Bowling Green, Kentucky

“ Yates had come home with William G. Greene to spend his vacation, and Greene took him around to Bowling Green's house to introduce him to "his friend, Abe Lincoln." Unhappily there is nowhere in existence a picture of the original occupant of this humble cabin. Bowling Green was one of the leading citizens of the county. He was County Commissioner from 1826 to 1828; he was for many years a justice of the peace; he was a prominent member of the Masonic fraternity, and a very active and uncompromising Whig. ”

“ In winter mules and sheep and horses paw away the snow to get at the green shoots that lie covered over beneath the full, rank growth of autumn, or they find it attractive provender in their ricks. For all that live upon it, it is perennial and abundant, beautiful and beneficent—the first great natural factor in the prosperity of the Kentucky people. What wonder if the Kentuckian, like the Greek of old, should wish to have even his paradise well set in grass ”

“ There was the English love of lawns, too, with a low matted green turf and wide-spreading shade-trees above—elm and maple, locust and poplar—the English fondness for a home half hidden with evergreens and creepers and shrubbery, to be approached by a leafy avenue, a secluded gate-way, and a gravelled drive; for highways hardly admit to the heart of rural life in Kentucky, and way-side homes, to be dusted and gazed at by every passer-by, would little accord with the spirit of the people. ”

“ Now green Kentucky, in the days of Sprigg, was green Kentucky, indeed! Mrs. Daniel Boone and her daughters had not yet distinguished themselves by being the first white women who ever set foot upon the banks of the Kentucky River, when Sprigg was already a three-years' child, the joy and pride of a home in a hewn log house in western Virginia ”

“ Before the band of white men, as they [68] stood upon an eminence of the ridge on the day they first sighted Kentucky, was a vast rolling country, roamed by herds of horned beasts, splendid streams and valleys which promised a rich yield to the hand which drove the plow through it.
But after a space given to wonder and admiration, Boone noted that the sun was slipping little by little behind the green rim of the forest.
“I think, boys,” suggested he, “we’d better look for a likely place to camp for the night. ”

“ The foliage of the Kentucky trees is not thin nor dishevelled, the leaves crowd thick to the very ends of the boughs, and spread themselves full to the sky, making, where they are close together, under-spaces of green gloom scarcely shot through by sunbeams. ”

“ Paul amid the native corn, and muses on the surpassing beauty of David as he rides his favorite horse through green pastures and beside still waters.
Hence, to be a farmer here implies no social inferiority, no rusticity, no boorishness. Hence, so clearly interlaced are urban and rural society that there results a homogeneousness of manners, customs, dress, entertainments, ideals, and tastes. Hence, the infiltration of the country with the best the towns contain. More, indeed, than this: rather to the country than to the towns in Kentucky must one look for the local history of the home life. ”

“ Bowling Green is served by the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton and the Toledo & Ohio Central railways, and by the Toledo Urban & Interurban and the Lake Erie, Bowling Green & Napoleon electric lines, the former extending from Toledo to Dayton. It is situated in a rich agricultural region which abounds in oil and natural gas. Many of the residences and business places of Bowling Green are heated by a privately owned central hot-water heating plant. Among the manufactures are cut glass, stoves and ranges, kitchen furniture, guns, thread-cutting machines, brooms and agricultural implements. ”

“ Its territory was supposed, in the early days, to extend to low water mark on the eastern side of the Big Sandy River, to the northern bank of the Ohio River, and to the western bank of the Mississippi on the western border, while the Kentucky, Barren and Green rivers lie wholly within its borders, and the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers cross the State in the western section. Green River is said to be one of the deepest river waterways in the world, and the scenery along its banks is indeed picturesque. ”

“ Even when the whole company of summer voyagers have sailed back to Kentucky, singing and laughing and kissing one another under the enormous green umbrella of Nature's leaves, he still is beyond them all in loveliness. But when they have been wafted away again to brighter skies and to soft islands over the sea, and he is left alone on the edge of that Northern world which he has dared invade and inhabit, it is then, amid black clouds and drifting snows, that the gorgeous cardinal stands forth in the ideal picture of his destiny. ”

“ The air seems all at once to tan the cheek. Out of the cold, blue recesses of the midsummer sky the sun burns with a fierceness of heat that warps the shingles of the pointed roofs and flares with blinding brilliancy against some whitewashed wall. Perhaps in all the street no little cooling stretch of shade. The unpaved sidewalks and the roadway between are but indistinguishable parts of a common thoroughfare, along which every upspringing green thing is quickly trodden to death beneath the ubiquitous play and passing of many feet. ”

“ Over all its broad and beautiful expanse which he had opened to the world, there was not a single acre which he could call his own. And he had no money with which to purchase a farm of those speculators, into whose hands most of the lands had fallen. Could the good old man now rise from his grave, a Kentucky Legislature would not long leave him landless. There is scarcely a cabin or a mansion in the whole State, where Daniel Boone would not meet with as hospitable a reception as grateful hearts could give. ”

“ The inhabitants of Kentucky believe that their State cannot be surpassed in fertility. They make the famous "Blue Grass Region," around Lexington, the subject of especial boast. The soil of this section is very rich, and the grass has a peculiar bluish tinge, from which its name is derived. One writer says the following of the Blue Grass Region:--
View the country round from the heads of the Licking, the Ohio, the Kentucky, Dick's, and down the Green River, and you have a hundred miles square of the most extraordinary country on which the sun has ever shone. ”

“ They come from a little town in the northwestern corner of the State, on the Ohio River, named Henderson—named from that Richard Henderson who in the year 1775 bought about half of Kentucky from the Cherokees, and afterwards, as president of his purchase, dressed the first legislative assembly ever held in the West, seated under a big elm-tree outside the walls of Boonsborough fort. These people must be his heirs, or they would never have tried to purchase my few Sabine acres. It is no surprise to discover that they are from the Green River country. They must bathe often in that stream. ”

“ Thomas Marshall Green, journalist and historian, was born near Danville, Kentucky, November 23, 1836, the son of Judge John Green, an early Kentucky jurist of repute, who died when his son was but two years old. Green was graduated from Centre College, Danville, in what is now known as the famous class of '55, which included several men afterwards distinguished. In 1856 Green joined the staff of the Frankfort Commonwealth, then a political journal of wide influence ”

“ Another incident illustrative of these perilous adventures in the now peaceful State of Kentucky. Mr. Rowan, with his own and five other families, left the little hamlet at Louisville to float down the Ohio to Green River, and to ascend that stream, intending to rear their new homes on its fertile and delightful banks. The families were quite comfortably accommodated in a large flat-bottomed boat. Another boat of similar construction conveyed their cattle and sundry articles of household furniture. On the route which they were pursuing, there were then no settlements. ”

“ And as the commonwealth grows strong, its wilderness falls before the axe of the pioneer, its broad farms smile where the Shawnee once roamed, the whistles of steamboats sound upon the streams which knew only the prow of the bark canoe, the thoughts of its sons and daughters go back to the old days; and they know that the greatness of Kentucky is founded upon the bold spirit and the long rifle of Daniel Boone. ”

“ His feelings had been too deeply wounded to allow him to think of remaining [Pg 283] a man without a home in Kentucky. Still the idea of leaving a region endeared to him by so many memories must have been very painful. He remembered vividly his long and painful journeys over the mountains, through the wilderness untrodden by the foot of the white man; his solitary exploration of the new Eden which he seemed to have found there; the glowing accounts he had carried back to his friends of the sunny skies, the salubrious clime, the fertile soil, and the majesty and loveliness of the landscape ”

“ But one is glad to discover that in numerous instances they are the preferred homes of those who have taste for the old in native history, and pride in family associations and traditions. On the thinned, open landscape nothing stands out with a more [212] pathetic air of nakedness than one of these stone houses, long since abandoned and fallen into ruin. Under the Kentucky sky houses crumble and die without seeming to grow old, without an aged toning down of colors, without the tender memorials of mosses and lichens, and of the whole race of clinging things. ”

“ For biographical sketch of General Henry Lee, see Michaux’s Travels, vol. iii of this series, p. 36, note 25.—Ed.
[116] Boonesborough was one of the first settlements of Kentucky, laid out in 1775 by the pioneer for whom it was named. It was the capital of the Transylvania Company, and the scene of some of the most noted events of early Kentucky history, particularly during the siege of 1778. Boonesborough declined in importance after the Indian wars; in 1810 it was a mere hamlet, and since that but the site of a farm. ”

“ The enemy will energetically push toward Nashville the heavy masses of troops now assembled between Louisville and Bowling Green. The general position of Bowling Green is good and commanding; but the peculiar topography of the place and the length of the line of the Barren River as a line of defense, though strong, require a large force to defend it. There is no position equally defensive as Bowling Green, nor line of defense as good as the Barren River, between the Barren and the Cumberland at Nashville ”

“ Hence you may assail the Kentuckian on many grounds, and he will hold his peace. You may tell him that he has no great cities, that he does not run with the currents of national progress; but never tell him that the home life of his fellows and himself is not as good as the best in the land. Domesticity is the State porcupine, presenting an angry quill to every point of attack. To write of homes in Kentucky, therefore, and particularly of rural homes, is to enter the very citadel of the popular affections. ”

“ This territory was a neutral hunting-ground for Northern and Southern Indians. The red men hunted over it, but did not live permanently upon it or claim it as their own. The district, therefore, was easier for the white man to settle than [7] were the surrounding regions in which the Indians had permanent homes.
The settlement of the Kentucky region really began several years before the Revolution. In 1769 Daniel Boone, a great hunter and one of the most interesting of American pioneers, left his home on the Yadkin River, in North Carolina, to seek the wilderness of Kentucky. ”

“ But the frontier settlement of log huts, and the majestic surrounding forests filled with game, had entirely disappeared. Highly cultivated farms, from which even the stumps of the forest had perished, extended in all directions. Ambitious mansions adorned the hillsides, and all the appliances of advancing civilization met the eye. There could be no home here for Daniel Boone. Amid these strange scenes he felt as a stranger, and his heart yearned again for the solitudes of the forest. He longed to get beyond the reach of lawyers' offices, and court-houses, and land speculators. ”

“ He says he sold forty odd horses in one year. Since he has lived in Kentucky, over two hundred, which you know is over fifty per year. From Maysville I crossed the river through the Sciota region, by the way of Portsmouth, then to Chillicothe; from there on to Zanesville, from there to Wheeling, and then to Washington, Pennsylvania; returned to Wheeling, then to Parkersburgh. I did not call at Marietta; there has some difficulty taken place in that region. From Parkersburgh to Charleston, Kanhaway, with but little delay. Our saline friends are great dealers in "coney." ”

“ Coming back to the present, the huge yellowish-red stage-coach rolls to-day over the marbled roads of the blue-grass country. Families may be found living exactly where their pioneer ancestors effected a heroic settlement—a landed aristocracy, if there be such in America. Family names come down from generation to generation, just as a glance at the British peerage will show that they were long ago being transmitted in kindred families over the sea. One great honored name will do nearly as much in Kentucky as in England to keep a family in peculiar respect, after the reason for it has ceased. ”