THE GRAVES AND CILLEY DUEL.

A great sensation was produced in Louisville this year, and indeed throughout the whole coun- try, by the killing, February 24th, upon the duelling-ground at Bladensburg, near Washing- ton City, at the third fire, of the Hon. Jonathan Cilley, member of Congress from Maine, by the Hon. William J. Graves, member from the Louisville District. The duel originated in a mere requirement of the "code of honor," un- der which Mr. Graves took the field as the friend of James Watson Webb, editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, with whom Mr. Cilley had quarreled, but whom he refused to fight. General Henry A. Wise, afterwards Governor of Virginia, was the second of Graves; and Cilley was seconded by General George W. Jones, of Iowa.

HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

This year, February Ist, was incorporated the Kentucky Historical Society, which was to have its headquarters, and keep its library and cabinet, in Louisville. The Revs. James Freeman Clarke and Benjamin O. Peers, George D. Prentice, John Rowan, George M. Bibb, Henry Pirtle, Simeon S. Goodwin, George Keats, John H. Harney, James Brown, Leonard Bliss, Jr., Humphrey Marshall, Sr., Wilkins Tannehill, and Edward Jarvis, M.D., most of them citizens of Louisville, are designated in the act as the in- corporators of the society. A constitution and by-laws were adopted March 29, 1838, and the society went hopefully into operation. Hon. John Rowan was President; Hons. George M. Bibb and Henry Bibb, vice-presidents; D. C. Banks, recording secretary ; Edward Jarvis, corresponding secretary and librarian. It was in existence for a number of years, but long since became extinct, and its collections were dis- persed. The library, according to Mr. Casseday, was merged in the old "Louisville Library."

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Mr. Collins gives the following account of the public schools of Louisville, as they existed this year :

The school system of Louisville, in 1838, was composed of the Collegiate Institute and seven free schools. The former was established " on the lot and buildings formerly the prop- erty of the Jefferson Seminary, which were donated to the city for the purpose, "by city ordinance of November 27, 1837, with an annual appropriation of $2,000, besides the tuition fees, and then had seventy pupils. Faculty-Rev.

B. F. Farnsworth, President, and Professors John H. Har- ney, James Brown, Leonard Bliss, two vacancies, and tutor H. F. Farnsworth. Of the seven free schools, number one was a "grammar school " for boys, at corner Fifth and Wal- nut; number two, at same place, free school for boys; number three and number seven, for boys, on Jefferson, between Preston and Floyd; number four, for boys, on Tenth, be- tween Grayson and Walnut; number five, for girls, in second story of school-house at Fifth and Walnut; and number six, for girls, on Tenth, between Green and Walnut. Total chil- dren in schools, over one thousand. Although called free, a uition fee of $1.50 per quarter was charged in all but number once, where the tuition was $2. Salaries of principal teachers, $750 or $900; an assistant teacher in each school paid by the fees- as also was Samuel Dickinson, the "general school agent."

BANK ROBBERY.

An unsuccessful attempt was made to rob the Louisville Savings Bank one afternoon this year. Mr. Casseday thus tells the story :

The only other event worthy of remembrance was the rob- bery of the Savings Bank. This was effected in the daytime, by a man named Clarendon E. Dix, who entered the bank about three o'clock in the afternoon. Soon after this time, Mr. Juhen, the cashier of the bank, entered the establishment and found Dix, who had still in his hand the large bank ham- mer, with which he had killed the clerk whom he found there. Finding that he should be vanquished in the struggle with Mr. Julien, Dix drew a pistol and shot himself. He was be- lieved to be insane.

THE LOUISVILLE GAS COMPANY

was incorporated this year, February 15th, with a capital of $600,000, its charter to run thirty years from January 1, 1839. The company did not organize, however, until 1839, when $232,300 were raised on individual subscription, and the city took stock to the amount of $200,000. Of this sum half was raised by issuing thirty-year bonds, at six per cent ; the other $100,000 was made out of the dividends, after deducting semi- annual interest on the bonds. The payments on her stock were thus completed January 3, 1859.

The first division of the works was built in 1839-the first gas works in the Western coun- try, and the fifth in the United States. On Christmas Day, the same year, gas was first sup- plied to the mains and service-pipes. The second division was built in 1848. At the close of that year, the city had sixteen miles of main and four hundred and sixty-one street lamps. The fourth gas-holder (two having been con- structed with the first division) was put up in 1855 ; and the works were further enlarged two years afterward. In 1859 the works had 66 re- torts, with capacity to produce 280,000 cubic feet per day. Thirty-five miles and 2, 157 feet of

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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.

street mains had been laid, and there were 2,879 private service pipes and 925 street-lamps. The annual product had risen from 6,545,810 cubic feet in 1840 to 47,512,100 in 1858. The city had derived, within two years, a revenue of $44,256. 32 from its stock in the company. The capital invested in the works was $440,349.78.

THE GALT HOUSE TRAGEDY.

December 15th of this year occurred the famous "Galt House tragedy," which was in hot discussion in the Courier-Journal thirty-five years afterwards. Mr. Collins gives the follow- ing statement of it:

Two brothers from Mississippi. Judge and Dr. Wilkerson, and their companion from Richmond, Virginia, John Mur- dangh, were attacked in the office of that hotel, in Louisville, where they were guests, by John W. Redding, - Roth- well, -- Meek, William Holmes, Henry Oldham, William Johnson, and five or seven others; and in self-defense killed Rothwell and Meek, and wounded two others, and were themselves wounded and mobbed. Their trial, by change of venue granted by the Legislature, took place at Harrods- burg in March, 1839; and the jury acquitted them, after be- ing out but a few minutes. They were prosecuted by the Commonwealth's attorney and Hon. Benjamin Hardin; and defended by Hon. John Rowan, Colonel William Robertson, Colonel Samuel Daveiss, John B. Thompson, Charles M. Cunningham, James Taylor, and C. M. Wickliffe, and by the brilliant Mississippi orator Hon. Sergeant S. Prentiss. It was one of the most remarkable of the criminal trials of America.

1839-ORGANIZATIONS AND CHARTERS.

The famous Louisville Legion, whose mem- bers have given it renown in two wars, had its origin this year, January 21st, in an act of the Legislature authorizing it, and providing that it should be composed of the three principal arms of military service, infantry, cavalry, and artillery.

Mt. Moriah Lodge No. 106, Free and Accepted Masons, was chartered January 15th. Thomas J. Welby was the first Master of this Lodge. The late George D. Prentice was one of its members.

The Kentucky and Louisville Mutual Insur- ance Company was incorporated this year.

The Ladies' Provident Society, for the relief of the poor, was also a creation of 1839. Mr. Casseday says of it :

This society was organized in the best possible manner, and was of very great value to the city. A depot for the re- ception of donations of food, clothing, etc., was established, where also work was provided for such indigent females as failed to find employment elsewhere. The city was divided

into wards, to each of which two female and one male visitor was apportioned, and the poor in each district were carefuily and judiciously attended to. No better scheme for amelioral- ing the distress which is ever to be found in cities, could have been invented, and it is greatly to be regretted that this noble monument of charity no longer exists. . The Scotch Benevolent Society, which is an association of Scotch- men for the purpose of relieving any necessitous persons of their own countrymen who may be in Louisville, was also in- stituted at this time, and is still [1852] in active operation.

The Right Worthy Grand Encampment of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows was organ- ized here November 21. The following named officers were installed : Henry Wolford, M. W. G. P .; Peleg Kidd, M. E. G. H. P .; Levi White, R. W. G. S. W .; Jesse Vansickles, R. W. G. J. W .; S. S. Barnes, R. W. G. Scribe ; John Thom- as, R. W. G. Treasurer. But two Subordinate Encampments had been formed in Kentucky, both chartered by the Grand Lodge of the United States : Mt. Horeb, No. 1, at Louisville, August 18, 1834, and Olive Branch No. 2, at Covington, May 15, 1837.

ST. PAUL'S CHURCH.

October 6th of this year the Rev. Mr. Jack- son, Rector of Christ Episcopal Church since July, 1837, and the greater part of the congre- gation, removed their membership to the new- St. Paul's Church, of which Mr. Jackson be came Rector. Mr. Collins, abridging from Dr. Craik's History of Christ Church, says:

Mr. Jackson was a preacher of great eloquence, much of which was owing to his habit of frequent extempore preach- ing. After some years of service in St. Paul's, he was struck down while in the act of writing his sermon for the following Sunday : "By eternity then, by an eternity of happiness, we demand your attention to your own salvation. It is Solo- mon's last great argument, and it shall be ours. With this we shall take our leave of this precious portion of God's word." These were his last words, written or spoken-to be sounded as a voice from the dead, in the ears of successive generations of the people of Louisville.

DR. DANIEL DRAKE.

This distinguished Cincinnati physician and medical professor came hither this year, to take a place on the staff of the Louisville Medical Institute. He remained here about ten years.

"AMERICA" IN LOUISVILLE.

. During 1839 a very attractive young woman appeared in this country, declaring herself to be America, a lineal descendant of Amerigo Ves- pucci, the Florentine navigator whose discoveries in the New World, by the accident of a narrator, gave the general name to the Western hemis

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phere. An exile from her native land, and in some financial strait, she had come to the United States in the hope of receiving aid from the Government, on account of her reputed ances- tor's services nearly three and a half centuries before. Much sympathy was expressed for her here, and Mr. Prentice opened a subscription for her at the business office of the Journal; but she declined to receive private aid, saying: "A national boon will ever honor the memory and the descendant of Amerigo Vespucci; but Amer- ica, even as an exile in the United States, can- not accept an individual favor, however cour- teous and delicate may be the manner in which it is proffered."

AN ACTOR-PREACHER.

The Rev. Charles Booth Parsons (afterwards D. D.), who had been an actor, was this year li- censed as a Methodist minister at Louisville. He subsequently became Presiding Elder of the Louisville District, and in 1858 was Pastor in charge of the Shelby street Methodist Episco- palion church. He was a powerful revivalist, an elegant yet forceful writer, and otherwise a strong man. Mr. Parsons died at Portland December 8, 1871.

VARIOUS MATTERS.

The first iron steamer on a Western river or lake, the Valley Forge, Pittsburg-built, passed the Falls in December of this year, bound for New Orleans.

October 16 the Kentucky banks, including those at Louisville, again suspended specie pay- ments, on account of the steady drain of specie from them to aid in meeting the demand for ex- portation to Europe. They had on hand at the time $1,158,351. During the year their total resources in specie had decreased $505,336, and $1,477,987 of their circulation had been called in.

In March Judge Wilkerson and Willliam Mur- draugh, of Mississipi, were tried at Harrodsburg, under a charge of venue, for their share in the murderous affray at the Galt House the previous year. They were defended with great ability and eloquence by that wonderful Southern ora- tor, Sargeant S. Prentiss, and acquitted.

A great four-mile race occurs at Louisville September 30th, for a purse of $14,000, in which Wagner, the winner in the last heat, came in only ten inches ahead of Grey Eagle, winning the race in 7 minutes and 44 seconds.

SOME PLEASANT RECOLLECTIONS

of life in Louisville in the earlier and middle thirties are comprised in a communication of Patrick Joyes, Esq., of the famous old family, to the Courier-Journal of January 5, 1868, which we have by his courtesy, and from which we make the following extracts:

The old Bell tavern stood on the south side of Jefferson street, blocking up Sixth street. The court-house was then standing on the jail lot and fronting Sixth street, and the poverty row of that day was scattered along Sixth and along Jefferson streets.

Have you forgotten poor old Jake Martin and his dingy little bakery and grocery in the frame shanty on the south side of Main, between Fifth and Sixth, and Schafer's candy shop, with his candy marble jars, arranged in mosaics? There we candied and sodaed near enough to Shade's drug store to prevent damage from excess. We shod hard by at Mullikin's or at Beyroth's, and bought our spelling-books at Rice's book-store, adjoining. People in those days, who wanted a choice steak, had to be by daylight at the market- house, between Fourth and Fifth, with the mayor's office over it.

What an event it was when the old Harrison House on the corner of Main and Sixth streets and the house below were torn down to give way to those monstrous structures - the Franklin House, the Light House, and the Louisville Hotel of those days. How grand those new edifices looked to us as story was piled on story until we were lost in bewilder- ment at their immensity. We would not believe that Paris or London could boast of such colossal buildings. Nothing had equaled them since the days of the Temple or the Tower of Babel. I remember of telling a boy cousin that "Louis- ville had two houses bigger than his whole town."

What a wonderful place to us was the old theater on Jef- ferson, between Third and Fourth streets. . Stickney's circus, before the circus had any of its new classic names, used to hold forth back of Scott Glore's present stand, and with the other boys you and I used to follow Lon Lipman and Frank Wilmot around the streets as though they were walking demigods, deeming it an honor if they would call us by name in the crowd. The elephant was the only lion, greater than a real acting circus boy. Excuse the bull. Ricards, you remember, was the clown. How racy and original were his jokes, the same that our grandfathers heard, the same that our grandchildren will laugh at.

Snethen's gymnasium [a school], a little later was on Second street, south of Walnut, and his boys wore uniforms -swallow-tailed coats with bullet brass buttons. He would not allow them to come with bare feet to school-a new- fangled idea then-but rumor used to say that notwithstand- ing this glittering outside they suffered in the flesh. . * Old man Goddard, as the young world called him, had his school under the Unitarian church, and these two schools were rivals. Goddard's boys got the start of the others, and perpetrated the following elegant refrain, with which they used to make the streets hideous in a small way:

Snethen's pigs are in a pen, Cant git out till now and then; When they git out they sneak about, Afraid of Goddard's gentlemen.

Emphasis and accent very heary on the last syllable of the last line; 1 can almost hear them now.

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History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I, Part 55

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