To Write on Ends As Was at Hand

Virginia Darcey Slaughter in 2004 opened a window into the life of Kentucky jurist Squire Turner (1793-1871). She posted on a message board that my subject corres-ponded with Talton Turner (1791-1858), then at Glasgow, Missouri. "One of these letters survives today," she advised. "It was written August 9th, 1845" from Squire Turner's home at Richmond, Kentucky.

Squire's papers, once entrusted to what is now Eastern Kentucky University, have been lost; yet he is voluminously represented in the record, if you know where to look. Henry Clay kept Turner's letters. Clay was but months from vaulting to U.S. Secretary of State from a third stint as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1827. Turner was in the third of six annual terms he'd serve in Kentucky's Lower House. Turner fed political intelligence to his fellow Kentuckian.

The two would migrate to the Whig Party. Turner would speak for Clay's nomination as Presidential candidate at the party's 1844 convention at Baltimore.

(Turner is well-represented in debate records for the Kentucky Constitutional Convention of 1849. A prolific writer, he can be credited with much of state law, codified under his influence the following year.)

Images enlarge when clicked.

If his mien, conveyed by an oil portrait (detail, right) hanging in the Madison County courthouse at Richmond doesn't do it, surviving historical documents – primarily his legal opinions – tend to portray Squire as taciturn. A rather poignant communique to his cousin breathes life into other reaches of the man's character.

I thought to identify the persons referred to, in this correspondence.

Sir,
Being at leisure this morning I determined to drop you a few lines and found I had no letter paper and thereupon determined to write on ends as was at hand. It is now a good while since you and I started this life - four fifths of our school mates have passed off this stage and gone from this world of care. It is meet therefore that we, while spared, should rekindle our early affections long buried in the busy scene of life. In a few years more, should we be spared, we shall be among the oldest of our name and kindred.

I was very much gratified at the visit your two interesting daughters paid us lately & that gratification was much increased by their companion Miss Clarke.

I hope it is not the only visit we shall receive from your family and Gen'l Clarks - The Turners have never [sic] for as much as they were entitled to. They have never paid enough attention to educating their children and giving them accomplishments and high aspirations.

You have organized a fine estate & are fully able to place your children in the first ranks & I am trying to do it with mine.

I was quite gratified to hear all about you and family & your father and all branches of this family - Your sister Polly was a great favorite of mine. We are nearly of the same age –

Tell Gen'l Clark that he and his wife & Ann must come. Ann is a smart girl & a pleasant fellow - I contraried her several times & when she became crusty over it, her good humor soon returned.

Father is greatly taken with Mrs. Pulliam. She must write the old man a letter. He will be delighted to get one [sic] cher him up. Mrs. Estill is a good girl & very discreet so far as I could discover. She was at my house less than the others. They were all such good company that we appeared lonesome after they left.

My health is reasonalby good but age is creeping up on me & my cares are greater as my family grows up.

Your children have of course given you an account of my family & of the community generally. Horace Turner, Joseph's son, has gone to Philadelphia to live.

My daughter Mary rec'd a letter some ten days since from Ann Clarke. Mary will go to Louisville to finish her education in a few weeks.

Old Marsh was about as glad to see your children as anybody was. He came a second time three days after they left. Betsy and all the family send their respects to you all - especially to our late visiters. Tell Mrs. Pulliam to carry to your father my highest respects & to tell the old man that I inquire after him every opportunity & find a lively interest in his health & happiness.

Yours,
Squire Turner

Turner admits he "contraried" a young woman. This may confirm churlish tendency. Idea that he would convey sentiments on scraps of paper, "on ends as was at hand," is incongruous. Let's call 'frugal' an attorney who twice turned down judicial appointment to the state's Court of Appeals, "because of the small salary." Superior in property law, Turner felt "entitled to" seven slaves, enumerated in 1840 and likely rented out and distributed across several landholdings. In 1845, Squire was midway to an 1850 accounting of a whopping twenty-nine souls held in bondage … valuing his 'real estate' at an impressive $45,000. (This calculator estimates labor's historic value. If all his property was in slaves, Turner's holdings would today represent an estimated $10,400,000.) An attorney in private practice, our subject was also investing in canals and the like, as part of Clay's visionary 'internal improvements' to infrastructure.

Squire Turner was by some evaluations in the billionaire class of his day.

Squire styled his father, Thomas Turner (1764-1847) as 'Old Marsh.' It is folksy euphemism for aging slave-master. Undoubtedly comfortable in perceived racial supremacy – a view shared by many Euro-Americans in Squire's sphere of association, even peers advancing emancipation – it may indicate inter-generational value the two men placed on domination. (In 1852 depiction of his jury-trial conduct, Livingston would compare Turner to a commanding general. The antebellum biography may have been based on self-report.)

I find it affirming that Turner valued "our name and kindred." My maternal grand-mother showed similar inclination when lauding the "fine man" she had never met. Loura Kittrell (Leer) Early (1893-1984) intended that I recall Squire Turner by name. My family history research grows out of handed-down reverence for kinship.

Recipient Talton Turner was twenty months older than Squire. It may be remarkable to note these cousins were a generation removed from one another. Both descended from John Turner, Sr. (1705-c1768) and Sarah Elizabeth Williams (c1720-aft 1778). Squire by John and Sarah's third surviving (son and) child John Turner, Jr. (c1738-1813) and wife Rebeckah Smith (d 1774); Talton by John and Sarah's last surviving child, Philip Turner (1762-1852) … to whom Squire above sends "highest respects." John Jr. was purportedly a full twenty-four years older than Philip. John Jr.'s son Thomas - 'Old Marsh,' above - actually occupied Talton's generation. Also seen as 'Tradin' Tom' Turner, Thomas had fathered a dozen children by two of his three wives. (And likely others, by his slaves. More here.)
[Thomas Turner and parents appear at A Basket Filled with Tears and Flowers.]

Talton was age fifty-three; Squire, fifty-two. In "the busy scene of life," the cousins' political paths had aligned after Talton left his Madison County North Carolina birthplace for Madison County, Kentucky. An 1883 History declared the early Missouri settler was "remembered to this day" as being one of "only two Whigs who voted that ticket for years."

No biographer I found indicates Talton (left) or Squire received anything more than crude, frontier education as children. The men in 1812, as Privates, gave short-term enlistments to different Kentucky Militia regiments in a "second war of American independence." Talton did acquire training, and by 1817 had secured the role of County Surveyor for Chariton County, Missouri. Three years later he married Sarah 'Sallie' Small Earickson (1802-1878). By 1825 Talton began speculating in land: his agglomeration did not fall short of phenomenal. At times partnering with his father-in-law, who became Missouri State Treasurer in 1829, the men secured thousands of acres in the years preceding Squire's note.

The Santa Fe Trail and Missouri River both brought Talton great wealth. In 1839 he and James Earickson took on proprietors and organized the Town of Glasgow in Howard County. On a fine-timbered rise the pair owned, midway between Saint Louis and the newly rising Kansas City. A deepwater landing on a bend in the Missouri propelled Talton's hemp and tobacco to European markets.

According to Wikipedia, The Missouri Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans places Howard County at the "heart" of Little Dixie. By 1840, Talton held twenty-five slaves on the "fine estate" (right) he is to have built for his bride fifteen years earlier. A dozen labored in crops and livestock, four brought him wealth in manufacture and trade. By 1850 he would value his real estate at $100,000: Talton became twice the equivalent billionaire that Squire was.

Some in this cast of characters are easy to identify.

'Polly' was first-born Talton's closest sibling in birth order: Mary Turner (1793-1856) was not much more than eight months older than Squire. She had by 1845, the date of Squire's remembrance, outlived two husbands and was in her third marriage.

"Should we be spared" takes on poignancy. Squire does not ask after Polly and Talton's younger brother Cyrus Turner (d 1844). Almost exactly a year earlier, while driving cattle to Minnesota, the enterprise had wandered into territory The Great Sioux Nation held by sovereign right. Cyrus was "captured and maltreated by the Sissetoan Dahkotahs," according to Neill. He escaped. Destitute and wounded, he drowned in attempt to find civilization. U.S. dragoons apprehended alleged perpetrators that fall. Who also promptly escaped. The loss may have remained raw. In July 1845, perhaps while Cyrus' nieces were with Squire, four Sisseton men were captured "and sent down to Dubuque, Iowa for trial by the civil authorities."

'Betsy' had been Elizabeth Stone (1800-1887) before marrying Squire Turner in 1819, one year before Talton and Sallie made their union. In Betsy's 1840 household were Squire, three sons and two daughters. Among their slaves, eldest was a woman then between thirty-six and fifty-four years old. Of seven enumerated, three slaves were younger than ten.

Squire and Betsy's daughter Mary Ann (1828-1879) was seventeen and preparing to leave home. He also mentions Horace Turner (1822-1871) as "gone to Philadelphia." Horace is likely notable for having survived the recent death of his father Joseph (1793-1854), with whom Talton and Squire grew up. Perhaps Horace the brewer was remarkable among Turners … for moving north, to cast his lot among Yankees.

Reference to Joseph indicates these Turners could be clannish, no matter where westward migration took their kinfolk. By his father Edward, Joseph was grandson to Thomas Turner, Sr. (1734-1822) … eldest sibling of Talton's father Philip and Squire's grandfather John Turner, Jr.. Thomas was likely delivered while parents John Sr. and Sarah (above) were yet in Virginia. Brothers John Jr. and Philip were born at Rowan County, North Carolina. All three siblings would follow Daniel Boone out of the Yadkin River valley and into Madison County, Kentucky. Only Philip would resettle in Missouri, however.

Women occupied Squire's recall, of the troupe that had visited.

"Mrs. Pulliam" was Talton and Sallie's eldest daughter, Eliza Jane (1822-1902). The twenty-three-year-old was eligible: first husband Elijah Robertson Pulliam (1816-1842) had died less than three and a half years into their marriage. It was in the 1839 period of their union that George Caleb Bingham painted a (now missing) portrait of Elijah, then postmaster at Chariton. Elijah had in 1840 – no doubt with his father-in-law's guidance – purchased a forty-acre parcel of Missouri land in nearby Saline County.

The discreet "Mrs. Estill" was Talton and Sallie's second (child and) daughter, Mary Ann (1826-1900). She was but two years older than Squire's daughter of the same name. Talton had given her away four months earlier. To James Robert Estill (1819-1900). Mention of 'Estill' enchants my research: by his father Wallace, James Robert was grandson of James Estill (1750-1782) … owner of 'Uncle' Monk Estill (d 1835), the one-time slave who saved the life of my 4x great-grandfather James Berry (1752-1822) in 1782. Following 'Estill's Defeat,' or the 'Battle of Small Mountain.' (Meet Monk Estill.)

By 1850, following birth of the couple's first children, Talton and Wallace, James Robert Estill farmed Missouri with fourteen slaves, valuing his real estate at $12,000. He named his plantation 'Estill' (now Greenwood). An 1883 map (detail, left) is revealing: Glasgow contends in importance with Fayette, the Howard County seat. Estill's enterprise is indicated; south of Boonesboro in this enclave of Kentuckians. Talton's 'Home Place' sprawled a mile and a half south of bustling Glasgow.

Companion "Miss Clarke" was certainly the most challenging to identify. One can assume she is Ann, daughter to a General.

On 10 January 1840, Talton had purchased almost 1200 acres: 312 of them – in Linn County, Missouri – were secured by a syndicate. From the record (detail, below) I discern his partners were William C. Boon, Thomas Reynolds & John B. Clarke.

William Crawford Boone, Sr. (1812-1885) already occupies my database.* Father William Linville Boone (1768-1847) was in August 1845 aboard a steamer. A pall bearer returning to Kentucky from Missouri. At the very time Squire took leisure to correspond, William Linville Boone accompanied what he took to be disinterred remains of his aunt and uncle, pioneers Daniel and Rebecca Boone. For memorializing and reburial at Frankfort.

William Crawford Boone, like Talton, ran a Missouri mercantile business. When he'd been Boone's age, Talton had government contracts to supply beef to the military and an Indian Agency. If he had not already, Boone would soon provision the state legislature from his warehouse at Fayette.

Partner Thomas Reynolds (1796-1844), former Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, had for three years been riding Missouri's 2nd circuit. Judge Reynolds was a climber: in the interim, he had swiftly risen from Missouri's House of Representa-tives to serve as Speaker of that body.

The Turner-Boone-Reynolds-Clark land syndicate is interesting for its timing and membership. On 11 August 1840, seven months after its filing, Missourians would go to the polls to elect Reynolds, a member of the 'Central Clique' political machine of pro-slavery Democrats. As Missouri's seventh Governor. His opponent? Whig John Bullock Clark, Sr. (1802-1885), also indicated on the above land grant.

Reynolds was dead by the time Squire reconnected with Cousin Talton. Apparently 'melancholic' and disturbed by treatment in the opposition press, Reynolds had the year before shot himself in the head. With a state-supplied rifle. While at his desk in the Governor's Executive Office.

But for peradventure, the 1840 gubernatorial election could have cost Clark his life as well. A month following the governor's race, a purloined letter – in which candidate Clark that July had proposed voter fraud – appeared in the Boonslick Democrat. In back-and-forth public correspondence via that newspaper, General Clark finally demanded a "personal interview." After unmasking his accuser as banker and serving State Representative Claiborne Fox Jackson (1806-1862).

Dueling was then illegal in Missouri. Yet Jackson's second, Chauncey R. Scott, proclaimed response (right): rifle fire at seventy yards. A medical doctor, Scott subsequently refused Clark's demand for a venue where none held jurisdiction over code duello.

Clark's final, written shot in this matter gives context for Reynolds' melancholy: he styled Jackson "a cold-blooded slanderer, a reclaimless scoundrel and a blustering coward." As a result of Reynold's election, syndicate member Boone replaced Jackson as Cashier at the Fayette branch of the Bank of the State of Missouri.

It is through John Bullock Clark, Sr. that I believe I've identified Ann, daughter of a General whom Squire thought "a pleasant girl." In 1826 Clark had married Eleanor Turner (1805-1873) … younger sister to Polly and Talton. None I found offer sources, but several online family trees assign a daughter Ann to these Clarks. Not all Ann Clark researchers attributing an 1848 death date are running her mother's lines; they may have cut and paste this data from Phillip Turner researchers who've placed a child of this name in their trees. I suspect Ann Clark never married. And died without issue. (At Finding Everett I explore how the childless tend to fare in preserved, historical record.)

As did Squire and Talton, Clark (right) took his first steps in Madison County, Kentucky. He removed to Missouri with his parents c1818, and was Clerk of the Howard County court when passing the bar in 1824. In 1832, a militant Sac war chief led his people back onto land fraudulently ceded in 1804. Clark was commissioned Colonel of Missouri Mounted Volunteers, but saw no action in the Black Hawk War.

In 1838, Governor Lilburn Williams Boggs issued (the likely unlawful) Missouri Executive Order Number 44 to "Genl. John B. Clark." Squire, holding the honorific 'Major' after serving as Inspector of Kentucky militia in 1825, would have been well aware of Boggs' commission of Clark as Major General, 1st Division, Missouri Militia. And the Governor's directive: "The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace …"

Clark "ferreted out the guilty" among state's enemies and forced dozens, including the beleaguered sect's founder Joseph Smith, into jail without charges. He reported to Boggs, "They have societies formed under the most revolting covenants in form, & the most horrid oaths to circumvent the law & put them at defiance, & to plunder & burn & murder & divide the spoils for the use of the Church." Once the majority were released, Smith's 'Danite Club' (unlike the Sac band, also weakened by hunger) were, by Clark's order, allowed to winter over before being sent from their land.

"As my family grows up."

Squire seems prompted to write to his cousin, to plead that the Turner clan "never paid enough attention to educating their children and giving them accomplish-ments and high aspirations." Placing children "in the first ranks" was important to him. He disclosed his daughter will finish her education in Louisville, then thirty percent more populous than Saint Louis, Missouri.

(See A Basket Filled with Tears and Flowers: Squire would, c1854, obtain financial reckoning on behalf of my great-grandmother Amelia (above) while she and her sister Matilda Tribble Turner (1845-1926) boarded … likely to attend school.)

Squire, the prominent jurist, repeated solicitation for Clark's attention. He may have known full well that his son, John Bullock Clark, Jr. (1831-1903), was entering the University of Missouri. And bent on a career in law.

Squire and Betsy's sons were among dozens of men who read law with their father. His first-born, Cyrus Squire Turner (1819-1849), attended but did not matriculate from Centre College. Still two years from serving his first term in Kentucky's legislature, Cyrus seemed content to start a family on a fine farm his father no doubt financed. Squire and Betsy's second surviving (child and) son, Thomas Turner (1821-1900) had graduated from Centre, taken a law degree from Transylvania College, served nearly four years as Attorney for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and, with seven slaves and an estate of about $40,000, taken his law practice to nearby Montgomery County. Youngest son William Stone Turner (1825-1876) had entered but not matriculated from Centre either. In the 1850 census he declared no real estate, as he practiced law while lodging at a Louisville inn. Squire, with the state's Chief Justice, had received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from the college in 1843.

Katherine 'Kate' Turner (1831-1913), Squire and Betsy's youngest surviving child, turned fourteen that summer. Perhaps during the cousins' visit. With Mary's pending departure, Squire may have reckoned with a declining sphere of parental influence. Hence, "my cares are greater as my family grows up."

"I was quite gratified to hear all about … all branches of this family."

By "a few years more, should we be spared," Squire alluded to the cousin's futures. I found it challenging to create a snapshot in time, culminating as best I could at August, 1845. (Discovery that "Mrs. Estill" would die eight days after her husband, in 1900, touched me.) The U.S. Congress would allocate $1,500 from annuities due the Sioux, in August 1846. To compensate 'legal represen-tatives' of Talton's childless and unmarried brother Cyrus "for depredations." Talton would partner in forming the Exchange Bank at Glasgow. He was not entirely spared: he would die, bedridden by rheumatism, in an upstairs room at his 'Home Place' (above). A Glasgow obituary gushed, "at the time of his death, he was perhaps the most extensive land owner in the state." Squire's firstborn, another Cyrus, would be killed at a political event in the following year. History did not finish with others identified: a War of Northern Aggression would leave - in particular - Squire and the Clark father and son on consequent pages of history.

NOTES:
*I share ancestry with William Linnville Boone's wife, Nancy Grubbs (1771-1835). Their son (William Crawford's older brother) Rev. Hampton Lynch Boone (1802-1851) is notable. I have vague plans for book-length depiction of the Reverend's son-in-law, Napoleon Bonaparte Giddings (1815-1897). The pair's political and social exploits are 'intriguing.'

Bold face indicates the author's ancestors.

Beyond the above time-frame, I thought it might be gratifying to report that Squire concretely anchored notions of "fine estate" and placing children in society's "first ranks." A home (below) he had built near his own - for widowed daughter Mary - would be completed after his death. It still stands, in Richmond, Kentucky.

Fiddling with Cato

"What about the women?" asked my [then] wife, after being subjected to a long, drawn out depiction of ancestral exploits. Subsequently sensitive to the fact that the dominant culture - keepers of the record - leaves many persons' histories unrecorded, I find it particularly rewarding when I encounter documentation left by people of color.

Reading 'The Negro In Kentucky,' written by G. W. Jackson and published in 1940 by the Negro Educational Association Journal, I assumed I'd discovered a non-white voice declaiming the merits of my subject, Monk Estill.

"In accounts of Indian raids, slaves are reported as loyal and daring. In the battle of Little Mountain, when pioneers fought with the Wyandotte Indians in 1782, the bravery of Colonel William [Captain James - RDH] Estill's slave Monk, inspired the pioneer warriors as nothing else in the battle did. He was an expert in making gunpowder and such an interesting preacher that the whites and blacks from Shelby and surrounding counties flocked to his meetings."

I leave aside reference to loyalty, and the author's statistics demonstrating that, "The Kentucky Negro has done his bit in the wars of the nation," while America prepared to enter World War II. It's true, but historical timing seems to drive this emphasis on fighting and preaching for the Lord.

I'll also leave aside the frustrations of Ted Franklin Belue, who contributed the entry concerning Monk in the 1992 Kentucky Encyclopedia, and who wrote me that editors reported Monk being a Baptist preacher ... despite his objection as a subject matter expert, and absent any proof on the editors' part.

Jackson's article referenced one of Monk's contemporaries, and my interest was piqued:

"The first Christmas party in Kentucky would have ended in dismal failure but for the fiddling of Cato Watts, a Negro servant who had come to Louisville with one of the families in the George Rogers Clark expedition."

Interesting, the term 'servant:' Cato was a slave. It also seemed odd that - when describing African American 'contributions' to Kentucky history - Jackson would leap past the sacrifice of Twetty's slave, killed by Native warriors before Boone's party ever cut their way to the future site of Boonesborough.

Nevertheless, since false (or at least unsupported) accounts abound ... of Monk in possession of musical talent ... I was keen to research Cato Watts.

From Reuben Thomas Durrett, attributed to his 1894 work, The Romance of the Origin of Louisville, I draw the version I call 'Uncle Cato,' where we are encouraged to see slaves as indolent, and gentle in their acceptance of forced subservience.

"A source of pleasure to the islanders was a fiddle in the hands of Cato Watts, a slave who belonged to Captain John Donne. Cato would play for hours in the shade of the trees while young and old joined in the Virginia Reel, the Irish Jig, and the Highland Fling. When Sunday came, however, the fiddle was silent and all joined in the singing of hymns."

Again with the emphasis on Christianity: this historian wants us to know the value the group placed on religion. It is true, that slaves worshiped with whites. Thirty-one years later, in 1809, Giles preceded by four years my 3x-gr-grandfather, Capt. Whitfield Early (1777-1865) into a Baptist congregation in Boone County, Kentucky. Giles, slave to Early, transferred his membership from a Virginia church.

Mildred J. Hill, in her History of Music in Louisville, gives an 1896 depiction of the Christmas party (on Corn Island, a crude settlement at the Falls of the Ohio, as Louisville was not yet in existence):

"This is the first mention of music of any kind in Louisville; and, as it is a story of happiness, contentment and good-fellowship, it makes a pleasant starting point for a pleasant subject."

The most recent account I discovered, of 'Cato Watts - the first Slave in Louisville,' shocked me. In observation of Black History Month, 2013, examiner.com posted this account of Cato's life:

... he was hanged.

The article - calling us to mind our history - runs but two paragraphs. Basically, "Little was known about Watts ... he was hanged." No fiddle playing. No birth or death dates, but their reporting does hyperlink Cato Watts to the illustrious slave-owner George Rogers Clark.

At family history sites, presumably-white descendants of Capt. John Donne have preserved an historical record of their ancestor's demise (no mention of fiddle playing discovered). They report that "Cato claimed the death was an accident." It might seem reasonable for descendants to then declare, "Cato was charged in the murder of John Donne and hung for the offence," except that Virginia law (then in effect in what is now known as Kentucky) prevented people of color - free or not - from testifying against whites. Or testifying at all in such cases.

J. Blaine Hudson, in a 1999 paper for the august, Louisville-based Filson Club Historical Quarterly, looked further into the historical record than examiner.com or Donne descendants. In his pre-trial hearing, "The above named Cato Watts was led to the Bar, and upon Examination says that he knocked the said Donne down but that it was not with the intention to kill him."

Uniquely, Hudson combined histories of Cato's status as first black resident, his fiddle playing, and the subsequent homicide. Though 'first slave in Louisville' accounts are often linked to his execution, my assessment is that Cato Watts is best remembered for saving Christmas ... with a particularly sentimental, fictionalized 2003 account here.

In a 1976 article by Robert A. Burnett, in another issue of the Filson Club Historical Quarterly, something poignant comes to light about that festive occasion in primitive conditions on Corn Island:

"Jean Nickle, a Frenchman ... entertained the party with his fiddle, playing dances then the rage in Paris, but these were too sophisticated [described as too 'scientific' in an 1893 account] for pioneers unaccustomed to the music of a Paris salon. The evening was saved when Nickle gave the slave, Cato Watts, some strings to replace the worn ones on his fiddle and Watts enlivened the party with popular tunes of the frontier."

Folklore depicting the first celebration of the birth of Christ in Kentucky could be used to indicate that pioneers lacked sophistication. In this story line, the rough justice subsequently handed out to Cato Watts would be reinforced for its barbarism.

In a sentence following how the Frenchman Nickle yielded fiddle playing to Cato "who soon had himself and the dancers in a paroxysm of joy," Durrett's 1893 account declares Monk's contemporary was, in addition to being the first slave in what is now Louisville ... in addition to being the man who saved the first Christmas in those environs ... Cato Watts, property of John Donne, was also the first man ever hung in Louisville.

"He killed his owner as he claimed by accident, but was tried and hung for the crime. He was hanged to the limb of a large oak tree which stood on ... the public square on which the court house now stands. The hanging was in 1787, and much to the sorrow of the young people who enjoyed his music at their dances."

Monsieur Nickle graced Louisville with a dancing school in 1786. In 2012, an Electronica/Worldbeat/Jamba band was performing in Louisville under the name of Cato Watts.

Cato Watts, from Stories of Old Kentucky, 
by Martha C. Grassham Purcell, pg 114; c1915

Looking for Monk's People

In an earlier post, I allude to the fact that Monk (slave name, Uncle Monk Estill) saved my 4x-great-grandfather's life after Wyandot warriors shot James Berry (1752-1822) in the thigh at a skirmish called Estill's Defeat, or the Battle of Little/Small Mountain. 22 March of this year will be the 230th anniversary of this 1782 event.

I was able to interest the Madison County Historical Society in printing the following article in their newsletter, Heritage Highlights.

Partly inspired by the group Coming to the Table, I seek to build relationship with Monk's descendants. Estill's heirs freed Monk for his valor during and after the battle. I contend that not only was Berry's consciousness changed by the debt he owed a slave, but that Berry's grandson (my 2x-gr-grandfather) James Berry Turner (c1820-c1867) also believed freed slaves capable of self-determination. Turner attended an Emancipation Convention in 1849. This deviant behavior - of contemplating a means to free slaves - outraged his in-laws and strained relations with Turner's own family.

Here is the article as submitted.

20 March, 1880 - “The court-house was crowded to overflowing today with the best people of the county to witness the exercises of the Estill Centennial,” reported the Courier-Journal about this grand Madison County event. “A century ago Captain James Estill, with twenty-four men, fought a party of Wyandotte Indians on a small branch of Hinkston Creek, near where Mt. Sterling, in this State, now stands, and Estill was killed. From the fact that a large artificial mound stood near the spot, the fight is known as the battle of Little Mountain or Estill's Defeat.” 

Much had been done in preparation. H. C. Krell’s marble relief, on the flank of Estill’s monument in Richmond Cemetery, is dated 1879. The frieze of Joseph Proctor, aiming his rifle - and our attention - to the moment before Estill was impaled, was likely unveiled as part of the Centennial. 

On the University campus one hundred guns were fired. Students and schoolchildren marched in procession to the courthouse, which was decorated for the occasion. Nearly a dozen dignitaries had prepared orations, prayers and a benediction.

The names of some of the defeated can still be found on a marker that the Col. George Nicholas Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution erected near the battlefield.

Killed
Adam Caperton (1753-1782), John Colefoot/Coltfoot, Capt. James Estill (1750-1782), Unknown (perhaps George) Forbes/Forbis, Jonathan McMillan, Unknown McNeely & John South (The Younger, 1745-1782)

Wounded
James Berry (c1752-1822), Ensign David Cook (c1756-1825) & William Irvine (1763-1819)

Others Engaged
James Anderson (perhaps 1757-1831), Henry Boyer(s)/Bowyer(s) (perhaps 1763-1821), William Cradlebaugh (c1744-aft 1832), Benjamin Dunnaway/Donway (perhaps 1757-1830), Whitson George (1766-1843), William Grim (likely William Grimes, b 1740), John Jameson (perhaps James Madison Jameson, c1741-1827), Unknown Johnson, Beal Kelly (1750-1837), David Lynch/Linch (1761-1826), Lt. William Miller (1747-1837), Rev. Joseph Proctor (c1755-1844), Reuben Proctor (c1753-c1804) & ‘Uncle’ Monk/Munk, slave to James Estill (D 1835) 

Boys
Peter Hacket(t) (B 1763) & Samuel South (c1769-1832)

To this list we must add young Jennie Gass (c1769-1782), daughter of David Gass (1732-1806) who was killed at the outset of hostilities.

To the DAR we can be grateful for specifying the most likely date of the battle: 22 March 1782. Others were involved in Col. Logan’s callout of the militia that March. The George Rogers Clark Papers in the Virginia State Archives report that in September 1783 the General ordered eight men compensated for horses lost at Estill’s Defeat: John Berry (1753-1811), David Crews (1740-1821), Stephen Hancock (c1744-c1827), Robert Harris (1749-1833), Benjamin Martin (1758-1838), John McDowell (perhaps 1757-1835), John Moore (1748-1825) & Page Portwood (1740-1779). Other evidence indicates William Hancock (1738-1818) and the Proctor brothers Benjamin (1760-1850) and Nicholas (1756-1835) may have been in the pursuit as well.

It is not clear where the Boones were during the attack. Alexander Robertson (1748-1802) was recuperating there when Estill’s station was attacked. Cotteril cites, in his History of Pioneer Kentucky that a (perhaps Charles) Hazelrigg was sufficiently knowledgeable about the battle to have given a subsequent deposition. He may have been on the burial detail of 40-50 men, which included John Harper. The primary native combatant has been referred to as Sourehoowah.

More than a hundred members of the Estill Family were to have attended the 1880 event; four of whom, Jonathan P. Estill, Maj. Jonathan T. Estill, Peter Estill, & Col. Clifton R. Estill, were living on their shares of Capt. Estill’s preempted land. Family members arrived from Missouri. They included Robert Estill, Jr. of Howard County, reportedly ‘one of the wealthiest citizens of the state;’ Robt. G. Estill of Kansas City, ‘for ten years a commission merchant’ of St. Louis; Benjamin Estill and wife of Kansas City; & T. K. W. Estill of Roscoe.

Other descendants of the ‘Heroes of Little Mountain’ addressed those assembled: William M. Irvine, then President of the Second National Bank; Judges William B. Smith and W. C. Miller; Hon. Thomas J. Scott and Hon. James B. McCreary; Col. James Caperton & Stanford attorney Wallace E. Varnon.

22 March 2012 will be the 230th anniversary of what the Richmond Register called the ‘Fiercest Battle Known.’ Recently, the freed slave Monk was honored by the 4th MCHS Walk of Fame plaque. Monk is to have sired 30 children by three wives, and a descendant of James Berry, the survivor of Estill’s Defeat whose life Monk likely saved, wants to acknowledge them. This MCHS member in Portland, Oregon is hoping readers can put him in touch with any of Monk’s known descendants. Mr. Hardesty is also soliciting all unpublished anecdotes pertaining to The Battle of Little Mountain and would like to hear from any descendants of those involved. Contact him via this page.



Warriors of Color Confront Monk

A site, purporting to deliver the history of Anishinabe Peoples, lists this account of the Battle of Little Mountain (also called Estill's Defeat):

This battle occurred in what is now Montgomery County, Kentucky. In this insignificant battle a small force of 25 white soldiers battled probably a larger force of Indian and black soldiers and lost. White casualties were 7 killed, while the casualties of the Indian and black soldiers was estimated at 17 killed and 2 wounded. The killings in the Gauntlet Grounds were intensifying during this time, as more and more whites commenced to settle down in the Gauntlet Grounds.

I know full well that the Wyandot peoples were often race neutral: it is understood that even a red-haired Anglo became a sub-chief in this time period. There were no permanent obstructions keeping Blacks taken as prisoners from becoming full-fledged People. Still, it took me by surprise to think that Captain Estill's slave Uncle Monk was not the only Black at the battle.

Upon reflection, it seems in the pioneers' best interest that all mention of armed Blacks - most likely escaped slaves - at war with ... and defeating ... militia forces should be kept secret. It must have been the pioneers' worst  nightmare.  Such intelligence must - at all costs - be kept from other slaves. It is entirely understandable that the written record, as well as anecdotes that have been passed down to us, would be silent on the subject.

Consider the implications. If true, does this knowledge make Monk's subsequent grant of freedom more remarkable? A prisoner overnight among the war party, he would have definitely known if any of his captors were black. Confronted by the idea that Monk might report that a Black Man, free or fugitive, has taken up arms, it is easy to surmise his life would become forfeit. His elimination would be the best way to prevent the spread of such incendiary information.

 The referent site represents expansively the concept of Anishinabe (whom I generally refer to as Chippewa or Ojibwa, while Wyandot is generally synonymous with Huron), and some historical accounts described are likely inaccurate. Still, this disclosure stimulates my thinking: I have heard Kentucky called the 'Middle Ground,' but never the 'Gauntlet Grounds.'