USA > Ohio > History of the Ohio falls cities and their counties : with illustrations and bibliographical sketches, Vol. I > Part 95
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Judge Stites's friends urged him still to stand for the office, and at length he yielded to their wishes, resigned the place of Circuit Judge, and became a candidate for Judge of the Court of Appeals. One of the gentlemen referred to im- mediately withdrew, leaving the contest to his friend, a distinguished lawyer and statesman, with a political majority in the district of over five thousand. Judge Stites, nevertheless, was elected by more than five thousand majority, and took his seat as Appellate Judge in September, 1854. He served out his term as Judge of the Court of Appeals, and was Chief Justice in 1862, in the midst of the civil war. Although urged to become a candidate for re-election, he declined ; and being a States-rights Democrat and Union man, but opposed to the war, and his sentiments well known, he was subjected to an- noyance by the military on both sides. Un- swerving in his allegiance to Kentucky, he con- tinued throughout the war. To avoid proscrip- tion, and being harassed by the petty military satraps of both sides, that were then riding rough-shod over the peaceful citizens of the southern part of the State, Judge Stites was ad- vised by his friends of both parties to leave the State and go where he would be free from such annoyances. This advice he adopted and went to Canada, where he remained with his wife until " the cruel war was over."
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
On his return to Kentucky, in January, 1866, he located in Louisville and resumed the prac- tice of his profession, in conjunction with the Hon. Joshua F. Bullitt, with whom he had been associated in the Court of Appeals as a brother judge. In Louisville he soon had a good prac- tice, and was pursuing his profession zealously, when a vacancy occurred in the office of Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, an important civil tribunal, caused by the resignation of the Hon. Judge Muir. To this place Judge Stites was appointed, upon the unanimous recom- mendation of the lawyers of the Louisville bar, without distinction of party, by Governor Steven- son, in October, 1867. In August, 1868, he was elected by the people of the district, com- posed of the county and city, to the same office, without opposition ; and again, in 1874 and 1880, he was re-elected, also unopposed both times, to the same places, thus holding high judicial stations, by the will of the people among whom he dwelt, for more than thirty years in all-an assurance on their part that they deemed him . "honest, faithful, and capable."
In 1876 Judge Stites was again married, and to a sister of his first wife, Mrs. Caroline M. Barker, an estimable lady, widow of Richard H. Barker, Esq., a prominent lawyer of New Or- leans.
The Judge's present term of office will expire in 1886, when, as we are informed, he will, if alive, claim exemption from public duty, and retire to private life. He has held, throughout his life, that it was the chief duty of man to be useful to his fellow-men, and has faithtully sought to discharge that duty.
THE TARASCONS OF LOUISVILLE.
An account of Louisville, Kentucky, would be very imper- fect without a reference to these far -reaching, sagacious, and enterprising men. In 1794 Lonis Anastasius Tarascon emi- grated from France and selected Philadelphia as the head- quarters for his mercantile enterprises. He was wealthy and became a large importer of silks and a variety of goods from France and Germany. He was a man of great sagacity, and soon began to entertain enterprising ideas of the opening glories of the West. In 1799 he sent two of his clerks, Charles Brugiere and James Berthoud, to explore the courses of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, from Pittsburg to New Orleans, for the purpose of ascertaining the feasibility of sending ships and clearing them from the port of Pittsburg, ready rigged, to the West Indies and Europe. The clerks made a favor-
able report,.and Mr. Tarascon associated them and his brother, John Anthony Tarascon, with himself, under the name of John A. Tarascon, Brothers, James Berthoud & Co., and established at Pittsburg an extensive wholesale and retail store and warehouse, a shipyard, a rigging and sailing loft, an anchor smithshop, a block manufactory, and everything necessary to complete vessels for sea. In 1801 they built the schooner Amity, of one hundred and twenty tons, and the ship l'ittsburg, of two hundred and fifty tons, sending the former, loaded with flour, to St. Thomas, and the other, also loaded with flour, to Philadelphia, from whence they were sent to Bordeaux, and returned with a cargo of wine, brandy, and other French goods, part of which they sent to Pittsburg in wagons at a carriage of from six to eight cents a pound. What a time these wagons must have had in conquering obstructions in the Alleghanies, to say nothing of other parts of the wilderness road? In 1802 they built the brig Nanino, of two hundred and fifty tons; in 1803, the ship Louisiana, of three hundred tons, and in 1804. the ship Western Trader, of four hundred tons. In 1796 Pittsburg was enlivened by a visit of some French princes. They were very pleasant and companionable. They bought a large skiff, covered it in part with tow linen, pur- chased a stock of provisions and hired a couple of men to row them to New Orleans. One of these princes was Louis Phillippe, who afterwards became the " Citizen King " of France.
The Tarascons must have found the Falls of the Ohio some- thing of an obstruction to their shipping enterprises, and they removed to Shippingport, at the Falls, where they car- ried on their mercantile affairs. They built a grist-mill which was run by the water-power of the Falls. They soon found that they were in an isolated condition, and began operations for improving their position. In 1824 Louis A. Tarascon, "of Shippingport, Jefferson county, Kentucky," presented a petition to the Legislature of Kentucky for cutting a canal around the Falls, as he said, " for the amelioration of com- merce, of course of the improvement of agriculture, manu- factures and of all other useful arts, productive of the pros- perity of the State, and of the happiness of its inhabitants." It is ably drawn. He had been residing at Shippingport, Kentucky, then, for a period of eighteen years, having re- moved there in 1806.
The readers of that famous novel, The Children of the Abbey, will remember how members of that Shippingport firm figure in the novel. Before petitioning for the canal Mr. Tarascon had urged upon the Congress of the United States the opening of a wagon road from the Missouri river, skirting on the northern frontier of New Mexico, to the Columbia river in Oregon, on the Pacific. But Kentucky was not in any condition to undertake any monetary enter- prises at that time. She soon became terribly involved, and the "Commonwealth's" banking enterprise for the relief of the people, soon acquired the familiar name of "two for one."
Mr. Tarascon, in his petition of 1824, urged that soon after 1806 he caused to be built, at the foot of the Falls, as he says, "the Shippingport mills, the first great mills which ever existed in the western country, by means of which he contributed his share towards drawing the name of Kentucky flour from a mire of merited discredit, and of raising it up to a high standing."
These pioneers of a new era of civilization deserve great credit for the earnestness and excellence of their labors. They had little dream of the coming power of steam. Even when the canal at the Falls was undertaken, the men who had charge of the work had so little idea of the coming
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
change that they adapted the locks to the size of the steam- boat Homer, that being supposed the utmost size that a steamboat would ever reach on the Ohio. There were built afterwards steamboats in which she might have been hidden"
John Tarascon's daughter, Nannine, married Mr. Taylor who died with cholera. She afterwards married Captain Z. M. Sherley, and died comparatively young, with consump- tion, leaving a son and daughter by Mr. Taylor, and two sons by Mr. Sherley. Young Taylor died a few years ago, unmar" ried. Edmonia Taylor, the daughter, married Hamilton Ormsby, one of the most prosperous farmers of Jefferson county.
Lewis Sherley was one'of the first and most thrifty mer_ chants of Louisville, Kentucky, He married Miss Brannon, the daughter of A. O. Brannon, a merchant of this city. She died in advance of her husband. He died in the very bloom of his manhood, leaving a son and daughter. The other son, John Sherley, is a partner of Henry C. Glover, in an extensive tobacco warehouse, in Louisville, Kentucky. He married the daughter of Edward Hobbes, one of the first citizens of Kentucky, who is very prominent in her po- litical and social history. Mr. John Sherley has a son and daughter. The spirit of the Tarascons still lives in their de" scendants.
The writer has read with much interest the manuscript journal of L. A. Tarascon, from Philadelphia to New Orleans made in 1799. It is full of intelligence and of masterly ob' servation. We could not but read with curiosity his charm_ ing description of New Madrid. He little dreamed while writing his account of it, what an amount of disfigurement it was to undergo, some ten years after, by an earthquake, from which it has never recovered.
NATHAN BLOOM.
The subject of this sketch was born in Dalheim, a small town in the duchy of Hesse Darmstadt, Germany, on the 17th day of November, 1826.
He attended school up to his fifteenth year, when he was apprenticed for three years to a merchant, who, being himself thoroughly educated in all mercantile matters, required him to visit commercial colleges and institutes during his spare hours. The knowledge so acquired, in addition to the practical experience gathered during his apprenticeship, helped greatly to capacitate him for his future business career.
After the expiration of this term he remained for three years longer, giving such satisfaction that great inducements for the future were offered to him, but the glowing reports which he had so often heard, convinced him that America presented greater opportunities to young men of energy ard will, andl he determined to try his fortune in the United States. He landed in New York in the spring of 1848.
During the first two years the lack of means compelled him to confine his transactions to small assortments of goods, with which he canvassed the interior towns of New Jersey, Louisiana, and later on of Kentucky, but, in the fall of 1850, having by strict economy accumulated a sufficient capital, he, with Mr. E. Hirech, now also a resident of Louisville, em- barked in business at Yelvington, Daviess county, Kentucky, opening a country general store.
Here he was successful and prosperous, and made many friends who to this day entertain for him the highest estcem and attachment.
On the 15th of January, 1851, he was married to Miss Rosina Kling, also a native of Germany, and in the following year, desiring a larger field of operations, he disposed of his business interests at Yelvington, and removed to Louisville, where he entered into partnership with Mr. E. Bamberger (his brother-in-law) under the firm name of E. Bamberger & Co., for the purpose of doing a wholesale dry goods business.
From the start the firm established the reputation for hon- orable and upright dealing, which has ever since character- ized it and which has been so great a factor in its remarkable success. Its trade, at first confined to the more adjacent por- tions of Kentucky and Indiana, rapidly extended until it com- passed nearly all the States of the Southwest, and had grown to such proportions in the year 1857 that they found it neces- sary to remove from Market street to Main street.
In the year 1872 the firm, which in the meantime had added several partners and had changed its name to Bam- berger, Bloom & Co., moved into its present beautiful quar- ters, having found it necessary to erect a building especially adapted to its colossal trade. No description of this structure nor further comment upon the business are neces- sary, as the firm of Bamberger, Bloom & Co., its house, and its business are known to every citizen of Louisville, and are brought to the attention of every one who visits the city.
The uninterrupted success and growth of this firm, of which Mr. Bloom has always been the acknowledged head, and its remarkable record during the great financial con- vulsions which have periodically shaken the business com- munities of this country to their very foundations, overcom- ing as it did all difficulties, only to continue its career with renewed energy and vigor, bear unquestionable testimony to his exceptional qualities as a merchant and financier.
This, however, is but one phase of his life. Taxed as he has been from the start with the responsibilities and burdens of his large business, he has still found time to take a front rank as a public-spirited citizen. A steadfast, consistent adherent of the Reformed Jewish faith, he is naturally liberal and pro- gressive in his ideas, and has ever been ready to defend the oppressed and to combat sectarian or racial intolerance.
He has at all times been ready to lend a willing ear to the thousands who seek his advice, to give his time and assist- ance for the promotion of public works, and to open wide his purse in the support of all charities. In fact, he is so deeply imbued with the idea that every man should not merely live for his own personal ends, but should faithfully fulfill the duties which he owes to his fellow man and the community at large, that the good works which he still con- tinues will never cease so long as God spares his life.
Mr. Bloom's family consists of the wife of his youth and six children-two daughters and four sons, three of the nine that were born to him having died in their early youth. The oldest daughter is married to Mr. Charles Goldsmith, who together with Jacob, the second oldest son, are members of the clothing firm established by Bamberger, Bloom & Co., in 1878. Levi, the oldest son, is a member of the latter firm; Isidore, the third son, is now pursuing his medical studies in Europe, whilst the younger daughter, Estella, and the youngest son, Max, are still attending school in Louisville.
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
JAMES GUTHRIE.
Kentucky, noted in American history for the production ot exceptional men, has brought forth none whose achievments for the material good of the State and Nation were greater than those of James Guthrie, lawyer, publicist, and inan of business. There have been greater orators, lawyers perhaps of more special ability-certainly politicians infinitely more skilled in the arts of manipulating a campa gn or creating a majority,-but there has never been a man who possessed greater wisdom in conceiving measures, or more wonderful power of bringing events to pass, than did he. Whether he managed a private enterprise or dictated the financial policy of a nation; whether he advised an ordinary client or shaped the plans of a vast corporation, the result so uniformly justified his views and opinions that, at last, by sheer force of con- sistent and habitual success, he won from a whole com- munity a confidence and respect akin to superstition, and after spending years of bitter contest in the defense of his opinions, lived to see his advice received and his measures ac- cepted, almost as a matter of course.
James Guthrie was of excellent pioneer blood, his father being the well-known Indian fighter, General Adam Guthrie, whose most famous action was the battle of Saline, west of Shawneetown, Illinois, where the whites, in the absence of bayonets, successfully charged and broke the Indian line with their tomahawks. After the days of border warfare were passed General Guthrie became prominent in civil life, representing his county in the Kentucky Legislature for several successive terms with credit to himself. The family was originally of Scotch blood, removed to Ireland at an early day, emigrated to America more than a century since, and came to Kentucky from Virginia.
James Guthrie was born near Bardstown, in Nelson coun- ty, Kentucky, on the 5th day of December, 1792. Such education as the country schools of the neighborhood afford- ed he received, and this was supplemented by a term at Mc- Allister's Academy, at Bardstown, of which a scholarly Scotchman of that name was head master, and which bore a very fine reputation at that day. As a schoolboy young Guthrie is described as being the most single-minded in his work or play of any of his class. One day he would take his books to an out-of-the-way spot and study during the hour of recreation; then no temptation could draw him from his task; again an unusual noise and activity would show that he had joined in the sports of his fellows, which were never so fast and furious as when he took part.
No sooner had Guthrie acquired such education as he deemed sufficient to fit him for the duties of life, than he turned his thoughts to the problem of making his own way in the world. The statement has been made by some biog- raphers that he commenced life as a flatboatman. While it is literally true that he did, after the fashion of many Ken- tucky youths of the time, assist in taking one or more boats, loaded with farm produce, to New Orleans, then the only market available, returning on foot or on horseback through the woods, it is certain that he did not intend to de- vote himself to the river for life, and it is equally sure that love of adventure and a desire to see something of the world influenced him to the experiment quite as much as did the money consideration involved. Certain it is that he soon began the reading of law at Bardstown, under the tutorage of the celebrated Judge lohn Rowan, afterwards Congress- man and Senator of the United States, that he practiced extensively and successfully in his own and adjoining coun- ties for several years, made two unsuccessful races for the
Legislature in Nelson county, and, after all this was done, removed to Louisville, but nine years after the only flatboat expedition of his participation of which we have any proof.
During his study and practice in Nelson county Mr. Guth- rie was completely engrossed in his profession. He denied himself social enjoyment as incompatible with the best intel- lectual work, and utterly held himself above and apart from the amusements and dissipations which are so disastrously prevalent among the lawyers of the State. He possessed then in kind, as he did later in so much greater de- gree, the mental grasp, the ready recognition of principles and the receptive and assimilative power of mind, which made intellectual effort a pleasure, certain of its highest re- ward. That he was well prepared for the practice of the law goes without saying, when so much has been told ; that he was from the first professionally successful to a marked de- gree is as certain, for, in 1820, Governor Adair appointed him Commonwealth's attorney for the district embracing Louisville, and he removed to that city to assume his duties. He was then but twenty-eight years of age, and while the law did not require the Governor to appoint to the office a resident of the district, there was certainly sharp competi- tion for the post, and the preference could not have been given to a non-resident of Guthrie's youth, had he not been deemed a peculiarly able man. At Louisville he held the post of prosecuting attorney for several years. The now magnificent city was then but a rough river town, having a floating population of the most lawless and reckless class -- men who had so long defied the law with impunity that the condition of the place bordered on terrorism. Mr. Guthrie was a man of great frame, enormous strength and vitality, indomitable will, and a courage that knew no fear. His vig- orous administration, stimulated by the very threats which were intended to paralyze it, soon accomplished the establish- ment of society upon a basis of law and order.
The town of Louisville was then rendered very sickly by the presence of great ponds of stagnant water here and there within its limits. No effort was made to drain these, and people accepted their annual attacks of fever and chills, as they paid their taxes, as an undoubted, but a necessary evil. Mr. Guthrie turned his attention to this end, and, in the face of all opposition, strenuous as it was blind, succeeded in securing the adoption of sanitary measures, abating the nuis- ance, and rendering possible the growth and development that would else have been out of the question.
In 1828 Mr. Guthrie took active part in securing a city charter for Louisville. He was elected a member of the first City Council, and for twelve years, from 1828 to 1839 inclu- sive, his service in that body was only interrupted during two years when he was a member of the Legislature.
During this legislative service Mr. Guthrie made himself the champion of those measures embraced in the Internal Im- provement system of Kentucky. The splendid system of highways known as the old State turnpikes was constructed under acts of the Legislature which he was largely instru- mental in pushing to a passage. The slackwater improve- ments of the Kentucky, Green, and Barren rivers, so hope- fully begun but since so shamefully abandoned, were under- taken as a result of the same movement, as was the build- ing of the first railroad ever undertaken in Kentucky-one of the very earliest, as well, in the United States-that extend- ing from Frankfort to Lexington. In favor of these measures and others intended to carry them into effect, Mr. Guthrie gave an earnest and efficient support, dictated by a clear- sighted assurance that upon these depended the material future of Kentucky. He rested on no " downy bed of ease."
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HISTORY OF THE OHIO FALLS COUNTIES.
His politics were avowedly Democratic, while Louisville was largely Whig. In addition to this cause of embarrassment, his own party was strongly opposed to the schemes of internal improvement which he had made peculiarly his own, and, after winning bitterly contested elections against a party rep- resenting a majority in his district, with such a leader as the late George D. Prentice and such an organ as the Louisville Journal-after winning against these odds, Mr. Guthrie found himself the acknowledged champion in the Legislature of measures which his party avowedly opposed. Notwith- standing numerical odds he was elected and re-elected; in spite of his personal independence he retained the friendship and support of his party. Whatever may be the opinion of to-day as to the abstract propriety of the improvement schemes, there can be no question that they were then advis- able and that they alone served to rouse Kentucky from the condition of a backwoods State, isolated from the highways and markets of the world.
During the years 1833-34, Mr. Guthrie was in full sym- pathy with the stand of President Jackson, in vetoing the United States Bank act, and was a leader in organizing the Bank of Kentucky, with a capital of $5,000,000, its principal office in Louisville and its sub-branches in various parts of the State. " This bank is now the leading bank of Kentucky, and its charter has formed the model for that of every bank of issue in the State. Mr. Guthrie was for many years one of its directors.
In 1837 Mr. Guthrie was a leader in the steps taken which resulted in the organization of the University of Louis- ville, of which he was long president, and, for thirty-two consecutive years, a trustee. No interest of his busy life lay nearer Mr. Guthrie's heart than this.
During those same busy twelve years he was active in securing the erection of the Jefferson County Court-house and the introduction of gas into the city of Louisville. The former project met with the strongest opposition, and, for lack of funds, which might easily have been secured, the building remained unfinished for some time, being derisively pointed to as "Guthrie's Folly."
In 1849 Mr. Guthrie was, after great opposition, made a delegate to the convention called to frame a new Constitution for Kentucky, and, upon its meeting at Frankfort, October Ist, became its President. The constitution which to-day endures was then framed. Mr. Guthrie not only made an admirable presiding officer, but took prominent part in the daily discussions in the convention, his speeches always com- pact, vigorous, and logical, showing a perfect mastery of the situation and of the need; of the State. His record in the convention is equal to that of any of the great and promi- nent Kentuckians who composed it.
Scarcely had Mr. Guthrie completed his duties in the con- vention when he became ardently engaged as president and chief promoter of the building of a railroad from Louisville to Frankfort, the second road in the State, and which, as .it was sixty-five miles in length, was considered a very serious undertaking. The road was carried through successfully. Mr. Guthrie remained its president until 1853, when he re- signed. At about the same time he was deeply interested in the building of the Jeffersonville & Indianapolis Railroad, of which he was ever after a director and large stockholder.
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