CAPTAIN JOHN VERTREES, Robert Hodgen, Patrick Brown and Bladen Ashby were the "gentleman Justices" at
the first term of the Hardin county court where now is Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Justice Brown was an uncle of Frances
P. Brown who married Justice Robert Hodgen's son, Jacob Hodgen, and became a resident of Pittsfield prior to 1836.
She was the mother of the surgeon, Dr. John Thomas Hodgen.
The first term of court began July 22, 1793, court being held at the house of Isaac Hynes, later at the house of
John Vertrees. At this session the sitting Justices set the price of whisky at the "ordinaries" at "7
½ pence per half pint (about 15 cents) and 3 pence for a night's lodging." In other words, a half pint
of whisky (considered a necessity) was rated by the Justices as worth two and a half nights' rest in a feather
bed (considered a luxury). Taverns, according to Haycraft, were then styled "ordinaries," universally
pronounced "ornaries," which Spiller Waide said "hit the nail on the head more appropriately than
the spelling."
Other prices at the "ordinaries" which were set by the Justices were as follows: "For supper or
breakfast, 1 shilling; for dinner, 1 shilling and 6 pence; for stabling and hay per night, 1 shilling; for corn
and oats by the gallon, 6 pence; for one quart do., 2 pence; for pasturage for horses 24 hours, 6 pence."
At a term of court held at the house of John Vertrees in January, 1795, Icabod Radley, great friend of Captain
John Vertrees and the first Kentucky schoolmaster to shake the birch over the heads of the young Vertreeses, was
sworn as deputy for Isaac Hynes, sheriff. Radley was a "Down Easter," with a better English education
than was common for that day, and was employed by William Hardin of Hardin's Settlement, as a teacher. Samuel Haycraft,
Jr., Mary (Haycraft) Chenoweth and Nancy (Haycraft) Vertrees, the latter two being of the early Pike county settlement,
acquired some education under this early Kentucky schoolmaster.
Radley, in passing through the Severns Valley to Bardstown, chanced to become acquainted with Hannah Bush, daughter
of the elder Christopher bush, heretofore mentioned; he courted her and in due time they were married. She was
a sister of Abraham Lincoln's stepmother.
Samuel Haycraft, whose daughter Nancy married Captain John Vertrees's son, John, Jr., at the May court term 1795
produced a commission from Governor Isaac Shelby, appointing him sheriff of Hardin county, and was qualified and
gave bond with Captain Vertrees as one of his bondsmen. A firm and enduring friendship, further cemented by the
intermarriage of their children, existed between these two men, Haycraft and Vertrees.
At a court held in Hardin county on July 4, 1797, it was officially decreed by the Justices that the town that
had been laid off in town lots on a 30-acre tract given by Andrew Hynes and on which a rude court house had been
erected "be established and known as Elizabethtown." It was thereupon ordered that the following persons
be appointed trustees of said town: Robert Hodgen, Benjamin Helm, Armstead Churchill, John Vertrees, Stephen Rawlings,
Samuel Haycraft, Isaac Morrison and James Crutcher
Showing how much the community of Pike county, Illinois, has derived from this early settlement of Elizabethtown,
it is of interest to note that descendants and kinsmen of six of these original trustees later settled in this
region, representing the families of Vertrees, Hodgen, Helm, Churchill, Haycraft and Morrison.
Isaac Larue (La Rue), forebear of the Pike county La Rues, had meantime built the first Hardin county jail in the
settlement now officially designated as Elizabethtown. The contract had been let to him in 1793 at 12 pounds and
16 shillings.
John Vertrees and Robert Hodgen, as sitting Justices of the Hardin court, sent numerous offenders to the stocks
and whipping post, which stood on the county grounds in early Elizabethtown. Says Haycraft of these methods of
punishment:
"In those days men were imprisoned for debt, a mistaken policy, a relic of hard times and barbarism long since
exploded, and in course of a few years many men, white and black, were confined in the stocks and flogged at the
whipping-post. The manner of punishment in the stocks was this: The offender was placed upon his knees, his head
and hands placed through the holes formed in two planks, the upper one sliding in a groove, let down and fastened
with a lock. If the man was dead drunk, he was laid on his back and his feet inserted in two holes made to suit
the case. He laid there until he was sober."
There was a statute in Kentucky at the time that required a ducking stool for scolding women, but it appears that
John Vertrees and Robert Hodgen of the early court were gentlemen too courtly and gallant to avail themselves of
that provision of the statute and the fair sex of early Elizabethtown was permitted to scold on to its heart's
content.
Associated with the families of John Vertrees and Robert Hodgen and sitting with these gentlemen upon the benches
of the early Kentucky courts, were Joseph and Alexander Barnett, kinsmen in the ancestral line of little Mary Barnett,
the red-headed heroine who in old Missouri territorial days, during the second war with Britain, in mid-winter
swam the icy water of the Cuiver river to warn a sleeping garrison of approaching Indians. Mary married Samuel
Hardin Lewis of the early Pleasant Hill settlement. Born in 1779, she died in 1868 and is buried in the Galloway
cemetery.
Honorable Judge Joseph Barnett was also a Baptist preacher. He traveled upwards of 75 miles to sit in court at
Elizabethtown. He possessed a considerable landed estate and was one of the preachers who constituted Severns Valley
Baptist church, on June 17, 1781. He had a son also named Joseph.
Records show that grand juries, after being sworn by Justices Vertrees, Hodgen or other members of the court, then
retired to the woods (as they had no room in which to meet) and there deliberated upon their presentments, which
covered almost every conceivable minor offense, such as "profane swearing," getting drunk, fighting and
so forth.
At the February term of court, 1796, Captain John Vertrees produced his commission as Quarter Session Justice.
Quarter session courts had the same jurisdiction that circuit courts now have and the gentlemen upon the bench
were really judges, and entitled to that appellation, but as in the cases of judges of the United States Court,
they were styled justices.
Honorable Justice John Vertrees sat in quarter sessions court at the February term, 1796, when the first death
sentence in the history of the valley was meted out.
Jacob, a Negro slave, had killed his master on December 30, 1795. They were both cutting on the same fallen tree
- the Negro at the butt end, the master high up. Crow, the master, thinking Jacob was not working with a will,
went over to inspect Jacob's cut, reproved him for sloth and turned away to resume his chopping; as soon as his
back was turned, the Negro dealt him a blow on the head with the axe, killing him outright. Jacob drew his dead
master to the side of a log and covered him with leaves. He then fled to Vienna at the falls of the Green river.
When the murder was discovered, one Philip Taylor pursued and captured Jacob. When arrested, he said to Taylor,
"I killed Crow but you prove it." The prisoner was conveyed in a canoe to the mouth of Rough Creek, and
up Rough Creek to Hartford, and from there was taken under guard to Elizabethtown.
On March 2, 1796, by consent of the prisoner, he was tried by a called court, composed of Judges John Vertrees
and Thomas Helm. On arraignment, Jacob pled guilty and was sentenced by the two judges to be "hung by the
neck until he was dead, dead, dead, and the Lord to have mercy on him," and the sheriff, Samuel Haycraft,
was ordered to execute the sentence on April 2, 1796, between the hours of 12 and 2:00 o'clock.
Judges Vertrees and Helm not agreeing on the value of the Negro, a jury was impaneled which fixed his value at
80 pounds.
The prisoner was confined in the old poplar log jail, and there being no jailor, the sheriff, with a guard, was
charged with Jacob's custody. A few days before the execution, Sheriff Haycraft being absent, the duty of feeding
the prisoner devolved upon the sheriff's wife, who was Margaret Van Meter. On opening the door to hand in his dinner,
the prisoner made a desperate dash, upset the aged woman and ran for his life. The Honorable George Helm, who became
father of Governor Helm of Kentucky, being in sight and being then a stout young man, pursued the prisoner, caught
and took him back to prison. He was then kept safely until the day of his execution, which was witnessed by a vast
crowd.
Sheriff Haycraft, having a distaste for the hangman's office, procured (by consent of Jacob) the services of a
black man to "tie the noose and drive the cart from under."
The Sheriff's son, Samuel Haycraft, Jr., the historian from whose account these facts are taken, was then less
than a year old but he remembered in his youth and for years afterward of having heard time reckoned as so long
before or after "the time Jacob was hung."