IN A ROUND LOG CABIN, with a puncheon floor and clapboard roof, Judge John Vertrees raised his family in the Kentucky
wilderness, where now is Elizabethtown. As related in former chapters, Judge Vertrees was a captain in George Rogers
Clark's force of Virginia "Long Knives" in the time of the Revolution and later sat as a gentleman justice
of the county court of Hardin county, Kentucky, and as a judge of the quarter session court (equivalent of the
present circuit courts).
Judge Vertrees, who was the grandfather of Jacob Sneed Vertrees, early settler at Perry, died just when Kentucky
was emerging from the wilderness. He had established his family in the Severns Valley in 1779; he died in the valley
in 1802.
Samuel Haycraft, Jr., son of the elder Judge Samuel Haycraft who was an associate of Judge Vertrees, in his history
of Elizabethtown, states that the following description of one house and fixtures and the doings of the inhabitants
will do for all up to the year 1801:
"The first operation (of the settler) was to clear off a spot some 30 feet square in which to erect a round
log cabin — puncheon floor and clapboard roof, confined to the house by weight pole, with an eave bearer, against
which the boards rested. As to windows, it is rather doubtful how they were constructed, as there was no glass
to be had, and making of a sash was not dreamed of.
"The chimney was built of wood, with fireplace nearly across the house, never less than seven feet wide in
the clear. The first section of the chimney ran up a little higher than the mantlepiece, which was a stick of oak
timber about one foot square and about six feet high. It was walled inside up to that with stone and clay, then
the chimney narrowed abruptly to about three feet square, and was constructed with what was then called cat-and-clay,
and as some readers may not be posted as to cat-and-clay, I will attempt to enlighten them.
"First a stiff clay was made, intermixed with straw or grass cut into nibs, then some oak timber was split
up into a kind of lath, similar to tobacco sticks; the balance of the chimney was built up of first a layer of
clay, then a round of sticks, then clay, and so on until the desired height was obtained, the clay all the time
covering the sticks inside and out about three inches thick, the sticks showing the ends about four inches; then
a lubber pole was set in across the chimney on the inside, on which were hung pot rambles on which to suspend pots
and kettles for cooking, boiling soap, rendering lard and heating wash water.
"The old-fashioned long-handled frying pan was universally used in frying chickens, rabbits and squirrels,
turkey breast and venison, etc. The good dames became very expert in the use of the frying pan. I have often seen
them at it when frying pancakes. When one side was sufficiently done, the pan was withdrawn from the fire, two
or three quick motions were made to loosen the pancake, and then by a sudden twitch up, which nobody except a woman
could do, the cake was lifted in the air so as to turn a somersault and was caught in the pan with the done side
up and then finished."
Of the cooking that went on in the pioneer homes of the Vertreeses, Haycrafts, Van Meters and others of the settlement,
the historian says:
"That old-fashioned cooking was as far superior to the new-fangled Frenchified mode of macaroni fricassees
and gumbo as day is to night, and it would be worth a ride of ten miles on a snowy day to any man of proper taste
to partake of a dinner of olden times; but it has been crowded out and can only be found on the outskirts of civilization
among the hills."
The out-of-doors bake oven was a necessary adjunct of every cabin settlement. Of this, Haycraft records the following
description:
"First a foundation was made two feet high by setting posts in the ground at each corner; a capping was placed
on that, representing sills; on this a floor was laid of split timbers; on this dirt was laid, on that a stiff
coat of clay about five inches thick; this was sleeked over by hand or paddle if they had no trowel. Then the oven
must go up; a stiff, well-mixed clay was made, intermixed with nibbled straw or grass; then the oven was built
of this clay in the shape of a goose egg cut into two parts lengthwise; a square hole for a door was left in front,
and a small hole at the back was made to let out smoke or extra heat.
"To prevent accidents the builders sometimes laid up carefully dried bark of the required shape for the inside
and the oven was built to fit on it. It was then left to dry a day or two. The bark was fired and burned out, which
completed the oven and at the same time fitted it for baking. During that operation, the oven, first being cleaned
of ashes, the door was stopped by a piece of plank and the back hole stopped up to keep in the heat."
With such rude contrivances the families of Vertrees, Van Meter, Haycraft, Hobbs, Hodgen, La Rue and others maintained
themselves in the old Kentucky wilderness. Of them, Haycraft wrote in 1869:
"They braved the savages of the forest for years, lived on wild meat, and clad themselves in buckskin and
buffalo wool. They all struggled onward and upward, without any legal organization, but were a law to themselves,
and fair dealing and justice was meted out with as liberal a hand as at the present day, notwithstanding the present
standing army of governors, judges, lawyers, justices of the peace, clerks, sheriffs, constables, coroners, assessors
and tax gatherers.
"Then no fellow came sneaking in and asked how many acres of land you owned, or how many horses and cows you
claimed, or how many dollars you had in the sugar trough under the bed. Nobody was sued for debt, for there was
no need of debt, and nobody owed anything but good will; nobody wore false teeth or wigs; nature's food stuck the
hair tight, and teeth were not rotted out by using pound cake, syllabubs, sallylunn, macaroni, chicken salad, stewed
oysters or such like conglomerations.
"A hunter could lie on the ground, covered with a buffalo skin and six inches of snow on that, having drunk
a half pint of bear's oil, and wake up in the morning cured of the worst cold known in those primeval days."
The first shoemaker in the Vertrees settlement was Joe Donahoe. He kept no shop but took his kit to the house where
a pair of shoes was wanted. If the whole family was to be shod, Joe would stay with the family until it was done,
provided he kept sober that long. Sometimes the family shoeing would be interrupted while Joe was put in the stocks
to sober up. But if the family could keep him sober and bear with the tobacco juice he squirted over the floor,
Joe would stick to his last till the family was completely shod.
The tailor, too, had no shop but tailored around among the families. He was a Scotchman named Archibald McDonald.
He was a dancing master as well as a tailor, of good physique, wore knee breeches and it was said of him he could
"out-strut any man in Kentucky." It was said also that he "stood much on his dignity and used high-
swelled words."
The first mill where now is Elizabethtown was built by Samuel Haycraft, father of the historian, Samuel Haycraft,
Jr., and of Nancy Haycraft, who married Captain John Vertrees's son, John Vertrees, Jr., first of the Vertreeses
to come to Illinois. Thomas Lincoln, father of the future president, later built and operated a mill in the valley.
Robert Hodgen also had a mill on Nolin Creek, known as Hodgen's Mill, where now is Hodgenville, Kentucky, county
seat of Larue county. Among the first roads laid out in pioneer days was one from the settlement in the Severns
Valley to Hodgen's Mill.
One of the earliest merchants in the early Vertrees settlement was Horace G. Wintersmith, who married Elizabeth
Hodgen, daughter of Robert Hodgen and Sarah Larue of Hodgen's Mill, and sister of Jacob Hodgen who built the first
brick store in Pittsfield, Illinois. Jacob Hodgen's daughter, Mary Wintersmith Hodgen, who became the wife of Dr.
Eden M. Seeley of the old Pittsfield hardware firm of Seeley & Loyd, was named for this early merchant of the
Severns Valley.
In those days it took a man not only of enterprise but of great courage to be a merchant. There was then no stage
or railroad or steamboat. It was a two months' trip through an Indian-infested and danger-haunted country to Baltimore
or Philadelphia and back. Before starting on such a trip the merchant made his will, called his friends and kinsmen
together to take what might well be his last leave of them, and the news that such a storekeeper was going away
for goods was received with awe in the cabin homes of the settlers.
The merchant mounted his horse with a brace of horseman's pistols on the cantle of his saddle, led another strong
horse with a padded quilt containing about two thousand Spanish dollars, sometimes took a guard through the wilderness
part of the way, and, thus encumbered, traveled about seven hundred miles across the mountains, through the great
forests, fording wild streams, taking from sixteen to twenty days for the trip, then, arrived at his destination,
requiring about three weeks to select and lay in a stock of goods.
Then the merchant would employ several teams of Maryland or Pennsylvania wagons, each drawn by six Conestoga horses,
which wound their weary way over difficult trails to Pittsburgh, a trip occupying from ten to fifteen days, then,
at Pittsburgh, a flat boat was purchased and the goods stowed in it, and the broad-horn, as this type of boat was
called, was floated down the Ohio, the merchant on board with his hands, this water trip down to the falls of the
Ohio, where now is Louisville, consuming some fifteen or twenty days according to the stage of the water, and there
the boat, if bound for Elizabethtown or the southern Kentucky counties, was piloted over the falls and finally
landed at the mouth of Salt river.