WE judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was after. We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the Ohio amongst the free States, and then be out of trouble.
Kentucky is the principal hemp-growing state of the Union; the crop of 1899, which was grown on 14,107 acres and amounted to 10,303,560 lb., valued at $468,454, was 87.7% of the hemp crop of the whole country. But the competition of cheaper labour in other countries reduced the profits on this plant and the product of 1899 was a decrease from 78,818,000 lb. in 1859. Hay and forage, the fourth in value of the state's crops in 1899, were grown on 683,139 acres and amounted to 776,534 tons, valued at $6,100,647; in 1909 the acreage of hay was 480,000 and the crop of 653,000 tons was valued at $7,771,000. In 1899 the total value of fruit grown in Kentucky was $2,491,457 (making the state rank thirteenth among the states of the Union in the value of this product), of which $1,943,645 was the value of orchard fruits and $435,462 that of small fruits. Among fruits, apples are produced in greatest abundance, 6,053,717 bu. in 1899, an amount exceeded in only nine states; in 1889 the crop had been 10,679,389 bu. and was exceeded only by the crop of Ohio and by that of Michigan. Kentucky also grows considerable quantities of cherries, pears, plums and peaches, and, for its size, ranks high in its crops of strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. Indian corn is grown in all parts of the state but most largely in the western portion. Wheat is grown both in the Blue Grass Region and farther west; and the best country for fruit is along the Ohio river between Cincinnati and Louisville and in the hilly land surrounding the Blue Grass Region. In the eastern part of the state where crops are generally light, Indian corn, oats and potatoes are the principal products, but tobacco, flax and cotton are grown. The thoroughbred Kentucky horse has long had a world-wide reputation for speed; and the Blue Grass Region, especially Fayette, Bourbon and Woodford counties, is probably the finest horse-breeding region in America and has large breeding farms. In Fayette county, in 1900, the average value of colts between the ages of one and two years was $377.78. In the Blue Grass Region many thoroughbred shorthorn cattle and fine mules are raised. The numbers of horses, mules, cattle and sheep increased quite steadily from 1850 to 1900, but the number of swine in 1880 and in 1900 was nearly one-third less than in 1850. In 1900 the state had 497,245 horses, 198,110 mules, 364,025 dairy cows, 755,714 other neat cattle, 1,300,832 sheep and 2,008,989 swine; in 1910 there were in Kentucky 407,000 horses, 207,000 mules, 394,000 milch cows, 665,000 other neat cattle, 1,060,000 sheep and 989,000 swine. The principal sheep-raising counties in 1905 were Bourbon, Scott and Harrison, and the principal hog-raising counties were Graves, Hardin, Ohio, Union and Hickman. Entry: KENTUCKY
_History._--Of the prehistoric inhabitants of Indiana little is known, but extensive remains in the form of mounds and fortifications abound in every part of the state, being particularly numerous in Knox and Sullivan counties. Along the Ohio river are remnants of several interesting stone forts. Upon the earliest arrival of Europeans the state was inhabited chiefly by the various tribes of the Miami Confederacy, a league of Algonquian Indians formed to oppose the advance of the Iroquois. The first Europeans to visit the state were probably French _coureurs des bois_ or Jesuit missionaries. La Salle, the explorer, it is contended, must have passed through parts of Indiana during his journeys of 1669 and the succeeding years. Apparently a French trading post was in existence on the St Joseph river of Michigan about 1672, but it was in no sense a permanent settlement and seems soon to have been abandoned. It seems probable that the Wabash-Maumee portage was known to Father Claude Jean Allouez as early as 1680. When, a few years later, this portage came to be generally used by traders, the necessity of establishing a base on the upper Wabash as a defence against the Carolina and Pennsylvania traders, who had already reached the lower Wabash and incited the Indians to hostility against the French, became evident; but it was not, apparently, until the second decade of the 18th century that any permanent settlement was made. About 1720 a French post was probably established at Ouiatenon (about 5 m. S.W. of the present city of Lafayette), the headquarters of the Wea branch of the Miami, on the upper Wabash. The military post at Vincennes was founded about 1731 by François Margane, Sieur de Vincennes (or Vincent), but it was not until about 1735 that eight French families were settled there. Vincennes, which thus became the first actual white settlement in Indiana, remained the only one until after the War of Independence, although military posts were maintained at Ouiatenon and at the head of the Maumee, the site of the present Fort Wayne, where there was a French trading post (1680) and later Fort Miami. After the fall of Quebec the British took possession of the other forts, but not at once of Vincennes, which remained for several years under the jurisdiction of New Orleans, both under French and Spanish rule. The British garrisons at Ouiatenon and Fort Miami (near the site of the later Fort Wayne) on the Maumee were captured by the Indians as a result of the Pontiac conspiracy. All Indiana was united with Canada by the Quebec Act (1774), but it was not until three years later that the forts and Vincennes were occupied by the British, who then realized the necessity of ensuring possession of the Mississippi Valley to prevent its falling into the hands of the rebellious colonies. Nevertheless, in 1778 Vincennes fell an easy prey to agents sent to occupy it by George Rogers Clark, and although again occupied a few months later by General Henry Hamilton, the lieutenant-governor at Detroit, it passed finally into American control in February 1779 as a result of Clark's remarkable march from Kaskaskia. Fort Miami remained in British hands until the close of the war. Entry: INDIANA
CLARK, GEORGE ROGERS (1752-1818), American frontier military leader, was born near Charlottesville, in Albemarle county, Virginia, on the 19th of November 1752. Early in life he became a land-surveyor; he took part in Lord Dunmore's War (1774), and in 1775 went as a surveyor for the Ohio Company to Kentucky (then a district of Virginia), whither he removed early in 1776. His iron will, strong passions, audacious courage and magnificent physique soon made him a leader among his frontier neighbours, by whom in 1776 he was sent as a delegate to the Virginia legislature. In this capacity he was instrumental in bringing about the organization of Kentucky as a county of Virginia, and also obtained from Governor Patrick Henry a supply of powder for the Kentucky settlers. Convinced that the Indians were instigated and supported in their raids against the American settlers by British officers stationed in the forts north of the Ohio river, and that the conquest of those forts would put an end to the evil, he went on foot to Virginia late in 1777 and submitted to Governor Henry and his council a plan for offensive operations. On the 2nd of January 1778 he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel, received £1200 in depreciated currency, and was authorized to enlist troops; and by the end of May he was at the falls of the Ohio (the site of Louisville) with about 175 men. The expedition proceeded to Fort Kaskaskia, on the Mississippi, in what is now Illinois. This place and Cahokia, also on the Mississippi, near St Louis, were defended by small British garrisons, which depended upon the support of the French _habitants_. The French being willing to accept the authority of Virginia, both forts were easily taken. Clark gained the friendship of Father Pierre Gibault, the priest at Kaskaskia, and through his influence the French at Vincennes on the Wabash were induced (late in July) to change their allegiance. On the 17th of December Lieut.-Governor Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, recovered Vincennes and went into winter quarters. Late in February 1779 he was surprised by Clark and compelled to give up Vincennes and its fort, Fort Sackville, and to surrender himself and his garrison of about 80 men, as prisoners of war. With the exception of Detroit and several other posts on the Canadian frontier the whole of the North-West was thus brought under American influence; many of the Indians, previously hostile, became friendly, and the United States was put in a position to demand the cession of the North-West in the treaty of 1783. For this valuable service, in which Clark had freely used his own private funds, he received practically no recompense either from Virginia or from the United States, and for many years before his death he lived in poverty. To him and his men, however, the Virginia legislature granted 150,000 acres of land in 1781, which was subsequently located in what are now Clark, Floyd and Scott counties, Indiana; Clark's individual share was 8049 acres, but from this he realized little. Clark built Fort Jefferson on the Mississippi, 4 or 5 m. below the mouth of the Ohio, in 1780, destroyed the Indian towns Chillicothe and Piqua in the same year, and in November 1782 destroyed the Indian towns on the Miami river. With this last expedition his active military service virtually ended, and in July 1783 he was relieved of his command by Virginia. Thereafter he lived on part of the land granted to him by Virginia or in Louisville for the rest of his life. In 1793 he accepted from Citizen Genet a commission as "major-general in the armies of France, and commander-in-chief of the French Revolutionary Legion in the Mississippi Valley," and tried to raise a force for an attack upon the Spanish possessions in the valley of the Mississippi. The scheme, however, was abandoned after Genet's recall. Disappointed at what he regarded as his country's ingratitude, and broken down by excessive drinking and paralysis, he lost his once powerful influence and lived in comparative isolation until his death, near Louisville, Kentucky, on the 13th of February 1818. Entry: CLARK
_History._--The settlement and the development of that part of the United States west of the Alleghany Mountains has probably been the most notable feature of American history since the close of the Seven Years' War (1763). Kentucky was the first settlement in this movement, the first state west of the Alleghany Mountains admitted into the Union. In 1763 the Kentucky country was claimed by the Cherokees as a part of their hunting grounds, by the Six Nations (Iroquois) as a part of their western conquests, and by Virginia as a part of the territory granted to her by her charter of 1609, although it was actually inhabited only by a few Chickasaws near the Mississippi river and by a small tribe of Shawnees in the north, opposite what is now Portsmouth, Ohio. The early settlers were often attacked by Indian raiders from what is now Tennessee or from the country north of the Ohio, but the work of colonization would have been far more difficult if those Indians had lived in the Kentucky region itself. Dr Thomas Walker (1715-1794), as an agent and surveyor of the Loyal Land Company, made an exploration in 1750 into the present state from the Cumberland Gap, in search of a suitable place for settlement but did not get beyond the mountain region. In the next year Christopher Gist, while on a similar mission for the Ohio Company, explored the country westward from the mouth of the Scioto river. In 1752 John Finley, an Indian trader, descended the Ohio river in a canoe to the site of Louisville. It was Finley's descriptions that attracted Daniel Boone, and soon after Boone's first visit, in 1767, travellers through the Kentucky region became numerous. The first permanent English settlement was established at Harrodsburg in 1774 by James Harrod, and in October of the same year the Ohio Indians, having been defeated by Virginia troops in the battle of Point Pleasant (in what is now West Virginia), signed a treaty by which they surrendered their claims south of the Ohio river. In March 1775 Richard Henderson and some North Carolina land speculators met about 1200 Cherokee Indians in council on the Watauga river and concluded a treaty with them for the purchase of all the territory south of the Ohio river and between the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers. The purchase was named Transylvania, and within less than a month after the treaty was signed, Boone, under its auspices, founded a settlement at Boonesborough which became the headquarters of the colony. The title was declared void by the Virginia government in 1778, but Henderson and his associates received 200,000 acres in compensation, and all sales made to actual settlers were confirmed. During the War of Independence the colonists were almost entirely neglected by Virginia and were compelled to defend themselves against the Indians who were often under British leadership. Boonesborough was attacked in April and in July 1777 and in August 1778. Bryant's (or Bryan's) Station, near Lexington, was besieged in August 1782 by about 600 Indians under the notorious Simon Girty, who after raising the siege drew the defenders, numbering fewer than 200, into an ambush and in the battle of Blue Licks which ensued the Kentuckians lost about 67 killed and 7 prisoners. Kentucky county, practically coterminous with the present state of Kentucky and embracing all the territory claimed by Virginia south of the Ohio river and west of Big Sandy Creek and the ridge of the Cumberland Mountains, was one of three counties which was formed out of Fincastle county in 1776. Four years later, this in turn was divided into three counties, Jefferson, Lincoln and Fayette, but the name Kentucky was revived in 1782 and was given to the judicial district which was then organized for these three counties. The War of Independence was followed by an extensive immigration from Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina[6] of a population of which fully 95%, excluding negro slaves, were of pure English, Scotch or Scotch-Irish descent. The manners, customs and institutions of Virginia were transplanted beyond the mountains. There was the same political rivalry between the slave-holding farmers of the Blue Grass Region and the "poor whites" of the mountain districts that there was in Virginia between the tide-water planters and the mountaineers. Between these extremes were the small farmers of the "Barrens"[7] in Kentucky and of the Piedmont Region in Virginia. The aristocratic influences in both states have always been on the Southern and Democratic side, but while they were strong enough in Virginia to lead the state into secession they were unable to do so in Kentucky. Entry: KENTUCKY
BLENNERHASSETT, HARMAN (1765-1831), Irish-American lawyer, son of an Irish country gentleman of English stock settled in Co. Kerry, was born on the 8th of October 1765. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and in 1790 was called to the Irish bar. After living for several years on the continent, he married in 1796 his niece, Margaret Agnew, daughter of Robert Agnew, the lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Man. Ostracised by their families for this step the couple decided to settle in America, where Blennerhassett in 1798 bought an island in the Ohio river about 2 m. below Parkersburg, West Virginia. Here in 1805 he received a visit from Aaron Burr (q.v.), in whose conspiracy he became interested, furnishing liberal funds for its support, and offering the use of his island as a rendezvous for the gathering of arms and supplies and the training of volunteers. When the conspiracy collapsed, the mansion and island were occupied and plundered by the Virginia militia. Blennerhassett fled, was twice arrested and remained a prisoner until after Burr's release. The island was then abandoned, and Blennerhassett was in turn a cotton planter in Mississippi, and a lawyer (1819-1822) in Montreal, Canada. After returning to Ireland, he died in the island of Guernsey on the 2nd of February 1831. His wife, who had considerable literary talent and who published _The Deserted Isle_ (1822) and _The Widow of the Rock and Other Poems_ (1824), returned to the United States in 1840, and died soon afterward in New York City while attempting to obtain through Congress payment for property destroyed on the island. Entry: BLENNERHASSETT
ASHLAND, a city of Boyd county, Kentucky, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, about 130 m. E. by N. of Frankfort. Pop. (1890) 4195; (1900) 6800 (489 negroes); (1910) 8688. It is served by the Chesapeake & Ohio (being a terminal of the Lexington and Big Sandy Divisions) and the Norfolk & Western railways, and is connected with Huntington, West Virginia, by an electric line. The city has a fine natural park (Central Park) of about 30 acres; and Clyffeside Park (maintained by a private corporation), of about 75 acres, just east of the city, is a pleasure resort and a meeting-ground (with a casino seating 3000 people) for the Tri-State "Chautauqua" (for certain parts of Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia). The surrounding country abounds in coal, iron ore, oil, clay, stone and timber, for which the city is a distributing centre. Ashland has considerable river traffic, and various manufactures, including pig iron, nails, wire rods, steel billets, sheet steel, dressed lumber (especially poplar), furniture, fire brick and leather. Ashland was settled in 1854, and was chartered as a city in 1870. Entry: ASHLAND
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM (1809-1865), sixteenth president of the United States of America, was born on "Rock Spring" farm, 3 m. from Hodgenville, in Hardin (now Larue) county, Kentucky, on the 12th of February 1809.[1] His grandfather,[2] Abraham Lincoln, settled in Kentucky about 1780 and was killed by Indians in 1784. His father, Thomas (1778-1851), was born in Rockingham (then Augusta) county, Virginia; he was hospitable, shiftless, restless and unsuccessful, working now as a carpenter and now as a farmer, and could not read or write before his marriage, in Washington county, Kentucky, on the 12th of June 1806, to Nancy Hanks (1783-1818), who was, like him, a native of Virginia, but had much more strength of character and native ability, and seemed to have been, in intellect and character, distinctly above the social class in which she was born. The Lincolns had removed from Elizabethtown, Hardin county, their first home, to the Rock Spring farm, only a short time before Abraham's birth; about 1813 they removed to a farm of 238 acres on Knob Creek, about 6 m. from Hodgenville; and in 1816 they crossed the Ohio river and settled on a quarter-section, 1½ m. E. of the present village of Gentryville, in Spencer county, Indiana. There Abraham's mother died on the 5th of October 1818. In December 1819 his father married, at his old home, Elizabethtown, Mrs Sarah (Bush) Johnston (d. 1869), whom he had courted years before, whose thrift greatly improved conditions in the home, and who exerted a great influence over her stepson. Spencer county was still a wilderness, and the boy grew up in pioneer surroundings, living in a rude log-cabin, enduring many hardships and knowing only the primitive manners, conversation and ambitions of sparsely settled backwoods communities. Schools were rare, and teachers qualified only to impart the merest rudiments. "Of course when I came of age I did not know much," wrote he years afterward, "still somehow I could read, write and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity." His entire schooling, in five different schools, amounted to less than a twelvemonth; but he became a good speller and an excellent penman. His own mother taught him to read, and his stepmother urged him to study. He read and re-read in early boyhood the Bible, Aesop, _Robinson Crusoe_, _Pilgrim's Progress_, Weems's _Life of Washington_ and a history of the United States; and later read every book he could borrow from the neighbours, Burns and Shakespeare becoming favourites. He wrote rude, coarse satires, crude verse, and compositions on the American government, temperance, &c. At the age of seventeen he had attained his full height, and began to be known as a wrestler, runner and lifter of great weights. When nineteen he made a journey as a hired hand on a flatboat to New Orleans. Entry: LINCOLN
Station crews are composed of a keeper and from six to eight surfmen, with an additional man during the winter months at most of the stations on the Atlantic coast. The surfmen are reenlisted from year to year during good behaviour, subject to a thorough physical examination. The keepers are also subject to annual physical examinations after attaining the age of fifty-five. Stations on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are manned from August 1st to May 31st. On the lakes the active season covers the period of navigation, from about April 1st to early in December. The falls station at Louisville, and all stations on the Pacific coast, are in commission continuously. One station, located in Dorchester Bay, an expanse of water within Boston harbour, where numerous yachts rendezvous and many accidents occur, which, with the one at Louisville are, believed to be the only floating life-saving stations in the world, is manned from May 1st to November 15th. Its equipment includes a steam tug and two gasoline launches, the latter being harboured in a slip cut into the after-part of the station and extending from the stern to nearly amidships. The Louisville stations guard the falls of the Ohio river, where life is much endangered from accidents to vessels passing over the falls and small craft which are liable to be drawn into the chutes while attempting to cross the river. Its equipment includes two river skiffs which can be instantly launched directly from the ways at one end of the station. These skiffs are small boats modelled much like surf-boats, designed to be rowed by one or two men. Other equipments are provided for the salvage of property. The stations, located as near as practicable to a launching place, contain as a rule convenient quarters for the residence of the keeper and crew and a boat and apparatus room. In some instances the dwelling- and boat-house are built separately. Each station has a look-out tower for the day watch. Entry: UNITED
IRONTON, a city and the county-seat of Lawrence county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, about 142 m. E.S.E. of Cincinnati. Pop. (1890) 10,939; (1900) 11,868, of whom 924 were negroes and 714 foreign-born; (1910 census) 13,147. It is served by the Chesapeake and Ohio, the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton, the Norfolk and Western, and the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton railways, and by river steamboats. The city is built on a plain at the base of hills rising from the river bottom and abounding in iron ore and bituminous coal; fire and pottery clay also occur in the vicinity. Besides mining, Ironton has important lumber interests, considerable river traffic, and numerous manufactures, among which are iron, wire, nails, machinery, stoves, fire-brick, pressed brick, terra-cotta, cement, carriages and wagons, and furniture. The total value of its factory product in 1905 was $4,755,304; in 1900, $5,410,528. The municipality owns and operates its water-works. Ironton was first settled in 1848, and in 1851 was incorporated. Entry: IRONTON
The use of the term "Mason and Dixon Line" to designate the boundary between the free and the slave states (and in general between the North and the South) dates from the debates in Congress over the Missouri Compromise in 1819-1820. As so used it may be defined as not only the Mason and Dixon Line proper, but also the line formed by the Ohio River from its intersection with the Pennsylvania boundary to its mouth, thence the eastern, northern and western boundaries of Missouri, and thence westward the parallel 36° 30´--the line established by the Missouri Compromise to separate free and slave territory in the "Louisiana Purchase," except as regards Missouri. It is to be noted, however, that the Missouri Compromise did not affect the territory later acquired from Mexico. Entry: MASON
BELLAIRE, a city of Belmont county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, 5 m. S. of Wheeling, West Virginia. Pop. (1890) 9934; (1900) 9912 (1159 foreign-born); (1910) 12,946. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio, the Pennsylvania, and the Ohio River & Western railways. Bellaire is the shipping centre of the Belmont county coalfield which in 1907 produced 19.3% of the total output of coal for the state. Iron, limestone and fireclay are found in the vicinity; among the manufactures are iron and steel, glass, galvanized and enamelled ware, agricultural implements and stoves. The value of the city's factory products increased from $8,837,646 in 1900 to $10,712,438 in 1905, or 21.2%. Bellaire was settled about 1795, was laid out in 1836, was incorporated as a village in 1858, and was chartered as a city in 1874. Entry: BELLAIRE