Narrative of a Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi in 1789-90

When I was about leaving the country, Governor Gayoso asked me what I intended to do with my land. I replied, that if I did not return in a year or two, that his excellency could do what he pleased with it. Some years after, when I lived in Cazenovia, I contemplated going back, and went to my large chest, which had traveled with me from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and thence in all my tramps and changes, where I supposed all my Spanish papers were safe in a little drawer; but, to my surprise, they were missing, and I never could tell what became of them, as I kept the chest locked, and retained the key. So vanished my eight hundred acres of valuable land in the promising Mississippi country.

On the arrival of Colonel Wyckoff, with his brother-in-law, Scudder, from Tennessee, preparations were made for our departure. Uncle Forman went down to New Orleans with us. It was in June, 1791, I believe, that we left Natchez. The parting with my kindred was most trying and affecting, having traveled and hazarded our lives together for so many hundred miles, and never expecting to meet again in this life. Many of the poor colored people, too, came and took leave of me, with tears streaming down their cheeks. Take them altogether, they were the finest lot of servants I ever saw. They were sensible that they were all well cared for – well fed, well clothed, well housed, each family living separately, and they were treated with kindness. Captain Osmun,22 their overseer, was a kind-hearted man, and used them well. They had ocular proof of their happy situation when compared with their neighbor’s servants. It was the custom of the country to exchange work at times; and, one day, one of our men came to me, and said: “I don’t think it is right to exchange work with these planters; for I can, with ease, do more work than any two of their men;” and added, “their men pound their corn over night for their next day’s supply, and they are too weak to work.” Poor fellows, corn was all they had to eat.

Uncle Forman and I stopped the first night with Mr. Ellis, at the White Cliffs, and next day embarked on board of a boat for New Orleans. On our way down we sometimes went on shore and took a bowl of chocolate for breakfast with some rich planter, a very common custom of the country. The night before our arrival at New Orleans we put up with a Catholic priest; some gentlemen of our company were well acquainted between Natchez and New Orleans, and had learned the desirable stopping places. The good priest received us kindly, gave us an excellent supper, plenty of wine, and was himself very lively. We took breakfast with him the next morning; and before our departure the priest came up to me with a silver plate in his hand, on which were two fine looking pears, which he tendered me. He looked at first very serious; but, remembering his good humor the previous evening, I suspected his fun had not yet all run out. I eyed him pretty close, and while thanking him, I rather hesitated, when he urged me to take them. I knew no pears grew in that country. I finally took one, weighed it in my hand, and looked at him, till he bursted out into a loud laugh. They were ingeniously wrought out of stone or marble, and looked exactly like pears. I brought them home and gave them to a friend.

Arriving in New Orleans, we took lodgings, and our first business was to wait on his excellency Governor Miro. Mr. Forman settling within his government with so large a number of people, under an arrangement with the Spanish ambassador at New York, Don Diego de Gardoque, gave him a high standing. Uncle Forman was in person a fine-looking man, very neat, prepossessing, and of genteel deportment, so that he was always much noticed.

As there was then no vessel in port destined for the United States, I had to delay a couple of weeks for one. At length the brig Navarre, Captain McFadden, made its appearance, and soon loaded for Philadelphia. There were a number of Americans in waiting, who engaged their passage with me, on this vessel. Uncle Forman did not leave the city until after the Navarre had taken its departure. He suggested that I should take a formal leave of Governor Miro and his secretary, Don Andre. The secretary was a large, fine-looking man. I politely asked him if he had any commands for the cape – Cape Francois, a fine town in the northern part of St. Domingo, usually dignified with the designation of the The Cape– for which port, I believe, the vessel cleared. “I know not,” said the secretary, “to what cape you are going – only take good care of yourself.”

After all were on board, the brig dropped down two or three miles, where the passengers went ashore, and laid in provisions enough, the captain said, to have carried us to London after our arrival in Philadelphia. I may mention something about distances as computed in those days. From Natchez to New Orleans was called three hundred miles by water, and only one hundred and fifty by land. From New Orleans to the Balize, at the mouth of the Mississippi, was reckoned one hundred and five miles. It was said that such was the immense volume of the Mississippi river that it kept its course and muddy appearance for a league out at sea.

There were no ladies among the passengers. We entered into an arrangement that each passenger should, in rotation, act as caterer for the party for each day. It fell to my lot to lead off in this friendly service. We got along very nicely, and with a good deal of mirthful pleasure, for a couple of weeks, enjoying our viands and wine as comfortably as if at a regular boarding house. The captain’s wife, however, was something of a drawback to our enjoyment. She was a vinegary looking creature, and as cross and saucy as her looks betokened, was low-bred, ill-tempered, and succeeded in making herself particularly disagreeable. During the pleasant weather portion of our voyage, she managed, without cause, to raise a quarrel with every passenger; and what added to her naturally embittered feeling, was that we only laughed at her folly.

When we arrived in sight of Cuba, the wind arose, and blew almost a hurricane, causing a heavy sea. We were in such danger of being cast away on the Florida reefs that the captain summoned all hands on deck for counsel. But, providentially, we escaped. For near two weeks no cooking could be done, and each one was thankful to take whatever he could obtain in one hand, and hold fast to something with the other, such was the rolling and pitching of our frail vessel. Most of the passengers were sea-sick; I was among the few who escaped from that sickening nausea. One night the rain was so heavy, the lightning so vivid, and thunder so tremendous, that the vessel trembled at every clap; when I went to my friend Wyckoff, as well as others who were asleep, informing them that it was a moment of no little danger and excitement.

Captain McFadden was a most profane man. But during the hours of our distress and danger he became very mild and humble, but it lasted no longer than the storm. The vinegary Mrs. McFadden, too, was very sensibly affected during this trying period; for, standing in the companion-way, leading to the cabin, she very humbly and demurely said that she would go below and make her peace. We all thought she could not be too quick about it. She was a veritable Katharine, but he was not a Petruchio.

Before we arrived at the capes of the Delaware, an American sailor, who had made his escape from a British man-of-war at the mouth of the Mississippi, sickened and died on board our craft. When we got into the Delaware, the sailors took his remains on shore and gave them a decent sepulture. At length we reached Philadelphia in safety.

1

This incident, occurring in May, 1780, is related in Barber and Howe’s New Jersey Historical Collection, 345-6.

2

Major John Burrows was first a captain in Colonel David Forman’s regiment. Forman had the nick-name of “Black David,” to distinguish him from a relative of the same name, and he was always a terror to the Tories; and Captain Burrows, from his efficiency against these marauders, was called by those enemies of the country, “Black David’s Devil.” January 1, 1777, Captain Burrows was made a captain in Spencer’s regiment on Continental establishment; and, January 22, 1779, he was promoted to the rank of major, serving in Sullivan’s campaign against the hostile Six Nations, and remaining in the army till the close of the war. Several years after, he went on a journey to the interior of Georgia, in an unhealthy season, when he probably sickened and died, for he was never heard of afterward.

Major Burrows left an interesting journal of Sullivan’s campaign, which appears in the splendid volume on that campaign issued by the State of New York, in 1887. The original MS. journal is preserved by his grand-daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Breese Stevens, of Sconondoa, Oneida county, New York.

3

This is an error. Bayonet charges were resorted to by Morgan at the Cowpens, and in other engagements.

4

This was John N. Cumming, who rose from a lieutenant to be lieutenant-colonel, commanding the Third New Jersey Regiment, serving the entire war.

5

The editor, while at Saratoga Springs, in 1838, took occasion to visit the venerable Anthony Glean, who resided in the town of Saratoga, and who was reputed to be the person who climbed the greased flag-staff at the evacuation of New York, and who himself claimed to have performed that feat. He was then a well-to-do farmer, enjoying a pension for his revolutionary services, and lived two or three years later, till he had reached the age of well-nigh ninety. The newspapers of that period often referred to him as the hero of the flag-staff exploit, and no one called it in question.

6

General Forman was born near Englishtown, Monmouth Co., New Jersey. He was, during the Revolutionary war, a terror to the tories of his region, and as brigadier-general commanded the Jersey troops at the battle of Germantown. No less than eighteen of the Forman connection were in his brigade in this engagement. He was subsequently a county judge, and member of the council of state. He died about 1812.

7

Mr. Forman forgot to mention Limestone, now Maysville, Kentucky, some sixty miles above Cincinnati, an older settlement by some four years than Marietta or Cincinnati. Perhaps it was passed in the night, and unobserved. And Columbia, too, at the mouth of the Little Miami, about six miles above Cincinnati, and a few months its senior in settlement.

8

Neither the Dictionary of the Army, the MS. Harmar Papers, nor the Journal of Major Denny, who was then an aide to General Harmar, make any mention of a Captain Kirby. It is probable, that William Kersey was the officer referred to. He served in New Jersey during the Revolution, rising from a private to a captaincy by brevet at the close of the war. At this period, early in 1790, he was a lieutenant. Probably, by courtesy of his rank and title in the Revolution, he was called captain. He attained that rank the following year; major, in 1794; and died, March 21, 1800.

9

Jonathan Forman was born October 16, 1755; was educated at Princeton College, where he was a fellow-student with James Madison, and entering the army in 1776 served as captain for five years, during which he participated in Sullivan’s campaign against the hostile Six Nations; and, promoted to the rank of major in 1781, he served under La Fayette in Virginia; and early in 1783 he was made a lieutenant-colonel, and continued in the army till the end of the war. He headed a regiment against the whisky insurgents of West Pennsylvania in 1794, and two years later he removed to Cazenovia, N. Y., where he filled the position of supervisor, member of the legislature and brigadier-general in the militia. He married Miss Mary Ledyard, of New London, Conn., who “went over her shoe tops in blood,” in the barn where the wounded lay, the morning after Arnold’s descent on New London and Fort Griswold, on Groton Heights, where her uncle, Colonel William Ledyard, was killed in cold blood after his surrender. General Forman died at Cazenovia, May 25, 1809, in his sixty-fourth year, and his remains repose in the beautiful cemetery at that place.

10

The Gallipolis settlement was much annoyed by the Indians; some of the poor French settlers were killed, others abandoned the place, but the settlement was maintained, despite all their trials and sufferings.

11

This is evidently an error of memory; it was known as Fort Steuben, located where Jeffersonville now is.

12

Trivial circumstances sometimes change the fate of nations, and so it would seem they do of cities also. North Bend might have become the great commercial metropolis of the Miami country, instead of Cincinnati, but for an affair of the heart, if we may credit the tradition preserved by Judge Burnet in his Notes on the North-western Territory. Ensign Francis Luce had been detailed, with a small force, for the protection of the North Bend settlement, and to locate a suitable site for a block-house. While the ensign was keenly but very leisurely on the lookout for a proper location, he made a discovery far more interesting to him – a beautiful black-eyed lady, the wife of one of the settlers. Luce became infatuated with her charms, and her husband, seeing the danger to which he was exposed if he remained where he was, resolved at once to remove to Cincinnati.

The gallant ensign was equal to the unexpected emergency, for he now began to discover what he had not discovered before, that North Bend was not, after all, so desirable a locality for the contemplated block-house as Cincinnati, and forthwith apprised Judge Symmes of these views, who strenuously opposed the movement. But the judge’s arguments were not so effective as the sparkling eyes of the fair dulcinea then at Cincinnati. And so Luce and his military force were transplanted in double-quick time to Cincinnati; and where the troops were the settlers congregated for their protection and safety. And so, the Queen City of the West followed the fortunes of this unnamed forest queen, who so completely beguiled the impressible ensign.

In this case there was no ten years’ war, as in the case of the beautiful Spartan dame, which ended in the destruction of Troy; but, by Luce’s infatuation and removal, North Bend was as much fated as though the combined Indians of the North-west had blotted it out of existence. Soon after this portentious removal, Luce, on May 1, 1790, resigned from the army – whether on account of his fair charmer, history fails to tell us. This romantic story has been doubted by some, but Judge Burnet was an early settler of Cincinnati, and had good opportunities to get at the facts; and when I met the judge, fully forty years ago, he seemed not the man likely to indulge in romancing. That General Harmar, in forwarding Luce’s resignation to the War Office, seemed particularly anxious that it should be accepted, would seem to imply that, for this intrigue, or some other cause, the general was desirous of ridding the service of him.

13

Michael Lacassangue, a Frenchman of education, settled in Louisville as a merchant prior to March, 1789, when General Harmar addressed him as a merchant there. He located a station on the northern shore of the Ohio, three miles above Fort Steuben, now Jeffersonville, where he had purchased land in the Clark grant. In a MS. letter of Captain Joseph Ashton, commanding at Fort Steuben, addressed to General Harmar, April 3, 1790, these facts are given relative to the attack on Lacassangue’s station. That on the preceding March 29th, the Indians made their attack, killing one man. There were only two men, their wives, and fourteen children in the station. Word was immediately conveyed to Captain Ashton of their situation, who detached a sergeant and fourteen men to their relief, and who arrived there, Captain Ashton states, in sixteen minutes after receiving intelligence of the attack. The Indians, three in number, had decamped, and were pursued several miles until their trail was lost on a dry ridge. The families were removed to Fort Steuben, and thus the station was, for a time, broken up.

Mr. Lacassangue must have been quite a prominent trader at Louisville in his day. About the first of June, 1790, Colonel Vigo, an enterprising trader of the Illinois country, consigned to him 4,000 pounds of lead, brought by Major Doughty from Kaskaskia. Mr. Lacassangue made efforts, in after years, to give character to his new town of Cassania – a name evidently coined out of his own – hoping from its more healthful situation, and better location for the landing of vessels destined to pass the Falls, to supplant Louisville. The little place, General Collot says, had in 1796, when he saw it, “only two or three houses, and a store.” The ambitious effort was a vain one, and Cassania soon became lost to the geographical nomenclature of the country. Mr. Lacassangue died in 1797.

14

Dr. John F. Carmichael, from New Jersey, entered the army in September, 1789, and, with the exception of a few months, retained his position till his resignation in June, 1804.

15

In July, 1789, less than a year before, Lieutenant Pierre Foucher, with four officers and thirty soldiers, had been sent from New Orleans to establish a post at this place, as stated in Gayarre’s Louisiana, 1854, p. 268. It is generally asserted that this settlement was commenced as early as 1780; but the Spanish census of Louisiana, both in 1785 and 1788, make no mention of the place.

16

We learn, from Gayarre’s History of the Spanish Domination of Louisiana, that, in July, 1789, Pierre Foucher, a lieutenant of the regiment of Louisiana, was sent, with two sergeants, two corporals, and thirty soldiers, to build a fort at New Madrid, and take the civil and military command of that district, with instructions to govern those new colonists in such a way as to make them feel that they had found among the Spaniards the state of ease and comfort of which they were in quest.

Colonel John Pope, in his Tour Through the Western and Southern States, states, under date, March 12, 1791: “Breakfasted and dined with Signor Pedro Foucher, commandant at New Madrid. The garrison consists of about ninety men, who are well supplied with food and raiment. They have an excellent train of artillery, which appears to be their chief defense. Two regular companies of musqueteers, with charged bayonets, might take this place. Of this opinion is the commandant himself, who complains that he is not sufficiently supported. He is a Creole of French extraction, of Patagonian size, polite in his manners, and of a most noble presence.”

Lieutenant Foucher must have left the country long before the great earthquake of 1811-12. The Spaniards evacuated their posts on the Mississippi to the north of 31st degree in 1798; and, two years later, transferred the country to France, and, in 1803, it was purchased by the United States.

17

Colonel Peter Bryan Bruin, son of an Irish gentleman, who had become implicated in the Irish Rebellion of 1756, and confiscation and exile were his penalty. He brought with him to America his only son, who was reared a merchant. In the War of the Revolution, he entered Morgan’s famous riflemen as a lieutenant, shared in the assault on Quebec, where he was made a prisoner, and confined in a prison ship, infected with small-pox, for six months. He was finally exchanged, and at length promoted to the rank of major, serving to the end of the war. Soon after settling near the mouth of Bayou Pierre, he was appointed alcalde, or magistrate, under the Spanish Government; and when the Mississippi Territory was organized, in 1798, he was appointed one of the three territorial judges, remaining in office until he resigned, in 1810. He lived till a good old age, was a devoted patriot, and a man of high moral character.

18

This refers to the proposed settlement at the Walnut Hills, at the mouth of the Yazoo, under the auspices of the famous Yazoo Company, composed mostly of prominent South Carolina and Georgia gentlemen. Dr. John O’Fallon, who subsequently married a sister of General George Rogers Clark, located at Louisville, Ky., as the agent and active partner in that region and endeavored to enlist General Clark as the military leader of the enterprise; but it would appear that the general declined the command, and Colonel John Holder, a noted Kentucky pioneer and Indian fighter, was chosen in his place. But nothing was accomplished. The original grant was obtained by bribery, fraud, and corruption, from the Georgia Legislature; and a subsequent legislature repudiated the transaction, and ordered all the documents and records connected with it to be burned in the public square.

19

Sir William Dunbar, son of Sir Archibald Dunbar, was born at Elgin, Scotland, and received a superior education in Glasgow and London. On account of failing health, he obtained a stock of goods for the Indian trade; and, landing in Philadelphia in April, 1771, took his goods to Fort Pitt, and about 1773 he went to West Florida to form a plantation. He suffered much during the period of the Revolution, and in 1772 settled near Natchez, became chief surveyor under the Spanish Government, and in 1798 he was appointed astronomical commissioner on the part of Spain in establishing the boundary. He was shortly after appointed by Governor Sargeant, on the organization of Mississippi Territory, under the United States Government, chief judge of the Court of Quarter Sessions. He corresponded with the most distinguished scientific men of his time, and contributed to the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. He died in 1810, leaving many descendants.

20

Stephen Minor was a native of Pennsylvania, well-educated, and early made his way West; first to St. Louis, and then to New Orleans, and was soon appointed to official station by the Spanish Government, rising eventually to the governorship at Natchez, and so continuing till the evacuation of the country. He then became a citizen of the United States, and was useful to the country. He died in after years at Concord, Mississippi.

21

Colonel Anthony Hutchins was a native of New Jersey; early migrated to North Carolina, and in 1772 explored the Natchez country, settling permanently at the White Apple village, twelve miles from Natchez, the following year, and survived the troubles of the Revolution, and died when past eighty years of age.

22

Benajah Osmun served, as Mr. Forman has previously stated, at the defeat of General Washington’s troops on Long Island, in August, 1776, when he was made a prisoner; he was then, apparently, a soldier in the ranks. On January 1, 1777, he was appointed a second lieutenant and quartermaster in Colonel Shreve’s Second New Jersey regiment, which he subsequently resigned. In September, 1778, he again entered the army as an ensign in the second regiment; was a prisoner of war on April 25, 1780; made a lieutenant January 1, 1781, retiring at the close of the war with the brevet rank of captain.

In 1802, he was made lieutenant-colonel of the Adams county militia; and when Colonel Burr visited the country, in 1807, on his mysterious mission, he was the guest of Colonel Osmun, who was one of his two bondsmen for his appearance at court, for they were fellow officers in the Revolution. Colonel Osmun settled a plantation at the foot of Half Way hill, near Natchez, became wealthy, and there died, a bachelor, at a good old age.