{168} CHAPTER XXVII

Road to Frankfort—Leesburgh—Mulatto innkeeper—Interchange of musical entertainment—Frankfort—Breakfast under air fans—Sand fit for glass—Marble—Publick buildings—Eccentrick character of the keeper of the penitentiary—Return—Coles’s bad inn—Abuses in the post-office department.

We left Lexington after dinner, and taking the left hand road of two equally used to Frankfort, we travelled twelve miles through a very rich, but not a generally settled country.

After crossing the Town branch, Wolfe’s fork, Steele’s run, and the South branch of Elkhorn river, to which the three former are auxiliaries, and on all of which are several mills, we arrived at a hamlet of three or four houses called Leesburgh, twelve miles from Lexington.[128]One of the houses had been the seat of the late Col. Lee, and is stillowned by his widow, who rents it to a mulatto man named Daly, who has converted it into an excellent inn. With the house, Daly occupies as much cultivated land as nearly supplies his well frequented stables with hay, corn and oats. There is also a good kitchen garden in which are vast quantities of culinary sweet herbs, besides useful vegetables, and he has good stabling and other out offices—for all which he pays only forty pounds Virginia currency, or one hundred and thirty-six dollars and two thirds, per annum. We experienced the benefit of his spacious icehouse, in the fine butter we had at supper, where every thing was good, particularly the coffee, which was almosta la Française. Daly having a good violin, on which he plays by ear with some taste, he entertained us with musick while we supped, in return for which, we played for him afterwards some duets, by the aid {169} of another violin, borrowed of young Mr. Lee, who resides in the neighbourhood with his mother.

My good bed did not lull me to repose, partly from the strength of our host’s coffee, and partly from a stomachick affection through indigestion.

After a sleepless night, the freshness of the morning air revived me, and we proceeded towards Frankfort, amusing ourselves by the way with talking over the vanity and egotism of Mr. Daly, who had entertained us with many little anecdotes, connected with some of the first and most celebrated characters in the United States, in which he was always a principal actor. His vanity however had met with a sad check, soon after our alighting at his house, from the abuse of a female negro slave from a neighbouring plantation, who he drove away with a cowskin, and she in return lavished on him the most opprobrious epithets, among which he seemed to be most hurt by her calling him “an Indian looking and a black son of a b—.”

A fine road, through a more level country than we had came through last evening, brought us in two hours, eleven miles, to the hill above Frankfort, which from thence was seen to advantage, with Kentucky river flowing past it, through a deep and narrow valley, confined by steep and rather stony hills, which afford a variety, after the fine plains, luxuriant forests and rich farms, within twenty miles in every direction of Lexington.

We descended the hill, into the capital of Kentucky, and stopped at Weiseger’s, the sign of the Golden Eagle, where we sat down to a sumptuous breakfast, with two green silk air fans kept in motion over our heads, by a little negro girl with a string from the ceiling, in a room seventy-two feet long.[129]

After breakfast I accompanied Mr. A—— to examine a shallow stratum of sand, on the bank of the river, near a mineral spring about half a mile below {170} the town, and he got a negro who was fishing, to wade to an island opposite, and bring some from thence, which had probably accumulated there by floods.—He pronounced both kinds proper for the manufacture of glass, which was what he had in view, but it did [not] seem as if a sufficient quantity could be procured for an extensive manufactury.

We then returned to town, walked through it, and entered the state house, from the cupola of which we could distinctly count every house, the number of which was exactly ninety, most of them well built with brick, and some with rough but good marble of a dusky cream colour, veined with both blue and red, and capable of a good polish, which is abundantin the neighbourhood. The old wooden houses are rapidly disappearing to give place to brick, since about two years ago. Until that time, attempts had been made at every annual sitting of the legislature, to remove the seat of government elsewhere, ever since the year 1793, the first after the separation of this government from the state of Virginia. These attempts having failed, and there having been no renewals of them in the last two sessions of the legislature, the proprietors, under a security of Frankfort being established as the permanent capital of the state, have become spirited in improvement, and the buildings erected since are on a scale and of materials worthy of a capital.

The publick buildings here, are a state-house, a court-house, a gaol, a market-house, the state penitentiary, and a government house occupied by Mr. Greenup, who now holds that office.

The state-house of rough marble, is about eighty-six feet front, by fifty-four deep. It is an oblong square with a square roof, and a cupola containing a bell rising from the centre. The house is plain, but roomy and commodious. On the first floor are the treasurer’s, register’s, auditor’s, and printing offices. {171} On the second, the rooms for the representatives of the state, and the federal court of appeals, and on the third are the senate chamber, the general court and a school room.[130]

The court-house is a plain brick building near the state-house.—A piazza of five arches opens on the hall for the county courts.—The clerk’s offices are on the same floor.—The jury rooms are on the second floor, and on the third is a mason’s lodge.

There are four publick inns, which in point of size, accommodationand attendance, are not surpassed in the United States, and there are several large houses, where people under the necessity of attending the courts, or detained for any time in Frankfort, can be accommodated with private lodgings. The erection of a permanent wooden bridge over the Kentucky has been lately commenced, which will be about one hundred and forty yards long from bank to bank, the surface of which is about fifty feet above low water mark. The present bridge of boats is about sixty-five yards between the abutments, and the river now at low water is eighty-seven yards wide. Three brigs have been built above the bridge, and sent down the Kentucky, the Ohio, and the Mississippi, but the Kentucky is not navigable during the low water of summer and fall. Coals are brought down it nearly three hundred miles and delivered in Frankfort at sixpence per bushel, but wood being yet tolerably plenty, they are used only in the penitentiary and by the blacksmiths.

There are several curious strata of marble, rising from the margin of the river, like steps of stairs, towards the top of the bank on the town side. The marble is covered by a stratum of blue limestone, which has {172} over it a superstratum of reddish clay and gravel mixed.

After dinner we visited the penitentiary accompanied by our landlord and Mr. William Hunter, a respectable printer and bookseller, and a genteel man, to whom I had brought a letter of introduction.[131]In our way we passed the government house, which is a good, plain, two story, brick building,and near it we met governour Greenup, who saluted us with much familiarity. He is a plain, respectable looking elderly man, much esteemed throughout the state.[132]

The penitentiary is contained within a square area of an acre, consequently each side is two hundred and eight feet long. The work shops and store houses occupy the front and the other three sides are enclosed by a stone wall sixteen feet high, surmounted by a sort of entablature of brick about three feet high, rounded on the top and projecting about a foot from the wall on each side to prevent any attempts of the convicts to scale the wall. There are now twenty-four miserable wretches confined here for various limitations of time, in proportion to the enormity of their crimes, but none exceeding ten years, the longest period limited by law. The cells of the criminals are in a two story building with a gallery on the inside of the area, extending the length of one of the sides. Some of the convicts were playing fives, and the rest amusing themselves otherwise in the yard. It was Sunday, a day always devoted to amusement by those outcasts of society, who have their daily task exacted from them with rigour during the rest of the week. They are taught, and work at every trade for which they have a taste, and of which they are capable, so that some who were useless burthens on society previous to their confinement, carry with them, on their return to the world, the means of earning a decent subsistence; though at {173} the same time, perhaps the majority, instead of being reformed, become more prone to vice, through despair of ever gaining their lost reputation. The institution had like to have failed about two years ago, through the insufficiency of the superintendants, when acaptain Taylor, a man of good property in Mercer county, who was an enthusiastick admirer of it, was prevailed on by the governour to undertake the management and superintendance, and it has since not only supported itself, but has earned a surplus, which goes into the state treasury. Taylor is a stern man of steady habits, and a great mechanical genius. He superintends every class of workmen himself, and has invented several machines for the improvement of mechanicks. He has nailors, coopers, chair makers, turners, and stone cutters, the latter of whom cut and polish marble slabs of all sizes, and he has taught most of them himself.

He is a large and strong man, about fifty years of age, and either through eccentricity, or to give himself a terrifick appearance, he wears his dark brown beard about two inches long, from each ear round the lower part of the chin. It is surely a strange taste, which prompts him to separate himself from his family and the world, to exercise a petty tyranny over felons, and to live in such constant apprehension from them, that, as I was informed, he always carries pistols.

We resisted the polite and friendly importunity of Mr. Hunter, to spend the day with him, and quitting Frankfort, we took a different route to that by which we had come, which brought us, after riding ten miles mostly through woods, to Coles’s, who keeps an inn on this road, in opposition to Daly, on the other. But any traveller, who has once contrasted his rough vulgarity, and the badness of his table and accommodations, with the taste, order, plenty, and good attendance of his mulatto competitor, will {174} never trouble Mr. Coles a second time, especially as there is no sensible difference in the length or goodness of the roads, and that by Daly’s, is through a generally much better settled country.

We got back to Lexington on Monday, 3d August, in time for breakfast, which I partook of at the publick table of the Traveller’s Inn, merely for curiosity, but notwithstandingthe apparent elegance of the house, my other landlord’s (Wilson) suffered nothing in the comparison.

I whiled away the day in expectation of the post, which was to decide whether or not I should have the pleasure of my friend A——’s company on my return to Pittsburgh, but owing to some unaccountable irregularity, which is a cause of general complaint in this country against the post-office department, it did not arrive until ten at night, although it was due at eleven in the morning. Another very just cause of complaint against the same department is the slowness with which the mail is conveyed. A trifling improvement and a very small additional expence, would forward the mails through the whole western country, where the roads are comparatively good, and the climate very fine, at the rate of fifty or sixty miles a day, except during floods in the winter, where, for want of bridges, the roads are sometimes impassable in particular spots for a few days, whereas, now, in the best season, the average progress of the mails, does not exceed thirty miles daily.

Mr. A—— having an engagement, the day would have passed very heavily, had it not been for the coffee house, where I amused myself with the wonderful mass of political contradiction to be found in forty different newspapers, where scarcely any two editors coincided in opinion.

FOOTNOTES:[128]Leestown, laid out by Hancock Lee in 1775, was one of the earliest settlements in Kentucky. Because of its location on the Kentucky River, it seemed destined to become a town of importance. In Cuming’s time, however, it had dwindled to a mere hamlet, and has since long ceased to exist.—Ed.[129]For a sketch of the history of Frankfort, see F. A. Michaux’sTravels, vol. iii of this series, p. 200, note 39. Daniel Weiseger was a prominent Frankfort citizen, who assisted in laying out the town and was one of the commissioners chosen for the erection of the second Kentucky state-house, 1814.—Ed.[130]This was the first permanent Kentucky state-house, built in 1794, and destroyed by fire in 1813. For a cut, see Collins,History of Kentucky(Covington, 1874), ii, p. 246.—Ed.[131]William Hunter was a native of New Jersey, who had been captured at an early age by a French man-of-war, and carried to France, where he learned the trade of printing. In 1793 he returned to America, and formed a partnership with Matthew Carey at Philadelphia. Two years later, he removed west, and after attempting newspapers in several towns finally establishedThe Palladiumat Frankfort in 1798, where he was also State printer. Later in life he removed to Washington, where he died in 1854.—Ed.[132]Christopher Greenup, third governor of Kentucky, was Virginia born (1750), and served in the Revolution, attaining the rank of colonel. In 1783, he migrated to Kentucky, and having already studied law was, two years later, chosen as clerk of the chief court for Kentucky District. His first service for the State was in Congress, 1792-97. After his gubernatorial experience (1804-08), he retired to his home near Maysville, where he died in 1818.—Ed.

[128]Leestown, laid out by Hancock Lee in 1775, was one of the earliest settlements in Kentucky. Because of its location on the Kentucky River, it seemed destined to become a town of importance. In Cuming’s time, however, it had dwindled to a mere hamlet, and has since long ceased to exist.—Ed.

[129]For a sketch of the history of Frankfort, see F. A. Michaux’sTravels, vol. iii of this series, p. 200, note 39. Daniel Weiseger was a prominent Frankfort citizen, who assisted in laying out the town and was one of the commissioners chosen for the erection of the second Kentucky state-house, 1814.—Ed.

[130]This was the first permanent Kentucky state-house, built in 1794, and destroyed by fire in 1813. For a cut, see Collins,History of Kentucky(Covington, 1874), ii, p. 246.—Ed.

[131]William Hunter was a native of New Jersey, who had been captured at an early age by a French man-of-war, and carried to France, where he learned the trade of printing. In 1793 he returned to America, and formed a partnership with Matthew Carey at Philadelphia. Two years later, he removed west, and after attempting newspapers in several towns finally establishedThe Palladiumat Frankfort in 1798, where he was also State printer. Later in life he removed to Washington, where he died in 1854.—Ed.

[132]Christopher Greenup, third governor of Kentucky, was Virginia born (1750), and served in the Revolution, attaining the rank of colonel. In 1783, he migrated to Kentucky, and having already studied law was, two years later, chosen as clerk of the chief court for Kentucky District. His first service for the State was in Congress, 1792-97. After his gubernatorial experience (1804-08), he retired to his home near Maysville, where he died in 1818.—Ed.

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