jessamine-history

DESCRIPTION OF FEARNOUGHT

Fearnought is five years old last grass; is a dark blood bay, 16 hands high, of superior bone and muscle, with fine limbs, lofty carriage and elastic tread: a star in his forehead, vividly lighting up a countenance expressive of great superiority; game head, curved neck; unusual depth of chest; fine, broad shoulder; beautifully inclining back, which gives him the appearance of a horse of most wonderful strength and endurance. I expect to enter him this fall for a purse of $1,000 at Fredericksburg, and the city of Baltimore and Washington. Bald Eagle is now the property of Daniel Bradford, and was trained in Maryland, and won many races there, but, I think, his career upon the turf is over.

Your friend,
B. Netherland.

In another letter, written to General Hopkins in 1802, Major Netherland recites a most interesting incident. During that year a party of Cherokee Indians from North Carolina stopped all night at the Mingo Tavern, kept by Major Netherland. In the morning one of them was very sick and unable to travel and in a few days died at the hotel. He received the kindest possible treatment from Major Netherland and his family. In describing this incident Major Netherland says:

"A few days ago four Cherokee Indians from Iredell county, N. C, called at my home and remained over night. Next morning one of them was too sick to travel. All day his sufferings were severe and painful. I sent for Drs. Gale and Peter Trisler, who at once pronounced his case hopeless. After intense suffering for four days the poor Indian died. His poor, disconsolate friends were painfully grieved at the death of one of their number, who was a man of some notoriety among his people, particularly as an expert hunter, having himself killed seventy-odd deer while on the last October hunt in the Cumberland mountains. The dead body of the poor Indian was taken to the Kentucky river cliffs, eight miles south of Nicholasville, and interred in the earth after the Indian custom, but instead of filling the vault with earth, as is used with us, these poor Indians made a small frame work of wood, like a steep roof, which they put round the mouth, and reared up a heavy pile of earth, giving it the appearance of a potatoe heap. The three Indians who buried their comrade appeared bowed with grief. One seated himself on the ground, directing his face toward sunset, and extending his voice, made a great and sore lamentation. As much as I hate these wild children from the forest, I could not refrain from shedding tears when looking on them in this honest grief at the loss of one who was regarded as a good and true man. In four or five weeks after the death of their comrade, the same party, with a brother of the Indian, who died, came back and took his body in a small wagon to North Carolina, a distance of more than 300 miles, and reinterred his remains in the land of his birth among his own people. I have been much among the Cherokees of North Carolina. I consider them among the best of our Indian friends. They have strange customs. I wish I had time to give you more correct idea of their general character as compared with the other Indian tribes of our country.

"Your old crony,

" B. Netherland."

Major Netherland died October 10, 1838, and was buried in his garden, which is now the lot on which the county jail is built. Mr. Jos. Wallace, a remote kinsman, has, with most commendable love and liberality and true spirit of kinship, erected a headstone over the grave of Major Netherland and that of his wife, who, in 1851, was laid beside her husband. At his death Major Netherland was accorded a magnificent military funeral. The funeral sermon was preached by Bishop Kavanaugh, who was then the Presiding Elder of the district. Gen. Leslie Combs, Maj. D. B. Price, Gen. John McCalla and Robert Wickliffe were his pall-bearers, and all the leading military companies of the county turned out to do his memory honor.

Major Netherland's experience in the battle of the Blue Licks, justified him in his subsequent love of horses.

He bred a great many fine race horses in his day, and in a letter written by him to Gen. John McCalla, in 1830, now in my possession, he begs him to come to Nicholasville on the following Sunday to dine with him and promises to show him "the damndest best three colts in the world."

Gen. Percival Butler, was born in Carlisle, Pa., April 4, 1760. In 1778, he entered the American army as a lieutenant. He was at Valley Forge with Washington, at the battle of Mon- mouth, and at the surrender at Yorktown. LaFayette was such an admirer of the young man that he presented him with a sword as a token of his friendship and esteem. He married a Miss Hawkins, of Virginia. Col. John Todd, who fell at Blue Licks, married another sister. It was probably through this connection that General Butler settled in Kentucky. He came to Jessamine county in 1784, and settled at the mouth of Hickman creek and engaged in merchandise. This point was then one of great importance. The Kentucky river was the outlet for a large pan of Central Kentucky, and flatboats plied up and down the stream, carrying the commerce of the country tributary to it. The rich lands lying in proximity were already producing large treasure which found markets in the East and at New Orleans. Gen. James Wilkinson had opened a large dry goods store at Lexington in 1784. Salt was carried out of the Salt river from Mann and Bullitt Licks in 1796 to Nashville, and the Kentucky river was also sending its tide of wealth to the outside world.

In 1785 a ferry had been established at the mouth of Hickman creek by the Virginia legislature, and in 1787 Wilkinson had pushed his trade down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and the mouth of Hickman at once became a center of trade.

By this date roads were cut through from Lexington to Danville, Stanford and Lancaster, and the chartering of the ferry as early as 1785 shows that a large trade crossed at this point. Prior to this date no other ferry had been established by Virginia except the one across the Kentucky river at Boonesboro (1779). The next were those at the mouth of Hickman, the mouth of Jack's creek, Madison county, at Long Lick, and two at Louisville, to the mouths of Silver creek and Mill Run.

Gen. Percival Butler remained at the mouth of Hickman until 1796, when he removed to the mouth of the Kentucky river, at Carrollton. He was made adjutant-general of Kentucky in 1792 and took part in the war of 1812, and died in Carroll county, in 1821.

His eldest son, Thomas L. Butler, was born at the mouth of Hickman, in 1789. He was an aide to General Jackson at the battle of New Orleans in 1815, being then only twenty-six years of acre, and was left by General Jackson in command of the city, to protect it against outbreaks. He represented Gallatin (then comprising Carroll) county in the legislature, in 1826, and Carroll in 1848, and died at Carrollton in 1877. aged 88 years.

Gen. Wm.. Orlando Butler, second son of Gen. Percival Butler, was born at the mouth of Hickman, April 19, 1791, and remained there until he was five years of age; then went with his father to Carrollton. He graduated at Transylvania University at twenty-one years of age, and at once volunteered as a private in the war of 1812, then in progress. He entered the service as a private, in Captain Nathaniel G. Hart's company, the "Lexington light infantry." Young Butler. was made a corporal. This company was in the battle of Raisin, fought January 22, 1813. Captain Hart was wounded in the leg in the fight. A British officer named Elliott, who had been nursed by Hart's family during a severe spell of illness, in Lexington, offered to protect Captain Hart, who was a brother-in-law of Henry Clay, but he basely failed to redeem his promise, and Hart was massacred. In both battles at Raisin, January 18th and 22d, Butler's conduct commanded the highest praise. His courage, gallantry, and self-denial elicited universal praise. He was wounded and taken prisoner.

His heroic conduct at Raisin shows that he has had no superior in courage and chivalry in the world's history, and one event is thus told by F. P. Blair. Sr.:

"After the rout and massacre of the right wing, belonging to the Wells command, the whole force of the British and Indians was concentrated against the small body of troops under Maj. Geo. Madison, that maintained their ground within the picketed gardens, a double barn commanding the plat of ground on which the Kentuckians stood—on one side the Indians, under the cover of an orchard and fence, the British on the other side, being so posted as to command the space between it and the pickets. A party in the rear of the barn were discovered advancing to take possession of it. All saw the fatal consequences of the secure lodgment of the enemy at a place which would present every man within the pickets at close rifle shot, to the aim of their marksmen. Major Madison inquired if there was no one who would volunteer to run .the gauntlet of the fire of the British and Indian lines, and put a torch to the combustibles within the barn, to save the remnant of the little army from sacrifice. The heroic Butler, without a moment's delay, took some blazing sticks from a fire at hand, leaped the pickets, and running at his utmost speed, thrust the fire into the straw within the barn. One who was an anxious spectator of the event says that, although volley upon volley was fired at him, Butler, after making some steps on his way back, turned to see if the fire had taken, and, not being satisfied, returned to the barn and set it in a blaze. As the conflagration grew, the enemy was seen retreating from the rear of the building, which they had entered in one end, as the flames ascended in the other. Soon after reaching the pickets in safety amid the shouts of his friends, he was struck by a musket ball in his breast. Believing, from the pain he felt, that it had penetrated his chest, he turned to John M. McCalla, one of his Lexington comrades, and, pressing his hand on the spot, said: 'I fear this shot is mortal, but while I am able to move I will do my duty. To the anxious inquiries of his friends, who met him soon afterward, he opened his vest, with a smile, and showed them that the ball had spent itself on the thick wadding of his coat and on his breastbone. He suffered, however, for many weeks."

He was a captain in the battle of New Orleans, December 14, 1814, and on January 8, 1815, was brevetted Major for his gallantry, and General Jackson commended his conduct in the highest terms. He was an aide on the staff of General Jackson, in 1816 and 1817, but resigned to study law. He married a daughter of General Robert Todd. He represented Gallatin county in the legislature in 1817, was elected to Congress in 1839, and served four years, refusing a re-election. In 1844 he was the Democratic candidate for Governor and reduced the Whig majority to 4,000.

On June 29, 1846, President Polk appointed General Butler a major general of volunteers, and on the same date Zachary Taylor, major general in the regular army.

On the 23d of February, 1847, the Kentucky legislature presented him a sword for his gallantry in Mexico. He bore a distinguished part in many of the battles of that war. He was wounded in the battle of Monterey in September, 1846. On February 18, 1848, he succeeded General Scott in the chief command of the American army in Mexico, and remained in such position until the declaration of peace, May 29. 1848. In that year he was nominated for Vice-President of the United States on the ticket with Gen. Cass; but they were defeated by Taylor and Fillmore. He received the full vote of his party for United States Senator in 1851, but failed of election. He was one of the six Peace Commissioners from Kentucky in January, 1861, and thereafter he remained in the quiet seclusion of his home, at Carrollton, and died August 6, 1880, in his 8o,th year. He rests in a sepulcher overlooking the splendid scenery where the waters of the Kentucky and the Ohio unite—a fit resting-place for him who did so much to wrest Ohio and the Northwest from the savage and 'o make still greater, the renown of the great commonwealth which had given him birth.

He was a man of the highest courage, truest patriotism, noblest public spirit, thorough culture and splendid talent. His poem, "The Boatman's Horn," induced by the associations and memories of his childhood on the Ohio, when listening to the large and sonorous horns the boatmen were accustomed to blow to announce their coming to the landing places on the river, is a real poetic gem :

The Boat Horn.

O boatman, wind that horn again,

For never did the list'ning air

Upon its lambent bosom bear
So wild, so soft, so sweet a strain.

What though thy notes are sad and few,
By every simple boatman blown,

Yet is each pulse to nature true
And melody in every tone.

How oft in boyhood's joyous day.
Unmindful of the lapsing hours.

I've loitered on my homeward way
Bv wild ( H1io's brink of flowers.

While some lone boatman from the deck
Poured his soft numbers to that tide.

As if to charm from storm and wreck
The boat where all his fortunes ride!
Delighted nature drank the sound,
Enchanted—echo bore it round
In whispers soft, and softer still,
From hill to plain and plain to hill,

Till e'en the thoughtless, frolicking boy,
Elate with hope and wild with joy,
Who gamboled by the river side
And sported with the fretting tide,
Feels something new pervade his breast,
Chain his light step, repress his jest.
Bends o'er the flood his eager ear
To catch the sounds, far off, yet near—
Drinks the sweet draught, but knows not why
The tear of rapture fills his eye;
And can he now, to manhood grown,
Tell why those notes, simple and lone,
As on the ravished ear they fell,
Rind every sense in magic spell?
There is a tide of feeling given—
To all on earth—its fountain. Heaven,
Beginning with the dewy flower
Just ope'd in Flora's vernal bower,
Rising creation's orders through
With louder murmur, brighter hue.
That tide is sympathy: its ebb and flow-
Gives life its hues of joy and woe;
Music, the master spirit that can move
Its waves to war, or lull them into love ;
Can cheer the sinking sailor 'mid the wave
And bid the soldier on . nor fear the grave ;
Inspire the fainting pilgrim on his road,
And elevate his soul to claim his God.
Then, boatman, wind that horn again !
Though much of sorrow mark its strain.
Yet are its notes to sorrow dear.
What though they wake fond memory's tear?
Tears are sad memory's sacred feast,
And rapture oft her chosen guest.