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    True Bluegrass Stories: History from the Heart of Kentucky
    True Bluegrass Stories: History from the Heart of Kentucky
    True Bluegrass Stories: History from the Heart of Kentucky
    Ebook162 pages3 hours

    True Bluegrass Stories: History from the Heart of Kentucky

    By Tom Stephens and Stephen M. Vest

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    About this ebook

    Famed pioneer Daniel Boone, upon seeing the Bluegrass region for the first time in 1769, wrote, From the top of an eminence, we saw with pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucke. Centuries later, his sentiments still ring true.
    In this fast-paced collection of articles from his widely successful Looking Back column in Kentucky Monthly magazine, author Tom Stephens delivers a captivating glimpse into Kentucky s renowned Bluegrass region. Hide
    away in the stockades and stations of the pioneers, discover Abraham Lincoln s Lexington retreat, face off in a duel as Henry Clay did, consume the potent origins of Kentucky bourbon and sober up with the Shakers. All of this and plenty more lie ahead when you explore True Bluegrass Stories: History from the Heart of Kentucky.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateNov 1, 2008
    ISBN9781625843524
    True Bluegrass Stories: History from the Heart of Kentucky
    Author

    Tom Stephens

    Tom Stephens is the author of the widely popular First Cats: Amazing Origins of the University of Kentucky Sports Tradition (Oakleaf, 2005), former history columnist for Kentucky Monthly magazine, editor of Kentucky Ancestors, and currently a copyeditor for Business First of Louisville. He has lived in Kentucky his entire life, studying its history and passing it on to the public along the way.

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    • 4/5
      This compilation is well-written and very well organized. As I grew up across the river in Indiana, many of the place and people names were familiar, but this book filled in many gaps in my knowledge. The illustrations are pretty good as well, and I particularly enjoyed the map of early Kentucky showing the stations and trails. A great set of readings about Kentucky.
    • 4/5
      First Line: Pristine and primeval in the mid-1700s, Kentucky first entered the consciousness of American colonists as an "Eden" or "El Dorado of the West," the next place an energetic young man could enter penniless and see his dreams come true.It was at about this time that several of my own ancestors packed their wagons and moved to Kentucky. They did quite well there for about a century before the next itchy-footed generation picked up sticks and moved to Illinois, which is where I was born.I've been to Kentucky many times and have to admit that one of my favorite parts of the state is indeed the Bluegrass, so I picked up this book fully expecting to (1) enjoy it and (2) learn something. Both my expectations were met.This is a collection of stories from Stephens' Looking Back column in Kentucky Monthly magazine. I can certainly see why the column is popular. He covers a lot of history in these short articles, and he does so in an entertaining and informative manner. As many times as I've been to the Bluegrass, I still learned several things such as: why there are so many Shelbyvilles and Shelby Counties in the United States, just what makes bourbon different from whiskey, and the life of the woman "Hot Lips" Houlihan in M*A*S*H was based upon. I also got to revisit some favorite places such as Pleasant Hill ("Shakertown"), outside of Harrodsburg.Anyone who's interested in United States history, and in particular the history of Kentucky, should add this book to their reading.
    • 5/5
      As a child, I lived in Kentucky for a few years. I have many good memories of the state but not a great knowledge of its history. My parents were great about taking us around the state to see various historic sites, however. Memories of those travels came back as I read this excellent book. True Bluegrass Stories is a collection of short historical pieces that are written in a very readable style – not dull at all! I was reminded of the beautiful Lexington area, Lincoln’s birthplace, and Henry Clay. I was also reacquainted with Shakertown and the history of Kentucky bourbon. I did not know, however, that Mary Todd Lincoln came from Kentucky, as did the inventor of the Thompson submachine gun and (just maybe!) “Hot Lips” Houlihan. The book also contains pictures and photographs to accent the articles. This book would make an excellent addition to the library of anyone who lives in or appreciates Kentucky.

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    True Bluegrass Stories - Tom Stephens

    everyone!

    Another Name for Heaven

    Pristine and primeval in the mid-1700s, Kentucky first entered the consciousness of American colonists as an Eden or El Dorado of the West, the next place an energetic young man could enter penniless and see his dreams come true.

    Virginian Dr. Thomas Walker explored it in 1750, and explorers called long hunters from the Carolinas, including Daniel Boone, came scouting land in the 1760s and 1770s. This was in defiance of King George’s Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited exploration and settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.

    Kentucky was a land of extreme contrasts. An explorer could be awed by its beauty and promise in one moment and in a terrifying fight for his life the next.

    General Robert B. McAfee remembered:

    In these years…[it] began to circulate that there was a rich and delightful country to the west on the waters of the Ohio…My father and uncles often held councils together and talked over their future prospects, all of whom being in the vigor of manhood and full of enterprise and adventure, longed to see for themselves, as they could not think of being confined to the sterile mountains of Virginia where only small parcels of fertile land could be found at any one place.

    REVOLUTIONARY SETTLERS

    By the 1770s, explorers had given way to settlers—often Revolutionary War soldiers whose enlistments had expired—who began seeking to secure land for themselves and their families. Under the Virginia land law, a pioneer possessing a land warrant—often payment for military service—or other right to own land had to locate an unclaimed parcel, enter his claim and have a survey done and recorded before he acquired ownership. This proved easier said than done in the middle of a war.

    Kentucky’s first settlement, Harrodsburg, began in 1774 as a row of separate cabins in the wilderness. By the next year, it was a fort. Courtesy of Kentucky Monthly magazine.

    Kentucky’s first settlement, Harrodsburg, began in 1774 as a row of separate cabins in the wilderness. By the next year, Harrodsburg was a fort.

    "STOCKADING UP"

    To make settlements militarily defensible, pioneers constructed stockades to encircle them. This process began by clearing an area of trees, often either one square acre of land or an equal amount in a rectangular shape. The chopped-down trees were used for construction material. Experienced pioneers, armed only with axes, saws and augers, could convert felled trees into almost anything they needed, from long logs for the stockade and cabin to flat-sided logs for floors to slivers of split logs for clapboards and roof shingles. Pegs were whittled from smaller pieces for use in the place of nails or other fasteners.

    Stockading up, as pioneers described it, meant digging a trench three feet deep into which were placed fifteen-foot-long logs set vertically. The process was described by historian Alfred Pirtle in the 1920s: One end of each piece was sharpened with the ax so that the pieces of timber when placed on end and so close together that there were no places for a bullet to go through, formed an edge like a saw…The earth was rammed tight around the stockade, and in a few months it was perfectly firm.

    Doors were made of split logs made straight on two sides and held together with pegs. Shutters were the only way to close a window opening, which was usually also accomplished with a peg. A door would have a latch that fit into a carved depression to make it secure. A hole was generally carved into the wood above the latch, from which a string would be passed to allow the latch to be operated from the outside. In times of crisis, the string would be pulled inside. Larger holes—to accommodate rifles—also were bored for fire-throughs.

    A stockade’s effectiveness was that logs would stop rifle balls, coupled with the fact that Indian attackers didn’t possess artillery.

    LAND

    The reason to come to Kentucky was to secure land. Regardless of the dangers posed by their enemies, these land-hungry pioneers weren’t about to cower inside a fort while more aggressive neighbors established claims to the best land. So they left the forts in search of their future homes, well aware of the risks they were taking. The shelters they constructed often were simply fortified cabins, or cabins either within or part of an enclosed stockade.

    Oftentimes pioneers traveled together in extended family groups. Their settlements sometimes became known as stations, though the terms station and fort were commonly used interchangeably. Kentucky soon had a network of stations, and it was the duty of every man who could carry a rifle to come to the aid of a station under attack. This arrangement was vital to the survival of all because Kentuckians were almost always outnumbered. It has been estimated that Boonesborough, founded by Daniel Boone, contained no more than 150 men, women and children when it was established in 1774, and the numbers at most other stations were much smaller.

    The situation changed with General George Rogers Clark’s successful 1778–79 military campaign to secure the frontier. With the Indian threat diminished, Kentucky was poised for its very first immigration explosion.

    GETTING THERE

    There were two main ways to enter Kentucky: via the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap or on the Ohio River to Limestone (present-day) Maysville and the Falls of the Ohio (present-day Louisville). To walk through the gap—the largest break in the Appalachian Mountains for hundreds of miles—settlers gathered at Sycamore Shoals, in present-day Tennessee, or at other rendezvous points along the Powell, Clinch and Holston Valleys in Virginia and North Carolina, then to Martin’s Station in western Virginia, southeast of the gap.

    Some came with military land warrants, either earned or purchased. Others, sometimes almost naked, paddling bare-foot and bare-legged along, or laboring up the rocky hills, arrived with nothing more tangible than the hope that their new home would be better than their old.

    Residents of whole communities in the East got caught up in the excitement, sold out and began assembling at places such as Fort Pitt—present-day Pittsburgh and the beginning of the Ohio River—Fort Redstone, Pennsylvania, and the Monongahela Valley in present-day West Virginia.

    Most loaded their belongings in flatboats or keelboats, the largest of which—known as Kentucky boats—could hold a minimum of ten tons of supplies, furnishings and even livestock. The more desperate often made the journey in dugout canoes. John Floyd, whose letters form much of what historians know about early Kentucky, reported in the spring of 1780 that near 300 large boats have arrived this spring at the falls (present-day Louisville) with families.

    Nicholas Meriwether wrote his father-in-law, Captain William Meriwether, on August 7, 1784, with advice about a flatboat trip to Kentucky: Sail all night unless exceeding dark & be upon the way earley in the mornings when you do stop & stay but little time at a place. This well Obsurv’d you’ll find it very trifleing to come down the river; and not the least dainger—We wish much to see you dow[n] safe; and live in hopes you’ll come this fall.

    In the midst of such a phenomenon, a Virginia preacher, trying to explain the eternal reward to his congregation, said, O my dear honeys, heaven is a Kentucky of a place.

    DANIEL BOONE

    One newcomer was John Filson, a thirty-two-year-old schoolteacher who came to Kentucky in the autumn of 1783 to acquire land to sell to others. As a way to market his investment, Filson wrote and published a book, The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke. It included a fine map and an appendix, which Filson titled The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon.

    It has been estimated that Boonesborough, founded by Daniel Boone, contained no more than 150 men, women and children when it was established in 1774, and the numbers at most other stations were much smaller. Courtesy of Kentucky Monthly magazine.

    Filson’s book not only attracted settlers from the seaboard states and Europe, but it also made Daniel Boone a household name for all time.

    THE FIRST IMMIGRANTS

    Those attracted to the infant Kentucky were mainly English and Ulster Scots (Scottish Protestants from Northern Ireland), but also Welsh and German, many of whom brought the African American slaves they had acquired in America. At statehood—June 1, 1792—Kentucky was a literal land of opportunity populated by Revolutionary War veterans, non-inheriting sons of wealthy easterners, land-hungry poor farmers and, perhaps more importantly, their families.

    Kentucky’s first leaders reflected its general ethnic makeup. Isaac Shelby, elected the new state’s first governor, was a grandson of a Welshman; Attorney General George Nicholas is believed to have been a descendant of a British navy surgeon; Speaker

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