The Filson Historical Society Blog

Jonathan Clark, of the famous Clark family, passed away on November 25, 1811 – 200 years ago this month. Born in August 1750 in Albemarle County, Virginia, Clark was the oldest of the ten children of John and Ann Rogers Clark. Two of his younger brothers – George Rogers and William – achieved great fame; George for his exploits in Kentucky and the Northwest Territory during the Revolutionary War and William as co-leader of the epic 1803 to 1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition across the American West to the Pacific Ocean.

George Rogers Clark, portrait by Matthew Jouett, ca. 1825. No portrait for brother Jonathan is known to exist.

William Clark, portrait by Joseph H. Bush, ca. 1817

Jonathan was a source of solid support and advice to both George and William as to his other siblings. He also achieved success and was widely admired in his own right. Jonathan served as a representative to two Virginia Revolutionary conventions and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel of the Eighth Virginia Regiment in the Continental Line during the American Revolution. He served with distinction in a number of campaigns and battles. He was one of the original Virginia members of the Society of the Cincinnati and in 1793 was commissioned a major general in the Virginia militia. Thus he, like George and William, also achieved the rank of general (all in militia service).

Jonathan moved with his family from Spotsylvania County, Va., to Jefferson County, Ky., in the summer of 1802, settling on a plantation on the South Fork of Beargrass Creek near his brother William’s Mulberry Hill plantation (and where the Clarks had settled in 1785). His house was located off of Dundee Road near Atherton High School and still stands (though greatly altered over the years).

Jonathan and Sarah Clark's Louisville home, located off of Dundee Road, photo by Jim Holmberg.

Jonathan moved at a fortuitous time, as great things were happening in the west beyond the Appalachians. Brother William set off on his “western tour” to the Pacific in the fall of 1803. Jonathan and other Clarks were there to see him depart. Big brother even sailed downriver a ways with the captains and the nucleus of the Corps of Discovery.

Jonathan Clark's diary entry for 26 October 1803.

William wrote letters to him during the expedition and sent reports, notes, and artifacts collected along the trail to him for safe-keeping and dispersal to family and friends.  When the captains returned to the Falls of the Ohio in early November 1806,  Jonathan noted it in his diary; as he did a celebration at sister Lucy Croghan’s home Locust Grove in honor of their return. As short as these diary entries are, at least they record these momentous events in the life of the family, our region, and the country.

Jonathan Clark's diary entry for 5 November 1806.

Engraving of the Falls of the Ohio, by Victor Collot.

Not long before his death, Jonathan recorded yet another event that proved to have great regional and national  importance. He took a ride on the first steamboat to travel on western waters. The New Orleans  left Pittsburgh in October 1811 and eventually reached New Orleans in January 1812.  While waiting at Louisville for the Ohio to rise sufficiently to pass through the Falls, Nicholas Roosevelt (the boat’s designer and one of its owners) gave rides upstream to demonstrate the paddlewheeler’s ability to travel against the current.  On November 9, Jonathan was one of the passengers to take a ride and see for himself what this feat of engineering foretold for river travel and the development of the country.  It is one of the few references by someone about, much less who rode on, the boat. One wishes he had described the boat and his excursion, but at least we have this: “Sailed in the Steam Vessle New Orleans - as far as the Diamond Island.” (Although uncertain, best evidence indicates that Diamond Island is present Twelve Mile Island.)

Diary entry noting ride on the steamboat "New Orleans", 9 November 1811.

Sixteen days later Jonathan Clark passed away. Thanks to his diary-keeping, as brief as his entries are, Jonathan recorded the momentous as well as the mundane over the course of more than forty years, and provided an important record of American history.

The Cumberland Gap, situated in the Cumberland Mountains section of the Appalachian Mountains on the Kentucky-Virginia border about a quarter of a mile from where Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee meet, is very important to the history of Kentucky and the Western United States.  The Gap was first used by the Native Americans as a westward gate to hunting grounds in Kentucky and Tennessee.  The first European credited with going through the pass was Dr. Thomas Walker, as a surveyor for the Loyal Land Company in order to find suitable lands for farming west of the Appalachian Mountains. 

After the French and Indian War, a more famous frontiersman would make the venture through the Cumberland Gap.  Daniel Boone, with the help of North Carolina land speculator Judge Richard Henderson, attempted to cross the Cumberland Gap.  His first attempt in the winter of 1767-1768, resulted in Boone’s party missing the Gap.  In late spring 1769, Boone and his companions were able to cross the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and stayed there trapping furs.  In December of 1769, Boone and a companion were captured by a Shawnee only to escape a short time later.  When stories about the exploits of Daniel Boone and his companions reached the people on the Eastern seaboard,  the adventurous and the landless began to pour westward and surveying teams began to operate in the west by 1773.  In March of 1775, Daniel Boone, along with thirty axmen, began to blaze a trail starting at Rose Point, Virginia going through the Cumberland Gap and finally terminating at Boonesborough, Kentucky.  The Wilderness Road, and in extension the Cumberland Gap, was the safest way into the west for settlers until the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 finally nullified the threat of the Shawnee throughout the Ohio Valley.

Although the Cumberland Gap would go on to play an integral part in other times during our history, the exploration of the Gap and the creation of the Wilderness Road allowed for all the others to come to fruition.  Many men, women, and children flooded into the west into what would become the states of Kentucky and Tennessee after the discovery of the Cumberland Gap and building of the Wilderness Road.  Because of this, the American nation was able to move one step closer to being a people that stretched from sea to shining sea.

The Filson wishes you a Happy Independence Day!

Having recently concluded a tour of some of the pioneer stations in Jefferson County, a “then and now” comparison between an early 20th century photo and one taken recently seemed appropriate. Floyd’s Station on the Middle Fork of Beargrass Creek, in present St. Matthews, was established by John Floyd in November of 1779. It is generally acknowledged to be the first station established along the creek and first settlement established in present Jefferson County after the founding of Louisville in May 1778 by George Rogers Clark.  Other stations and farms would soon be scattered along the three forks of Beargrass, Pond Creek, and across the county. Letters written by Floyd from the station record that a number of cabins and a fort were constructed. Not specifically mentioned, but a fixture of all stations and farms, was the springhouse. Like the fate of so many of these early structures, only the springhouse remains today. It dates from the period of the station.

The Floyd's Station springhouse in 1922 before falling victim to vandals. Photo by R. C. Ballard Thruston.

Time and vandals haven’t been kind to it, but part of it has endured. Today, it quietly sits in the back of the Jamestown of St. Matthews apartment complex, a reminder of the pioneers of more than 200 years ago as they struggled to carve new homes out of a wilderness and wrest control of the land from the Native Americans.

Purchased by the City of St. Matthews, the springhouse had a new roof put on its remaining one level and a fence placed around it. Photos by Jim Holmberg.

Partially destroyed by vandals, the springhouse is now one level.

Major Bland W. Ballard (1759 or 1761-1853) was an early pioneer in Kentucky and quite possibly the toughest looking man of his era. The Filson’s portrait of Ballard by Chester Harding depicts a man hardened by the violence of the Ohio Valley frontier. In 1788, a party of Delaware Indians killed Ballard’s

Portrait of Bland Ballard by Chester Harding, ca. 1820-1830

father, stepmother, two brothers and half-sister, while Ballard was at a nearby fort. Hearing the gunfire, Ballard rushed back to his family’s cabin and reportedly killed six of the attacking Delawares before they retreated. Ballard told historian Lyman C. Draper in 1844 that he had killed thirty or forty Indians during his life, in part to retaliate for the massacre of his family. He certainly gave himself every opportunity. From 1779 when he immigrated to Kentucky through the War of 1812, Ballard served as a scout on no fewer than seven campaigns against the Indians north of the Ohio River, and he fought in numerous skirmishes with Indians raiding in Kentucky. Even when he was in his fifties, Ballard continued his private war against the American Indian, fighting in the Northwest during the War of 1812. Although wounded and captured at the Battle of River Raisin in 1813, Ballard survived the war and returned to Shelbyville, where he died in 1853.

Ballard was a large man for the eighteenth century. Draper described the frontiersman as “six feet, strong, raw boney man weighing upwards of 200.” That description matches the figure painted by Chester Harding in the early ninteenth century. In Harding’s painting, Ballard appears in a fringed buckskin jacket, and with the dark smudges on his face, he looks as though he has just returned from a fight in the woods and given no thought to rinsing away the grime of the wilderness. Ballard seems to be lurking in the shadows, and unlike Daniel Boone in the portrait Harding did of him, Ballard’s eyes look into the distance, maybe watching for danger. As much as any portrait in The Filson’s extensive collection, Harding’s portrait seems to capture the essence of its subject. From Ballard’s own telling of his life and later historical accounts, we know he was a hard man, comfortable in a dangerous world.