Historic Shrines of America Part 38

When he had a house ready for his wife, he returned to Virginia, and brought her to Kentucky. It is said that she was the third white woman to cross the c.u.mberland Mountains, Mrs. Daniel Boone and her daughter being the first and second. The claim has been made that their daughter, Louisa, who was born in Boonesborough, was the first white child born in the present limits of Kentucky.

Louisa was perhaps four years old when Whitley removed to the vicinity of Crab Orchard, the famous a.s.sembling place for parties about to take the dangerous journey back to Virginia. Two miles from the settlement he built Whitley's Fort. In 1788 he felt able to build for his growing family the first brick house in Kentucky. The brick were brought from Virginia, and the man who laid the brick was given a farm of five hundred acres for his services. The windows were placed high above the ground to prevent the Indians from shooting in at the occupants. The window-gla.s.s was carried across the mountains in pack-saddles. The stairway had twenty-one steps, and on these steps were carved the heads of thirteen eagles to represent the original thirteen Colonies.

The doors were made of wood, elaborately carved, and were in two layers, a heavy sheet of iron being placed between these. The old-time leather hinges are still in use.

The owner laid out on his property the first race track in Kentucky, and he called his house Sportsman's Hall. In its walls scores of settlers found refuge in time of danger. Famous men sat with Mr. and Mrs. Whitley at their hospitable table, among these being Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark, and General Harrison.

Until his death at the battle of the Thames in 1813 Whitley was one of the chief defenders of the settlers against the Indians. On his powder horn he cut the lines:

William Whitley, I am your horne, The truth I love, a lie I scorne, Fill me with the best of powder, I'll make your rifle crack the louder.

See how the dread, terrifick ball Makes Indians blench at Toreys fall, You with powder I'll supply For to defend your liberty.

One day in 1785 a messenger came to Whitley's Fort with the tidings that Indians had captured a mother and her babe, after killing three older children. Mr. Whitley was not at home, but Mrs. Whitley sent for him. In the meantime she collected a company of twenty rescuers. On his return Whitley placed himself at their head, pursued the Indians, and rescued the prisoners.

The t.i.tle Colonel was given to Whitley in 1794, when he commanded the Nickerjack expedition against the Tennessee Indians, who had been conducting foraging expeditions into Kentucky. The march was conducted with such secrecy and despatch that the enemy were taken by surprise, and were completely routed.

The last of his campaigns took place in Canada against the British, French, and Indians in 1813. Many claim that before he received his mortal wound in the battle of the Thames, he fired the shot that killed Tec.u.mseh, the chief who had given so much trouble to the settlers of Kentucky and Indiana. Others say that the shot was fired by a Colonel Johnson.

The body of the Indian fighter rests in an unknown grave hundreds of miles from the territory he helped to wrest from the Indians, but the brick house he built near Crab Orchard is still one of the historic buildings of Kentucky.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHITE HAVEN, ST. LOUIS _Photo furnished by Albert Wenzlick_ See page 362]

Lx.x.xIII

WHITE HAVEN, NEAR ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

WHERE ULYSSES S. GRANT COURTED JULIA DENT

Immediately after Ulysses Simpson Grant graduated from West Point, he was sent to Jefferson Barracks, at St. Louis. His military duties were not so arduous that he was unable to accept the invitation of Fred Dent, a former roommate at West Point, to go with him to the Dent homestead on the Gravois Road, four miles from the Barracks.

The young second lieutenant did not have to be urged to repeat his visit. In fact he went so often that the road between the Barracks and the Dent farm became as familiar to him as his old haunts on the banks of the Hudson. He did not meet Julia Dent at first, for she was absent at school, but he found enough attraction in a sister to make him a frequent visitor.

Then came the eventful day when he met seventeen-year-old Julia. The courts.h.i.+p was by no means a long-drawn-out affair; the young people were engaged before Grant was ordered to the Mexican border, though the fact was not announced until his return to St. Louis in May, 1845.

The marriage took place in August, 1848, after the close of the Mexican War.

For some years Mrs. Grant was a soldier's wife. Grant took her with him to Detroit, but he left her at her old home in St. Louis when he was transferred to the Pacific Coast. In 1853 he accepted a commission as captain, which he soon resigned, determining to return to the East.

Several unfortunate speculations had left him without funds, and he was indebted to a friend in San Francisco for transportation.

"I rejoined my family to find in it a son whom I had never seen, born while I was on the Isthmus of Panama," Grant said in his "Personal Memoirs." "I was now to commence, at the age of thirty-two, a new struggle for our support. My wife had a farm near St. Louis, to which we went, but I had no means to stock it. A house had to be built also.

I worked very hard, never losing a day because of bad weather, and accomplished the object in a moderate way."

After working as a farm laborer for a time, he built a cabin on sixty acres given to Mrs. Grant by her father. "Hardscrabble," as he called the four-room log house, was the home of the Grant family for several years. This cabin, which was on the grounds of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, and White Haven, must both be counted homes of the family at this period. Fred, Nellie, and Jesse Grant were all born in White Haven.

Ready money was scarce, but the father of a growing family felt the necessity of providing for their wants. "If nothing else could be done I would load a cord of wood on a wagon and take it to the city for sale," he wrote in his Memoirs. "I managed to keep along very well until 1858, when I was attacked by fever and ague. I had suffered very severely and for a long time from the disease while a boy in Ohio. It lasted now over a year, and, while it did not keep me in the house, it did interfere greatly with the amount of work I was able to perform. In the fall of 1858 I sold out my stock, crops and farming utensils at auction, and gave up farming."

The family remained at White Haven for a time, and Grant tried to make a living in the real estate business. His partner was a cousin of Mrs.

Grant. The income of the business was not sufficient for two families, so he soon gave up the attempt. "He doesn't seem to be just calculated for business, but an honester, more generous man never lived," was the remark of one who knew him at this time.

In the meantime he had taken his family to St. Louis. He made one further attempt to support them there. Learning that there was a vacancy in the office of county engineer, he applied for the position, but the appointment was to be made by the members of the county court, and he did not have sufficient influence to secure it. So the move to Galena, Illinois, in May, 1860, became necessary. There, in the leather business, he earned but eight hundred dollars a year. And he had a family of six to feed.

A year later he responded to the call of President Lincoln, and began the army service that made him famous.

White Haven was built in 1808 by Captain John Long, who had won his t.i.tle during the Revolution. Later the house and three hundred acres of the original farm were sold to Frederick Dent, who, at one period, had ninety slaves in the slave quarters still to be seen at the rear of the house.

Through Mrs. Grant the entire property came into the possession of General Grant. At the time of the failure of Grant & Ward, the farm was pledged to William H. Vanderbilt, who sold it to Captain Fuller H.

Conn of St. Louis. Captain Conn disposed of it in a number of parcels.

One of these, containing fifteen acres and the old homestead, was purchased by Albert Wenzlick, who makes his summer home in the house where Ulysses S. Grant met Julia Dent.

EIGHT: ALL THE WAY BACK TO NEW ENGLAND

_In verdurous tumult far away The prairie billows gleam, Upon their crests in blessing rests The noontide's gracious beam.

Low quivering vapors steaming dim The level splendors break Where languid lilies deck the rim Of some land-circled lake._

_Far in the east like low-hung clouds The waving woodlands lie; Far in the west the glowing plain Melts warmly in the sky.

No accent wounds the reverent air, No footprint dints the sod,-- Lone in the light the prairie lies, Wrapt in a dream of G.o.d._

JOHN HAY.

EIGHT: ALL THE WAY BACK TO NEW ENGLAND

[Ill.u.s.tration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S HOUSE, SPRINGFIELD, ILL.

_Photo by E. C. Hall_ See page 369]

Lx.x.xIV

THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN HOUSE, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS

FROM WHICH PRESIDENT-ELECT LINCOLN WENT TO WAs.h.i.+NGTON IN 1861

When Abraham Lincoln entered Springfield, in 1837, he did not own a house; in fact he did not own much of anything. Joshua Speed is quoted by Ida Tarbell thus:

"He had ridden into town on a borrowed horse, with no earthly property save a pair of saddle-bags containing a few clothes.... Lincoln came into the store with his saddle-bags on his arm. He said he wanted to buy the furniture for a single bed. The mattress, blankets, sheets, coverlid, and pillow ... would cost seventeen dollars. He said that perhaps was cheap enough; but small as the price was, he was unable to pay it. But if I would credit him till Christmas, and his experiment as a lawyer was a success, he would pay then, saying in the saddest tone, 'If I fail in this I do not know that I can ever pay you.'"

The storekeeper thereupon proposed that the young lawyer should share his own room above the store. Lincoln promptly accepted, went upstairs, and in a moment was down again. With dry humor he said: "Well, Speed, I am moved."

Lincoln longed for better quarters, however, because he wanted to be married. He watched with interest the new buildings that were going up, probably reflecting sadly that none of them were for him. In his discouragement he wrote to Miss Mary Owen of New Salem, to whom he had said something about coming to live with him in Springfield:

"You would have to be poor, without the means of hiding your poverty. Do you believe you could bear that patiently?

Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented. And there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort. I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am, provided I saw no sign of discontent in you."

Miss Owen declined to go to Springfield, because she felt that Lincoln was "deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman's happiness."