A Bachelor in Louisville (pages 65-72)
(page 65, par. 2) rumors that Caucasian spies for the Indians operated with impunity within Louisville Forman and Draper, Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi 1888, p. 37.
(page 66, par. 2) Richard Chenoweth’s family suffered multiple fatalities Yater, George H. Two Hundred Years at the Fall of the Ohio: A History of Louisville and Jefferson County, p. 23; and Blaine A. Guthrie Jr. “Captain Richard Chenoweth: a Founding Father of Louisville” Filson Club History Q, April 1972, Vol. 46, pp. 147-160.
Another such incident came to be known as the Tick Creek Massacre. See: Kleber, John E. The Encyclopedia of Louisville, p. 58; and Bridwell, Margaret Morris “Notes on One of the Early Ballard Families of Kentucky, Including the Ballard Massacre, “ Filson Club History Quarterly 1939, Vol 13, pp. 1-20. Bridwell captures the brutality perpetrated by and – in reprisal actions – on Indians, and gives a flavor for the terror it induced among settlers: “Ballard’s father, stepmother, brothers John and Benjamin, and three younger children lived in a cabin about 100 yards from a fort known as Tyler Station. In Spring 1788, a party of Delaware Indians shot and killed John at the wood pile, then surrounded the house. As Ballard rushed out to guard his father’s front door, several Indians ran to the back of the house, broke out chinking, and shot and killed the elder Ballard, fourteen-year-old Benjamin, and one small daughter. Mrs. Ballard was tomahawked as she ran out the front door. Another little daughter, injured by a hatchet, recovered. A son James was not at home. It is said that Ballard fired six shots and killed six Indians. The enemy later admitted that they lost seven.”
(page 65, par. 2, line 8) found themselves on the wrong end of the Delawares’ arrows, guns, and tomahawks Townspeople and soon Samuel S. still feared Indian attack potentially very close to the town. After a nocturnal incident where Indians were suspected to have been scouting, “I immediately moved from that place” Forman and Draper, Op. cit., p. 40. Samuel S. and Louisville citizens had no way of foreseeing that the Chenoweth and Tick Creek Massacres were among the last of murderous Indian raids in the area. The bulk of raiding and reprisals shifted north of the Ohio River into the Ohio Territory “Middle Ground.” Samuel S. initially set up his store on the outer precincts of the small town at Bear Grass Creek:
“A few people [local settlers] got together in the night, and followed the Indian trail of the village without alarming me. The Indians evidently thought themselves discovered, and retired, hence I escaped. In consequence of this alarm, I immediately moved from that place [Bear Creek] to the center of the village, into the corner building opposite the tavern.”
(page 66, par. 3, lines 5-6) This was good news indeed, though a close call involving a decoyer would await Ezekiel wrote to Samuel S. that he had traveled “through innumerable perils and difficulty” on his trip from Louisville to Natchez with his family and enslaved African Americans. Recounting details of those perils would wait. Setting up the plantation and business matters were more pressing. Ezekiel Forman to Samuel S, Forman, April 18, 1790, In: Samuel and Samuel S. Forman papers, Fairchild Collection, NYPL, Ms Coll 969.
(page 66, par. 4, lines 2-3) tending to his goods and trading them for good-quality tobacco from any willing plantation owner The temporary store became the center of Samuel S.’s Louisville world Samuel S. Forman was following the business model of his resident competitors. Monsieur Tradiveau and another early French trader, Jean Honore, started the retail trade in Louisville in 1782 by bringing a variety of manufactured goods likely to be in demand by the locals – cloth dry goods, ribbons for the ladies, farm tools, bar iron for blacksmiths, gunpowder, shot, etc. overland from Philadelphia and then floating it down the Ohio to Louisville and their stores’ stock. Mr. Brodhead opened a grocery in town in 1783. He too sold a variety of wares originating in Philadelphia. Kleber, Op. cit., p. 361, John Broadhead opened the first general store in Louisville in 1783.
(page 67, par. 5) Cuffey a month-old bear cub Forman Travels, NYPL manuscript c. 1850, p. 57. Cuffey is unnamed in the published and some of the other manuscript versions. Samuel S. Forman did not explain his choice of name. Cuffey was sometimes used as an Afro-American’s first name, possibly an Anglicization of Kofi, an Akan African male name.
(page 68, par. 1) “all appeared in moccasins” Forman and Draper, Op. cit., pp. 38-39. I will leave it to historians of costume and fashion to discern if there is any relation whatsoever between preferred soft-soled footwear for social dances in 1790 frontier Louisville and Elvis Presley’s 1956 iconic elevation of blue suede shoes into the pop culture limelight. Pressley’s rock and roll music – a cultural fusion encompassing Soul, Spirituals, Jazz, and Country musical traditions of diverse Americans – burst forth from Memphis and the complex fabric and cultural fusion of the mid-South. Though Samuel S. Forman did not identify the source or style of moccasins in this amusing episode, geography would suggest Cherokee nation artisans could have been involved. And Tupelo, Mississippi, Pressley’s birthplace, had been a major Chickasaw town Pre-Removal.
(page 69, par. 2) dueling Kleber, John E. Op.cit., pp. 256 There were 41formal duels fought by Kentuckians between 1790 and 1867. Three involved Louisvillians. “The most sensible duel involved John Rhurston and Johnson Harrison in the summer of 1792 in the woods where Broadway currently runs. Manifesting uncommon sense, the two parties decided to settle their trivial disagreement by shooting at an inanimate target rather than each other, the winner to receive a gallon of whiskey. Harrison won the match and the liquor.” See: J Winston Coleman, Famous Kentucky Duels: The Story of the Code of Honor in the Bluegrass State, and Robert M. Ireland, “Homicide in Nineteenth Century Kentucky” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 1983: Vol. 81, pp. 134-153.
(page 69, par. 2) “into the eye and push it out from the socket” Yater, George H., Op cit., p. 25, as quoted from the Erkuries Beatty diary, describes rough and tumble wrestling and barbaric gouging.
(page 69, par 1, line 3) leisure, of which they seemed to have plenty Samuel S. Forman would have agreed with a visitor from New York, quoted by Yater, George H., Op. cit., p. 35. Samuel S. had a bemused opinion of wealthy settlers’ sons – “Virginians” he labelled as “young blades” of the sort who vandalized the windows to his store.
(page 66, par. 3) a letter from Ezekiel with instructions for liquidating their store Samuel S. Forman to Ezekiel Forman, ms letter dated March 18, 1790, in: Samuel and Samuel S. Forman papers, Fairchild Collection, NYPL, Ms Coll 969.
(page 70, par. 1, line 1) “whiskey as much as possible but good strength” Ezekiel Forman to Samuel A. Forman, ms letter dated April 18, 1790, in: Forman Papers, NYPL Ibid.
(page 70, pars. 2-3) [Ezekiel Forman] complained that one source did not come through with the sale of tobacco in a deal that they apparently concluded in Louisville two months before I provide a brief account of the Indian attack on Lacassangue Station in the hamlet of Cassania, a little upriver from Louisville on the northern Indiana territory side. Details of the Indian raid are contained in a manuscript letter, Captain Joseph Ashton to General Harmar, April 3, 1790, as quoted in Forman and Draper, Op. cit., p. 34 footnote. The violence disrupted carrying out the business deal, unbeknownst to Ezekiel, who by then was far on his way to Natchez. Ezekiel complained that Mr. Lacassangue did not come through with the sale of tobacco in a deal that they apparently had concluded in person, two months before, when Ezekiel was still in Louisville. “Monsieur Lacassangue most certainly ought to sell me his tobacco upon the expressed terms stipulated in that paper and, I must say, I am amazed he should hesitate about it.” Ezekiel wanted to buy Lacassangue’s tobacco outright and add it to the shipment Samuel S. was preparing. Short of that, Ezekiel was willing to act as the Frenchman’s agent, so long as the tobacco had been officially passed for quality by the Virginia warehouse inspector in Louisville. Eliminating that last step, Ezekiel realistically feared, risked Lacassangue’s tobacco being rejected by the Spanish in New Orleans. Ezekiel, if he were to agree to serving as agent for Lacassangue’s tobacco, would be left in a lurch. Ezekiel delegated to his supercargo Samuel S. the delicate negotiation, instructing:
“that no touching on any terms but that of his risking the [Spanish] inspector at [New] Orleans. That risk I will not run. I have more reason to think, that I should get my tobacco into the King’s store, than I had when at Louisville, but nothing to count with certainty upon. This would in my contract be a great thing to Mr. Lacassangue. And I should really be happy at serving him [as agent] independent of my own Interest. See: Ezekiel Forman to Samuel A. Forman, ms letter dated April 18, 1790, in: Forman Papers, NYPL Ibid.
(page 70, par. 5) Mr. Buckner for his entire crop of tobacco The exchange probably involved Philip Buckner, a substantial planter in the Louisville area at the time . In 1797 Jefferson county court approved the petition of a Philip Buckner to lay out Middletown on part of his 500 acres.” 11 miles East of downtown “where the Sinking Fork of Beargrass Creek crosses the road to Shelbyville.” See: Yater George H., Op. cit., p. 25.
(page 71, par. 2) 10 casks of tobacco Kinnard, Lawrence, “Spain in the Mississippi Valley” Vol. III (part. II), pp. 351-352. The entire cargo, as it entered the port of entry for Natchez, is enumerated from transcribed and translated Spanish original documents: “10 casks of tobacco; 6 barrels ditto; 120 pounds of iron bars; 2 kegs of lard; 106 beaver skins; 4 otter skins; 9 fox skins; 25 ditto of wildcat.”