Class. Book.. 4-S)3 . pizN4-C CoipgtitN^_ COEHUGHT DEPOSIT. PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY IRVIN S. COBB STANDING BESIDE CHIEF PADUKE'S STATUE Paducahans in History BY FRED G. NEUMAN AUTHOR OF "STORY OF PADUCAH" PADUCAH, KENTUCKY YOUNG PRINTING COMPANY 1922 Copyright, 1922, By FRED G. NEUMAN 0CTi2'2l ©CUe8B250 TO MY PARENTS: THEY ARE NOT LIKE ANY OTHER OF ALL MY FRIENDS. THEY STAND ALONE. PREFACE The history of Paducah links itself with the lives of its native or adopted sons and daughters whose names shine upon the local, State and National page. As soldier, statesman and author their work grows brighter with the years, inspiring the young and stimulating the old. On the battle field they gave themselves, as statesmen they were the people's tribunes, as authors they con- tributed richly to the treasure-house of literature. Unostentatiously they shared honors with the greatest, drank freely from the cup of success; then the chaplet of laurel was thrown aside, the trump of fame disregarded. In all that v/as done they reckoned themselves as secondary in the achievement of a purpose, and this self- effacement prompted in no small measure the investigations revealed by these sidelights. More than a hundred friends are due thanks for courtesies extended while the chapters were in preparation. Dr. E. B. Curd of Hazel, and Captain William T. Rigby of the Vicksburg National Military Park Commission were exceedingly kind in supplying valuable data. Captain T. B. Fauntleroy of Kevil, and Captain Edwin P. Farley of Paducah ansv/ered inquiries that resulted in the presentation of new matter. Miss Harriett Boswell of the Paducah Carnegie Library, and the assistant librarians, very generously offered the volumes of that institution for research. Judge E. W. Bagby of Paducah was frequently consulted, his wide reading and personal knowledge of the subjects discussed proving exceptionally advantageous. Mr. W. G. McFadden of Paducah made possible the reproduction of several rare pictures which had never been in print. Particular thanks are due Mr. V. Blaine Russell for reading manuscript and proof, and offering suggestions. Without his sympathetic assistance the pen portraits would have lacked far less color and the events of their time lost much of the interest they might possibly contain. The preparation of the book has been a pleasure and if by it the life or deeds of any subject are illumined the writing has not been in vain. FRED G. NEUMAN. Paducah. Ky., August 15, 1922. CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I CHIEF PADUKE AND HIS PEACEFUL INDIAN TRIBE 15 CHAPTER n HON. LINN BOYD AND HIS NOTED CAREER 27 CHAPTER HI GEN. LLOYD TILGHMAN AND HIS DASHING BRAVERY___ 35 CHAPTER IV COLONEL ALBERT P. THOMPSON AND THE BATTLE OF PADUCAH 55 CHAPTER V "OLD JUDGE PRIEST" AND HIS NOBLE CHARACTERISTICS 73 CHAPTER VI IRVIN S. COBB AND HIS TEACHERS AND OLD SCHOOL DAYS 79 CHAPTER VII PADUCAH'S MAYORS AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS 97 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY CHAPTER I CHIEF PADUKE AND HIS PEACEFUL INDIAN TRIBE MAJESTICALLY seated on a carved rock, his proud head up as if sitting in council with his sagamores, the right hand holding a shield in upright position and the left arm resting upon it, exposure of leg, arm and back muscle giving mute but unmistakable evidence of perfect physique and mighty strength, the statue of Chief Paduke is a fit representation of the Herculean Indian after whom Paducah was named. The monument is conspicuously located at the northwest corner of Fifth and Broadway in full view of thousands who daily cross the busy intersection on errands of business and pleasure. How many pause in their thoughts of more modern things to ponder over the why and wherefore of the carved stone? The red man in Western Kentucky was originally of the Chickasaw tribe, but later became known as a member of the Padouca or Padoucah clan. Still later or shortly before the town of Pekin was founded the spelling was changed and the Indians in that section of Kentucky lying west of the Tennessee river were known as the Paducahs — a kindly family of red men whose past, so far as can be learned, is without blemish in that they were free from the customary bloodshed frequently attributed to the aboriginal race. They roamed the territory with all the freedom that was theirs. The country was densely thicketed with forests of sycamore, walnut, hickory, oak and birch. The squirrel made these his place of retreat and the sagacious fox and raccoon looked from within. Around the trees the fleet deer trod, the fox scurried, the wolf howled ; the 15 16 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY black bear roamed the canebrake or reconnoitred through the forests in search of bee trees, and the muskrat swam noiselessly in the creeks and rivers. The snipe let forth his shrill call in the marshes, the mocking bird whistled from the thorn tree, the noisy blue jay scolded the robin for his cheerfulness, and the comely partridge answered his mate in the broom sedge on the hillside. The forests are still standing along Island Creek, but the intrusion of civilization has long since driven the wolf, bear and deer from the scene. The mocking bird still whistles, the jack snipe still wades in the bogs, and the blue jay and robin quarrel as vehemently as ever in the woodland, but the noble red man is gone forever — gone to the Happy Hunting Ground — where he will never be molested in his pursuit of primitive happiness, where his every arrow finds its mark. PURCHASE DISTRICT CHANGES HANDS Jackson's Purchase in West Kentucky is composed of Ballard, Calloway, Carlisle, Graves, Fulton, Hickman, Marshall and McCracken counties, embracing an area of more than 2,100 square miles or approximately 1,344,000 acres. The vast area for which General Andrew Jackson and Governor Isaac Shelby of Kentucky negotiated in reality includes twenty counties in western Tennessee with an area three times as great as that in Kentucky, but in recent years the appellation has come to be used only in connection with the territory in western Kentucky. It is even now rarely called Jackson's Purchase, euphony of expression and an equal meaning simply designating it "The Purchase." Linn Boyd, then less than eighteen years old, was a member of the commission which dealt with the Chickasaws. The vast domain was purchased from the Chickasaw Indians of which the Paducahs were a part, the sale having been effected October 18, 1818. "The stipula- tions of this treaty," says Albion H. Bedford in "The History of Methodism in Kentucky" (Vol, 2, page 494), "were made in Monroe County, Mississippi, on the banks PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 17 of the Tombigbee, on the road between Aberdeen and Cotton Gin, about ten miles from the former place, under a magnificent oak whose branches shaded General Jackson and his staff, and Chinnubby and his chiefs." Among the Paducah Indians occupying The Purchase territory in western Kentucky there was one influential, dominant character. That distinctive personality was Chief Paduke — tall and massive, of perfect physique and generous spirit — an altogether unique and extra- ordinary individuality to come from a nomadic tribe. Belonging to a race of people noted for morose ways and superstitious deeds, he was yet of a comparatively cheerful mood and always when he smiled it bore a benevolent aspect. The responsibilities of a tribal chief naturally tend to repress the active spirit of the leader, but the firm step and graceful air of the Paducah chieftain betrayed nothing seriously grave — he was ever easy and agreeable, though not familiar. He was far and away the ablest red man in the district. Chief Paduke possessed all the cunning and conceal- ment developed by life in the wilderness. Deceiving creatures that once inhabited the area upon which the city of Paducah now stands, he could imitate the gobble of the wild turkey, lure the bird by resonant whistle, and lead into error the wolf by a bark that resounded through the woods. His olfactory nerves were tuned like those of the bloodhound so that he could follow a trail with ease. With his tribe he depended principally upon wild animals for food, and remarkable was the skill he developed with his crude bow and arrow and other instruments in bringing down the birds and animals which darted here and there. His method of tilling the soil was of the most primitive manner and save for the Indian corn which he grew on what is now the east side of South Third Street, just north of the grove where his wigwam stood. Chief Paduke and his sturdy tribe depended almost wholly on the flesh of wild animals and fish for food supply. Berries were eagerly sought during the summer months, but these were of no great sustaining power, and 18 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY when in season they often gathered the paw-paw, nuts, wild grapes and other wild products of the forest in the desire for a change in food. THEIR MAIN HUNTING GROUNDS His favorite expeditionary sites included the banks of Clark's river near where it flows into the Tennessee, where wild animals were particularly abundant. Even now the hillsides in the vicinity give evidence of the Indian deer chase, an arrowhead or tomahawk occasion- ally being found by boys roaming the fields or farmers tilling the land. The finding of Indian relics in other parts of McCracken county point the spots the Paducahs chose especially to roam, while several places within the corporate limits of Paducah reveal evidences of the red man's wanderings. Gooseneck Hill, a few hundred feet south from the foot of South Tenth street, across the hollow, was an elevation preferred above all others save the grove where Chief Paduke's tent stood, owing to its strategic location and commanding outlook. Whether the Indians under their tribal head built the narrow neck which originally connected the hill proper with the western level of the ground is not known, for nature might have formed the slender and advantageous protrusion. But certainly the Paducahs recognized the impregna- bility of its position and formation, for until about twenty-five years ago when boys carried many relics from its crest, the hill was a treasure-house of Indian memorials. The stem of Gooseneck Hill has been partly removed in recent years by excavation and use of the clay for the manufacture of brick. In the process of digging a fragment of some crude Indian object is sometimes unearthed. Another spot associated with the Paducahs is what is known as Graveyard Hill, a ridge 200 feet long situated a hundred yards southeast of the Franklin school building on South Sixth street. The seasonal rains have almost leveled the fourteen mounds that formerly rested on Graveyard Hill, and a lumber yard PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 19 to the north of it has covered many signs and relics of the days when Chief Paduke was the wise sachem of his tribe. The arrowheads and flint rocks gathered there in years past would make an interesting collection. Several mounds were also located imme- diately back of the school under the stately paradise trees that stand so erect there. WHITE MEN VISIT THE PURCHASE But the principal camping ground of the Paducah tribe was located on the east side of South Third street, extending from Caldwell street to the mouth of Island Creek. A grove extended south from halfway between Caldwell and Husbands streets for a distance of four hundred feet, at the north end of which Chief Paduke had his wigwam. From their camping grounds the Indians could see the Tennessee river below and the broad Ohio in the distance. Island Creek was nearby, and it afforded unusual opportunity for the hunting of many animals which came there for drink. The bottoms were an almost impassable thicket during the Indian days, but the country was beautiful as a whole and the red men were content until white intruders ventured into the territory. A section of what is known as The Purchase was given General George Rogers Clark shortly after the American Revolution for his services against the British at Vincennes, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and other points. The Government presented the brave soldier with two tracts of land by patents bearing date of September 15, 1795, aggregating 73,362 acres. McCracken county embraced 36,400 acres of this gratuity, which General George Rogers Clark, in 1803, conveyed to his youngest brother General William Clark. On his way down the Ohio river with a band of one hundred and thirty-five picked riflemen. General George Rogers Clark landed at Owen's Island on the 28th of June, 1778, crossing the Tennessee river and stepping upon what in 1792 became the State of Kentucky. He and his party came ashore at the foot of what is now Kentucky Avenue, where a 20 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY marker reads: "At the foot of this street General George Rogers Clark and his followers landed in 1778 on their way to Fort Massac, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes." Before the sale of The Purchase in 1818, the Paducah Indians experienced no particular inconvenience or molestation save occasional excursions into their hunt- ing ground by white men. They did not strenuously object to the pale faces so long as they came and went, for when Captain Nicholas J. Roosevelt ran the first steamboat down the Ohio river he landed at the little clearing at the foot of what is now Broadway and successfully bargained with the Paducahs for fuel. The steamer was the New Orleans. In exchange for wood which the red men kept stored on top of the hill, Captain Roosevelt gave several strings of beads, a number of gaudy calicoes and a few other cheap articles. There is no record of the Paducahs ever having resisted ad- vances of white adventurers in McCracken county or territory adjacent. Yet with the acquisition of The Purchase territory the Paducahs, living up to their traditional peaceful character, began to evacuate, the tribe under leadership of Chief Paduke migrating to Mississippi. Members of the white race, who learn to dearly love the cottage or the mansion which they respectively call home, can well imagine the heart aches that must have assailed this peaceful little tribe as they pushed their canoes into the broad Ohio, leaving the land which they had occupied so long and so happily, and which their ancestors before them had inhabited ; going to a new hunting ground, only to be eventually pushed from that, and all succeed- ing places of abode until the final departure to the happiest one of all. The white man, in his desire to accomplish his own ends and acquire lands, wealth and comfort, no doubt often was thoughtless of the fact that even an aborigine can have a heart which loves with as much fiery passion as his white brother's, even though the Indian does not make the outward show of affection that the pale face does. After settling in Mississippi the friendly Chief was advised of a visit General William Clark was to make PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 21 to the now deserted camping ground, which was known as Pekin. Chief Paduke learned that the visit would occur in the summer of 1819, and he proposed meeting the General where he had lived for half a century. In company with the Chief, ninety braves in canoes paddled up the Mississippi river and then into the Ohio to the clearing at Pekin. General Clark had already arrived when the Indian band reached the place, and he con- sidered the personal greeting the greatest compliment ever paid a white man by an Indian chief. NAME SITE FOR CHIEF PADUKE In warfare, no people are more treacherous than the red race. Hiding behind trees and bushes, their arrows strike an enemy without warning, for to them all is fair in war. But in time of peace, the Indian is the friendliest of men, even sacrificing his life for a white friend. Once the confidence of the red man is gained, he shares all he has for the white stranger within his gates, nor asks rewaid for the kindness. Strangely enough, the open space at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio rivers was changed in name from Pekin to Paducah by General William Clark, whose appreciation of Chief Paduke's display of friend- liness suggested his naming the place after the noble Indian. General Clark felt he could honor the Chief in no better way than by calling the old camping grounds after him, for the Chief's unusual tribute must be repaid in an unusual way. The party of Paducahs remained at the clearing more than ten days, entering their canoes on the return to the Mississippi settlement in the early part of June. They had hardly started when Chief Paduke suffered an attack of malaria, marked by a chill and followed by a high fever. The party paddled to the Kentucky shore a few miles above where the Ohio river empties into the Mississippi, and members procured medicinal plants in an effort to stay the rising fever. These vegetable compounds were faithfully administered, but all efforts to save his life were unavailing and the 22 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY veteran Chieftain died, a victim of the febrile disease. The remains were brought to Paducah out of sentiment, the small band deciding Chief Paduke should be buried at the place where he lived and which had been named in his honor. BURIED WHERE WIGWAM STOOD Arriving at Paducah with the body, more than a score of Indians still lingering in the surrounding territory came for the burial. Interment was under a large sycamore tree in the royal grove whose branches had protected Chief Paduke's wigwam for many years. Laying the body upon the surface of the ground and solemnly exercising the religious rites incidental to the burial of a leader among his tribe, the highest honors were paid him and the remains then covered with the sod he had once owned and ruled over. The little band of Paducah Indians hewed logs and placed them around the grave, the mound of which could be seen long after the crude timber gave way to the elements. Mrs. Elizabeth Smedley, now eighty-nine years old and the oldest living native resident, recalls Chief Paduke's grave in an interesting way. In 1843, when she was ten years old, the spot was clearly evident. "We children had weird thoughts as we approached the burial spot several blocks north of the creek," Mrs. Smedley says. "Third street was but a narrow road then which led past the hill, the scene being a slight eminence filling us with superstitious fears. We thought the place was haunted and in our childish vision often imagined we saw Chief Paduke's spirit or ghost- like appearance." A marker one hundred and fifty feet north of Husbands street and in the sidewalk on the east side of South Third street determines the spot where Chief Paduke was buried. The marker, a concrete tablet set with brass letters, was placed there in the spring of 1915, at the suggestion of the late Dr. D. G. Murrell, and reads: "Two hundred feet east of this spot was buried the Indian Chief Paduke, in 1819, for whom the PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 23 city was named." In the early part of April, 1874, an effort was made to find the remains of the beloved Chief but nothing could be found. Fifty-five years had then elapsed since he was buried and it is possible the chemical processes of the soil obliterated any trace of his mortal being. STATUE ERECTED IN MEMORY At the suggestion of Mrs. Eli G. Boone a striking likeness of Chief Paduke was chiseled from stone by Lorado Taft of Chicago, a nationally famous sculptor, and was unveiled at the northwest corner of Fifth and Broadway on the 19th of May, 1909. Mrs. Boone was regent of the Paducah Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution at the time, and it was through her efforts and the untiring work of the members of that organization that the fountain-statue was presented to the City of Paducah. The monument represents an expenditure of $3,000 including cost of erection, all of which was donated by the Paducah Daughters to further perpetuate memory of the Indian Chief. More than five thousand people crowded near the intersection of Fifth and Broadway on the Wednesday afternoon when the memorial was uncovered, exposing in sitting posture the mighty form clad only in a blanket thrown about the loins. With the falling of the covering tumultuous applause began and the granite figure be- came the cynosure of the great assemblage. The honor of drawing the first cup of water from the fountain fell to Miss Helen Pulliam, now Mrs. Harold Williamson, who presented the sparkling fluid to Mayor James P. Smith. The exercises were then adjourned to the old Kentucky Theater, which until 1922 occupied the building since converted into a vaudeville playhouse. Presiding in the absence of Mrs. Boone who was called away from the city shortly before the ceremonies, Mr. Eli G. Boone introduced Mr. Taft, Mayor Smith, Captain Saunders A. Fowler and Honorable Charles K. Wheeler as speakers for the occasion. A notable event in connection with Home-Coming Week held in Paducah from May 19 to 24, 1913, was the 24 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY impersonation of Chief Paduke. The old warrior had been absent from the once famous hunting grounds for ninety-five years, and his return had been anticipated no less keenly by the residents of the city than by approximately five thousand visiting revellers. On Tuesday, the second evening of the festivities, the steamer G. W. Robertson, bearing Chief Paduke in the person of James G. Wheeler decked in paint and feathers, neared the Paducah harbor amid the shrieking of factory whistles and reverberation of a roaring cannon on the river front. Hundreds of people crowded the levee. The steamer docked at 7:45 o'clock and the Chief and his party came ashore greeted by thunderous ap- plause. Mounting his white steed, he started west on Broadway, followed by Miss Adine Corbett as the princess on a handsome float accompanied by the maids of honor. Miss Ruth Hinkle and Miss Bertha Ferguson. Dismounting at Fifth and Broadway where a speaker's stand had been erected on the side of Chief Paduke's statue, the old warrior approached the plat- form around which approximately fifteen thousand people surged. Mayor Thomas N. Hazelip motioned for the crowd to cease tooting horns and the noise abated. Welcoming Chief Paduke to the city which now stood where he reigned so contentedly years ago, the Mayor expressed the pleasure experienced in having him return. He concluded his address by saying, "Take Paducah; it is yours." It was a dramatic moment when Chief Paduke stepped forward. His dry eyes seemed to have whole Niagaras of tears stored up behind them. His mind was filled with recollections of another day, a day long since past but which hung in memory like a picture on the wall. He spoke with feeling and evidenced great emotion. The old wigwam, it was there — in memory; and the hills and valleys — how they had metamorphosed into level residential sections and busy marts of trade! How the place had changed! He PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 25 marvelled at it all, and wondered if it might be a dream, an imagination. His reference to the old Indian days when the Paducahs wandered in their earthly paradise and chased the deer here, the fox there — ah! it was pathetic, almost heart-breaking. Then he spoke of the wonderful progress made by the City of Paducah. At length he confined himself to a gracious appreciation for the magnificent reception he had received. And amid a joyful spirit unparalleled in the history of the city which was named after him. Chief Paduke concluded his address happily and joined in the gay festivities. The shade then disappeared. HON. LINN BOYD From a miniature now in possession of his grandson, Mr. Linn Boyd, Paducah, Ky. 26 CHAPTER II HON. LINN BOYD AND HIS NOTED CAREER SHADED by a huge cedar tree and inconspicuously marked by a simple Italian spire monument whose height suggests no parting of the skies, one of the most distinguished personages in Oak Grove cemetery sleeps his last long sleep almost unknown to the racing, mercenary-bent generations of today, and seemingly forgotten save by relatives and students of the dim past. An eight-foot shaft, in front of which rests all that was mortal of Hon. Linn Boyd, points the spot where in years now gone stood hatless young men experiencing the tenseness of a real thrill ; in the presence of great men the young hea.rt expands and ambitirn takes fire.. Casually glancing at the sacred, weather-beaten spire one would hardly think "Here lies Linn Boyd". Entering Oak Grove cemetery through the arch at the east, that person wishing to spend a few moments in solemnity and quiet contemplation finds himself surrounded by a vast array of imposing marble shafts. These modern and expensive monuments tell of men who have had a more recent existence and whose victorious battles were fought in commercial marts and not in the turbulent political arena. Do not look for Linn Boyd's grave here, for you will not find it. When this man's body was consigned to its last resting place. Oak Grove was not nearly so large and the burying ground was farther to the west; or in other words, back of what is now known as the cemetery proper. Pass this rich and costly marble, if you wish to glimpse the grave of the famous Kentuckian. Do you see that sighing, melancholy cedar? The modest granite shaft is scarcely visible from any distance, but under that tree reposes the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, the distinguished 28 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY Paducahan who at one time was prominently mentioned for the presidency of the United States. Stroll yet awhile and leave the well-kept part of the burying ground in the rear, slowly approaching the grass-covered and unkempt portion where low moss-covered slabs peep out of the tangled grass and creeping myrtle and briars. The unpretentious and faded obelisk does scant honor to the mortal remains of one of the most noted citizens in the silent city. The inscription is short, telling only of the noted man's birth and death. The elements and years have dared efface these, the speeding seasons leaving the lettering almost unintelligible. BORN IN NASHVILLE Hon. Linn Boyd was born in Nashville, Tenn., November 22, 1800. His father, Abraham Boyd, joined the Revolutionary patriots in South Carolina at the age of sixteen, crossing the mountains into Tennessee after the War of Independence and locating in Nashville. The father was a native Virginian by birth, but in early life his family removed to North Carolina. When Linn Boyd was two years old, his parents came to Christian (now Trigg) county, Kentucky, settling on the east bank of the Cumberland river. Here the elder Boyd died, and here young Linn Boyd grew to manhood. His educational advantages were limited to brief elementary studies, but he was a boy of character and native ability — gifts and traits that served him well in later years in the absence of the opportunities afforded through schooling. He was a voracious reader, assimilat- ing easily what he read by dint of a strong memory and of serious reflection, and soon developed the faculty of making the most of what he knew by clear, vigorous, affluent and impressive utterance. GOES TO LOWER HOUSE His first public service was rendered when he was seventeen years of age. As a co-worker with Andrew Jackson, young Boyd was sent as a commissioner of the United States to treat with the Chickasaw Indians for PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 29 their valuable domain lying south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi rivers. The Tennessee river separates Trigg county from Calloway, and in 1826 Linn Boyd left the parental roof and located in the county across the river, boldly en- gaging in politics there and at once making himself known as the foremost figure in discussions relative to the appropriations and settlement of the surrounding land; he pushed its virtues, expounding to great effect the qualities of the land and its possibilities. So rapidly and completely did he gain the confidence of the people scattered over four large counties, that in 1827 he was sent to the legislature by a handsome majority over Judge James, a very influential citizen who had been honored by that office for twenty years. He represented the First district for three sessions or until 1830, and it is an interesting incident that during this time his father was for two sessions spokesman for Trigg county. Linn Boyd was one of the members of the lower branch of the legislature who brought forward the provision granting the actual settlers possession of their homes at one-half the sum required of others. By this stroke of statesmanship the foresters remained un- molested by insatiate land jobbers. YEARNS FOR SIMPLE LIFE In 1830 the young statesman returned to his paternal roof in Trigg county, where a year later he was again elected to the legislature, this time by the largest majority ever polled in the county. A year after the magnificent tribute was paid him, Mr. Boyd announced his desire to return the commission and retire to private life on his 130-acre farm. And shortly after his marriage to Miss Alice C. Bennett, a Virginia lady of exquisite charm and beauty then residing in his county, he chose the simple farm life as a means of livelihood. Hardly had he settled to the quiet life when friends importuned him to run for the congressional seat against the incumbent, Col. C. Lyon. He reluctantly consented, and in the finals was beaten by a small margin. He ran 30 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY again in 1835 and was triumphantly elected, serving with honor and distinction. By reason of long and unbroken family friendship and concurrence in general views and principles he became identified with the administration of President Jackson. Then it was that Mr. Boyd truly entered the arena of national politics and started on his illustrious career which terminated only with death. At the time Mr. Boyd entered Congress the freedom of the people was greatly reduced from various forms of oppression and tyranny and all was chaos and dis- content; liberties and right of speech were vouchsafed by the Constitution, true enough, but these sacred possessions were in constant jeopardy. His stand for right and justice was again rewarded when in 1839 he was returned to his congressional seat by an overwhelm- ing majority. He was re-elected in 1841 and in 1843, while in 1845 he was returned to Washington without opposition. Two years later he was re-elected to the House by a majority of 3,200, and in 1849 his un- blemished record was again so clearly recognized and approved by his constituency that for the second time he was returned to his seat without opposition. In a three-cornered contest in 1851, against two well-known aspirants, Mr. Boyd led the field by the astonishing majority of 2,900. In the spring of 1848 he was chosen Democratic candidate for governor of Kentucky. The State Demo- cratic Convention meeting at Frankfort selected him, and being advised of its action he addressed a letter to the chairman of the State Central Committee (Hon. James Guthrie), formally declining the candidacy. Hon. Lazarus W. Powell was then chosen. POPULAR IN CONGRESS As a congressman and statesman, Hon. Linn Boyd was foremost in shaping and directing all the great questions that agitated the country during his time. The greatest laurel leaf in his crown of honors, however, was his election to the speakership of the House of Represen- tatives, a position he held from 1851 to 1855. With the PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 31 exception of Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, perhaps no man served more successfully in the days of this triumvirate than Mr. Boyd. He was elected to Congress eight times successively from the First district, known in the early days of the country as Jackson's Purchase. The great Calhoun had just passed away in March, 1850, when a year later Mr. Boyd was chosen Speaker of the House, and he was serving in this capacity when Clay and Webster died in 1852. Clay knew the worth and integrity of Linn Boyd, as did Calhoun and Webster. HIS POPULARITY CONTINUES Hon. Linn Boyd was still the most popular man in the state when he returned to his home in Paducah, where he had moved from Trigg County. The retiring Speaker was prominently mentioned for the highest office within the gift of the American people, the Boyd boom being at its height in September, 1855. In 1859 he was elected lieutenant governor of Kentucky on the ticket with Beriah Magoffin, without any effort on his part. However, he was not permitted to enter upon the duties of this last office, for he died in Paducah, Saturday evening, December 17, of the same year. He was mentally alert when at the age of 59 he met the courier as the tired sentry meets the relief. His death occasioned state and national sorrow. Mr. Boyd was twice married. His second wife was Mrs. Anna L. Dixon, a daughter of James Rhey of Cambria county, Pennsylvania. She was a woman of culture and wide reading, and was a cousin of Millard Fillmore, and at one time during his administration was mistress of the White House and the "leading lady of the land." Rhey Boyd, a son, was born to this couple in Paducah, April 14, 1853, and he occupies a grave on the same lot beside his illustrious father, having died September 30, 1895. Neither of Linn Boyd's consorts sleep in Oak Grove, his first wife having been buried at Murray while the remains of his second life's companion were taken to 32 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY her old home in Pennsylvania and interred beside those of her parents. His second wife died in 1894. Mr. Boyd never served as Secretary of State under President Buchanan with the beginning of Buchanan's administration in 1857, as is popularly supposed. A tablet on the south side of Broadway near Eighteenth street determines his place of residence and erroneously imparts this information, reading: "Three hundred feet south of this tablet lived and died Hon. Linn Boyd, Secretary of State under President Buchanan." Mr. Boyd returned to Paducah following retirement from the House of Representatives of which he was chairman, in 1855. Two years before, or in 1853, he had erected the present home of his grandson and namesake at 1710 Kentucky Avenue. The house is a two-story brick now painted a stone gray. It is splendidly preserved and in outward appearance recalls the Colonial period. The interior is strikingly beautiful, the large rooms and high ceilings lending a rich rareness and benign comfort. The ballustrade near the front entrance is of solid mahogany, and it was necessary for an expert woodworker to come on horseback from Pennsylvania to build the attractive stairway. The massive oaks surrounding the old homestead were planted by the former Speaker of the House of Repre- sentatives about six years before his death. END COMES IN PADUCAH Following an illness of Bright's disease which began during his last year at Washington, Mr. Boyd died at his home in Paducah, December 17, 1859, at 8 o'clock. His remains were interred in the then most prominent section of Oak Grove cemetery and a pyramidal shaft placed at the head of the grave. The couch has ever been green and above it feathered songsters have for many years sung their sweetest notes. Handsome in appearance and pleasing in manner, smooth-shaven and possessing snow-white hair since he was thirty; dignified, yet unassuming, Hon. Linn Boyd was one of the most positive forces in the American PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 33 capital during his stay in Congress. He was of great physique, towering six feet four inches and weighing 220 pounds. The eyes were of heaven's own blue. A fact not generally known is that Boyd county is named after the Paducahan. **He was a gentleman whose unusually quiescent course challenged but little of public observation," says Wheeler's "History of Congress" (Vol. 1, page 105), "but whose influence over his party in regard to some of the most important measures of its policy was less exemplified in manner no less signal than compli- mentary. He seemed to possess an unpretending faculty of uniting discordant opinions and concentrating them upon a general result not surpassed by that of any member in the Democratic party." In the "Biographical Sketch of Hon. Lazarus W. Powell," governor of Kentucky from 1851 to 1855, the following tribute to Linn Boyd appears on page 39 : "His influence in Western Kentucky was paramount and in the national Congress he was universally regarded as the leader of his political associates. He was a man of acknowledged patriotism and exalted character." It is related that a more pathetic scene was never witnessed anywhere than in Oak Grove cemetery on the occasion of the last visit of Hon. Roger Q. Mills to his old home, which was in Todd county, Kentucky. The old Civil War veteran and Senator made a special visit to Paducah to take a farewell look at the grave of the former Speaker. For some time he stood with un- covered head in reverential homage by the side of Boyd. It is said that as the great Texan talked of the deeds of the man who slept beneath, tears flowed down his cheeks. Roger Q. Mills was just verging into manhood when Linn Boyd's career was drawing to its close. He knew him and was well acquainted with his work and the honors that his State had showered upon him. And he remarked as he gazed at the time-worn marble shaft that the State of Kentucky owed it to the memory of Linn Boyd to erect a more imposing monument over his last resting place. GENERAL LLOYD TILGHMAN From an enlargement owned by Mr. T. Boswell Jones, Paducah, Ky. CHAPTER III GENERAL LLOYD TILGHMAN AND HIS DASHING BRAVERY SURMOUNTING a massive stone structure and visible from four directions a mile distant, the most imposing monument in West Kentucky stands in Lang Park on Fountain Avenue between Madison and Harrison streets abutting Monroe. The huge cenotaph is in memory of Gen. Lloyd Tilghman, a Paducahan who left the city with the beginning of the Civil War and who never returned. He was killed in battle at the age of forty-seven. General Tilghman came from a family whose ances- tors were prominently identified with early American history. The genealogy of the Tilghmans can be traced back to the middle of the seventeenth century, or to 1659, when Dr. Richard Tilghman, an eminent surgeon and direct descendant of the great Duke, John of Gaunt, left London for the American colonies. He obtained from the first Lord Baltimore a grant of 400 acres of land in the colony of Maryland and in 1660 built Tilghman's Hermitage on the Chesapeake Bay. After a lapse of more than 250 years a part of the original building is still in excellent condition. A rose vine of half a century's luxuriant growth clings to the original English bricks which antedate it by some 200 years. Dr. Richard Tilghman, its builder, known in history as The Emigrant, still lies within sight of its walls; and his grave, the nucleus of the resting place of seven generations of those that bore his name, may be identi- fied at once by the bronze plate on which is repeated the epitaph that time and weather are slowly obliterating from the flat grave stone. In the olden days the burial grounds were always close to the houses so that the graves might be the better guarded against Indian visits 36 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY and roving wolves. General Tilghman was born here at "Rich Neck Manor," near Claiborne, in Talbott County, Eastern Shore Maryland, the only son and the oldest of four children. HAD FINE ANCESTRY The great-great-grandfather of General Tilghman was Tench Francis Tilghman who died August 14, 1758, and who was Attorney General of Pennsylvania from 1744 to 1752. On December 29, 1724, he was married to Miss Elizabeth Turbutt, and their daughter Anne at the age of sixteen became the bride of James Tilghman, a member of Penn's Provincial Council of 1767. His brother, Hon. Matthew Tilghman was for half a century, from 1740 to 1790, one of the most prominent figures in the political annals of both the Province and the State of Maryland, and was justly styled by the historian McMahan as "the patriarch of the Maryland Colony," Matthew Tilghman was a member of the First Con- tinental Congress of 1774, and of those of 1775, 1776 and 1777. He would have been a signer of the Declara- tion of Independence but for the fact that he was called to Annapolis in June of that memorable year to preside over the convention which framed the first constitution of the State of Maryland. Miss Henrietta Haria Tilghman, the daughter of James and Anne Tilghman, became the wife of her cousin. Judge Lloyd Tilghman, January 22, 1785. Their son, Hon. James Tilghman, was born February 7, 1793, and died five years after General Tilghman was killed near Vicksburg. James Tilghman was married to Miss Ann Caroline Shoemaker (1797-1872) and their fourth child and only son was born January 26, 1816, and named in honor of his grandfather, Lloyd Tilghman (1749-1811). The. son was destined to serve with dis- tinction in two wars. Entering the United States Military Academy at West Point, July 1, 1831, at the age of fifteen, after attending the schools in Baltimore, Lloyd Tilghman was a cadet in the army until his graduation July 1, 1836, when he PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 37 was assigned to the United States Dragoons as an additional Second Lieutenant. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant three days afterward, but resigned September 30 to accept the position of civil engineer of the Baltimore & Susquehanna Railroad, which he held until 1837. He then associated himself as an engineer in the survey of the Norfolk and Wilmington Canal for a period of one year. In 1838 and 1839 he was engineer for the Eastern Shore Railroad, resigning to accept a similar position with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in which capacity he served for eighteen months, or until the latter part of 1840. He superintended public improve- ments in Baltimore afterward. With the beginning of the Mexican War in 1846, the inherited chivalry and martial spirit in his being were not to be denied, and spurred by the fresh memories of the Alamo and San Jacinto the course of Lloyd Tilghman was clear. He was then thirty-two years of age, tall, agile, and keen-visioned. He enlisted as a volunteer aide-de-camp to Gen. David E. Twiggs and with him went to Mexico where he was engaged in the Battle of Palo Alto, May 8, 1846, and the Battle of Resaca de la Palma the next day. During June of the same year he superintended the erection of defenses at Matamoros, and August 14, 1847, he {was made Captain of the Maryland and District of Columbia Volunteer Artillery and remained at the head of this intrepid organization until it was disbanded on the 13th of July, 1848. A year later Lloyd Tilghman became principal assistant engineer of the Panama division of the Isthmus Railroad, and still later was engaged in surVeying and superintending the construction of southern railroads, one from Paducah to Memphis and another from Paducah to the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile. He moved his family to Paducah in 1852, and until the outbreak of the Civil War resided in what later became known as the old Whitefield property at the northeast corner of Seventh street and Kentucky Avenue. 38 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY The two-story brick house in which the Tilghmans lived is in fine preservation and still occupied, but it is unfortunate that a marker has never been placed in the sidewalk in front of the house to indicate the place of residence of the distinguished family. In 1855-56 General Tilghman was chief engineer of the first railroad entering Paducah and the second in the State — the New Orleans & Jackson which put in a line between Paducah and Trimble, Tenn., passing through Mayfield. The opening of this railroad brought new possibilities in point of growth to Paducah and from the day of its entrance proved a decided factor in the upbuilding of its commercial life. This line later passed into the hands of the Illinois Central Railroad Company. Hon. Beriah Magoffin was Governor of Kentucky when the Civil War began and had Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner as first in command of the Kentucky State Guards, of which Lloyd Tilghman was a member and held the rank of Captain. The State tried to assume a neutral position in the great struggle, and General Buckner and Captain Tilghman stayed by the Commonwealth. This position was maintained until Federal troops entered the State at Paducah. COMMANDS THIRD KENTUCKY With this invasion the State legislature ordered the United States flag hoisted upon the capitol to proclaim Kentucky's Union attitude. Thus it became necessary for the men to take sides, and General Buckner met with Captain Tilghman at the latter's home where they de- cided to join the Southern cause and aid it to the extent of their power and influence. They were both intensely Southern in spirit and there was never any question among their friends as to how they would stand when a decision became necessary. General Tilghman was commanding the Third Kentucky Regiment, a splendid body of men well equipped and drilled, and armed with the best small PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 39 arms besides a battery of Brass Napoleons, and he entered the Confederate service July 5, 1861, taking his whole command with him. Among the Paducahans who went were Charles J. Jarrett, D. A. Given, W. A. Grief, Joseph Ullman, Dr. J. G. Brooks, Thomas J. Fauntleroy, Charles Reed, afterwards mayor, and others. Mr. Reed was later transferred to General Nathan Bedford Forrest's division and was active in the Battle of Paducah. The regiment went to Camp Daniel Boone near Clarksville, Tenn., where Tilghman was made a Brigadier-General on the 18th of October, 1861, and where he commanded. General Tilghman went from Camp Boone to Hop- kinsville, Ky., where he succeeded General Clark in drilling and instructing 3,000 men, and from there was placed in command of Fort Henry on the Tennessee river and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. His first taste of actual hostilities in the Civil War and likewise his first opportunity to demonstrate his generalship were soon realized, for at 11:40 o'clock on the morning of Thursday, February 6, 1862, the Union forces had advanced on the breastworks with 16,000 well-armed men aided by Commodore Andrew H, Foote's seven gunboats. General Tilghman was inside the en- closure with 2,610 poorly-armed men, having eleven medium-size guns in comparison to the fifty-four heavy pieces of the Federals. Against such a disadvantage in both troops and guns General Tilghman and his gallant officers readily realized no tactics or bravery could avail, and he thought to retain only the heavy artillery company to man the guns and retire the main command to Fort Donelson. It was clear the meagre forces maintaining both forts were unequal to the Federal troops in numbers. It was therefore a stroke of wisdom to concentrate the small body in defense of the strongest fortification, Fort Donelson. With less than 100 men General Tilghman remained at Fort Henry and fought valiantly for more than two hours while the main army escaped detection and 40 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY reached Fort Donelson with General Buckner. The high water around Fort Henry made passage of the troops somewhat hazardous and it was with difficulty they reached the place of concentration. FEDERALS BREACH FORT The enemy opened gunboat fire on the fort at 11:45 o'clock. General Tilghman ordered his men to refrain from firing until the effects of the first Federal shots could be fully ascertained. The brave little band then returned fire. Soon the gunboat Essex was disabled and then a second gunboat floated helplessly downstream, but meanwhile the brave defenders had been reduced in number and at 1:30 o'clock only four of the guns were left serviceable. Twenty minutes later General Tilghman took charge of one of these guns, giving the flagship Cincinnati two shots to hinder its movement which was intended to enfilade the two guns remaining. Now the enemy was already breaching the fort directly in front of the guns and not wishing to further expose the lives of the men who had so nobly seconded him in the unequal struggle, and realizing, too, that the main body had been given time enough to permit retreat to Fort Donelson, the fort was surrendered as a military necessity. In his official report of the battle, General Tilghman gives the number of commissioned officers surrendered at 12 and the non-commissioned officers and privates 82, including 16 wounded in the hospital-boat Patton. DAVIS COMMENDS CONDUCT Jefferson Davis in his "Rise and Fall of the Con- federacy," comments upon the surrender of Fort Henry and says that "for this soldierly devotion and self- sacrifice the gallant commander and his brave band must be honored while patriotism has an advocate and self-sacrifice for others a votary." Even more eloquent was the address delivered before a Confederate society at Mississippi City, Miss., in 1878, PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 41 when Mr. Davis paid a touching tribute to the memory of the Conferedate officer, "The Greek who held the pass, the Roman who for a time held the bridge, have been immortalized in rhyme and story," he said ; "but neither of those more heroic- ally, more patriotically, more singly served his country than did Tilghman at Fort Henry, when approached by a large army, an army which rendered defense of the fort impossible; he, with a handful of devoted followers, went into the fort and continued the defense until his brigade could retire in safety to Fort Donelson ; then, when that work was finished, when it was impossible to any longer make a defense, when the wounded and dying lay all around him, he, with the surviving remnant of his little band, terminated the struggle and suffered in a manner thousands who have been prisoners of war know how to estimate." HE PRESENTS PROBLEM The question of proper disposition of General Tilgh- man at first proved vexatious. Gen. U. S. Grant sought to have the captured officer paroled and confined to the limits of Paducah where Col, David Stuart was com- manding, and while Maj.-Gen. H. W. Halleck granted the proposal, the arrival in Paducah from Fort Henry of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and the surrendered band on February 15 definitely changed the plan. General Grant himself saw the impropriety of keep- ing General Tilghman a prisoner in Paducah two days after he had expressed such a wish, declaring the paroling of the Confederate officer here was "par- ticularly objectionable" since it was his home city. He was then taken to St. Louis, and General Buckner having been made prisoner at Fort Donelson April 16, the two captured officers were taken to Fort Warren, Boston Harbor. They reached the fort in a heavy snow the night of March 3. The two Generals were for a while placed in solitary confinement, and when this came to the knowledge of General Tilghman's mother, who lived in Philadelphia, I-I J^ PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 43 she went to see Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and gained from him permission for her son to walk for one hour each day on the ramparts for exercise. When her son learned that General Buckner was not included in the same privilege, he magnanimously declmed the liberty. ^ ,,^ , This led to another visit of Mrs. Tilghman to Wash- ington, when Mr. Stanton, at her earnest solicitation, modified his order so as to include General Buckner in the permission to take exercise outside of the casement. They were confined in separate apartments and for- bidden to write or receive letters from their families or friends But the imprisonment was not destined to be of long duration for in the following August, after being incarcerated for six months, General Tilghman was exchanged for General J. F. Reynolds of the United States Volunteers. General Buckner was exchanged for General G. A. McCall. GETS NEW COMMAND With his release from the Federal fort, General Tilghman together with General Buckner was placed m command of 10,000 similarly exchanged Confederate prisoners of war at Jackson, Miss. These had to be re- organized into companies, regiments and brigades ol infantry, cavalry and artillery, and clothed, armed and equipped anew. This was a prodigious task, a most arduous and per- plexing undertaking in view of the extreme difficulty of obtaining from the then already impoverished Con- federate Government supplies and stores for either Quartermaster, Commissary or Ordnance Departments. All this required more than ordinary executive ability on the part of the commander, which General Tilghman happily possessed to a marked degree, for to natural ability had been added the thorough training of the United States Military Academy broadened by practical service as a soldier and engineer. In a few months he accomplished the work in a most satisfactory manner, and led them against General Grant's forces at Coffey- 44 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY ville and signally defeated the Federals on the 5th of December, 1862. It was in the spring of 1863 that General John C. Pemberton's army was driven by General Grant within the fortifications of Vicksburg. The rear guard of the Confederate Army was commanded by General Tilgh- man and known as the First Bridage of Major-General W. W. Loring's Division. At Champion's Hill, about twenty-two miles from Vicksburg, that American gibraltar of those days, General Tilghman made a de- termined stand against the advancing columns of the Federal forces. As the fight waxed hot and his troops were being forced back, he dismounted and took command, in person, of a section of field artillery and was in the act of sighting a howitzer when he received his death wound, a cannonball striking him in the hip. He was struck at 5:20 o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, May 16, and lived about three hours after being carried to the shade of a peach tree. He died with the Lord's Prayer upon his lips in the arms of his adjutant general, Powhattan Ellis. D. A. Given and Charles J. Jarrett were near their commander when he welcomed death. In his suffering he met the summons as eagerly as a tired sentry greets the ''relief." The burial took place in the Searles family lot in Vicksburg's "Beautiful City of the Dead," the city cemetery that is almost as noted as the National burial ground nearby. And another home, far off in the blue distance, w^as made sadder by the grim war. WINS HIGHEST PRAISE A huge granite boulder in Hinds County, Mississippi, marks the spot where General Tilghman was killed. The bronze tablet on the rock bears the following inscription: "Lloyd Tilghman, Brigadier General C. S. A. Com- manding First Brigade Loring's Division, killed here on afternoon of May 16, 1863, near the close of the Battle of Champion's Hill." The boulder was placed there by PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 45 his two living sons, Frederick Boyd Tilghman and Sidell Tilghman now of New York City. In his official report of the Battle of Champion's Hill, General Loring speaks of the brilliant defense made by the lamented officer, the reckless indifference to self and the love and respect he commanded from the men under him. "Tilghm.an had been left on the road," the report reads, "and almost immediately after our parting met a terrible assault of the enemy. When we rejoined him he was carrying on a deadly and most gallant fight with less than 1,500 effectives. OVERWHELMED IN NUMBERS "He was attacked by from 6,000 to 8,000 of the enemy, with a fine park of artillery, but being ad- vantageously posted he not only held him in check but repulsed him on several occasions and thus kept open the only line of retreat left to the army. The bold stand of this Brigade, under its lamented hero, saved a large portion of the army." General Loring closes his report by saying it is fitting that he should speak of the "gallant and accomplished Tilghman, quick and bold in the execution of his plans; for he fell in the midst of a Brigade that loved him well, after repulsing a powerful enemy in a deadly fight. Struck by a cannon shot, a brigade wept over the dying hero, alike beautiful as it was touching." But an even more beautiful tribute was paid the dead hero by Colonel A. E. Reynolds, who succeeded General Tilghman. An extract from his official report reads: 'T cannot refrain from paying a slight tribute to the memory of my late commander. As a man, a soldier and a general, he had few if any superiors, and was always at his post. He devoted himself day and night to his command. Upon the battlefield he was cool, collected and observant. He commanded the entire respect and confidence of every officer and soldier under him, and the only censure ever cast upon him was that he always exposed himself too recklessly. The tears 46 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY shed by his men on the occasion and the grief felt by his entire Brigade, are the proudest tributes that can be given the gallant dead." Gen. Lloyd Tilghman was married to Miss Augusta Murray Boyd, May 26, 1843, in St. Paul's Episcopal church, Portland, Maine. She was born in Portland January 8, 1819, the youngest of fifteen children, and was educated in her native city. Her father was Joseph C. Boyd, the first Treasurer of the State of Maine, while her mother was Miss Isabella Southgate, whose sister, Miss Eliza Southgate, was married to Walter Bowne, mayor of New York in 1833. Her grandmother was Miss Mary King, sister of Rufus King, the first Minister to the Court of St. James. John Alsop King, Governor of New York, was the son of Rufus King, and therefore her cousin. Robert Boyd, the first Boyd who came to this country, brought with him the family records, showing the descent from the Earls of Kilmarnock, and it is comparatively easy to trace the connection to Robert Bruce, King of Scotland. HOW ROMANCE BEGAN When Mrs. Tilghman was a girl she often visited her uncle, Walter Bowne, who lived on Beckman street. New York, where she frequently met Martin Van Buren and with whom she became a great favorite. Mrs. Tilghman died at her home in New York City, February 1, 1898, at the age of 79 years. An injury sustained in a fall and from which she never fully recovered, hastened the end. Of her eight children only two sons are now living. The oldest son, Lloyd Tilghman, Jr., was killed in the Civil War in August, 1863, near Selma, Ala., at the age of seventeen years, meeting his death only a few months after his gallant father. The manner in which General Tilghman came to meet Mrs. Tilghman is of interest. His mother, Mrs. James Tilghman, lived in Philadelphia and was a strict Episcopalian, and always, when possible, attended the triennial conventions of bishops. In those days ministers and delegates were often assigned to private houses to PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 47 be entertained during assembly. It happened that in 1841 the Reverend Frederick Boyd of Portland was assigned with his young sister, Augusta Boyd, to Mrs. James Tilghman's house, and so made the acquaintance of General Tilghman, who was then twenty-five years old. This meeting resulted in a close friendship between them, and two years later they were married. Frederick Boyd Tilghman was named after his uncle on his mother's side. When General Joseph Hooker died at Garden City, Long Island, in 1879, his body was brought to the City Hall in New York City to lie in state. Sidell Tilghman mentioned this mark of respect to his mother, who said: "My son. General Hooker was your father's best man at our wedding." Whereupon Mr. Tilghman immediately visited the city building and viewed the remains. Mrs. Tilghman was named for Miss Augusta Murray, or "Lady Augusta" as she was called by courtesy of her friends. The Murrays lived in St. John's Park, where now stands the New York Central freight station, but in the olden days one of the leading residential sections of New York, and as a girl Mrs. Tilghman often visited there and also at their farm, Murray Hill, as it was known at that time. The farm was located at what is now Fifth Avenue and Thirty-seventh street, and is today the site of many important mercantile establishments, including among others Tiffany & Company. FAMILY LEAVES PADUCAH The Tilghman family left Paducah in 1861, boarding the steamer Dunbar on the last trip that steamer made up the Tennessee river. General Tilghman not only took his entire family and several servants, but included a number of his favorite horses^ Stopping at Fort Henry, General Tilghman went into the fort and called on Colonel Henry Hineman, after which he returned to the steamer and continued up the Tennessee until reaching Danville, Tenn., where the Louisville to Memphis rail- road division crosses the river. The General and his CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL TO GENERAL TILGHMAN IN LANG PARK PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 49 family left the steamer there and proceeded by rail to Clarksville, Term., where he procured a residence for his dear ones and where they remained through the horrors of the war. The cannonading at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson could be heard when the wind blew in the direction of Clarksville, The widowed mother remained at Clarksville until 1865, when she took her children to New York City. The two sons who are still living have made their residence in the American metropolis continuously since, and today Frederick Boyd Tilghman and Sidell Tilghman are numbered among the most successful business men in the busy center. Both are members of the New York Stock Exchange. Frederick Boyd Tilghman was born in Baltimore, Md., December 28, 1847, and was married in Cleveland, Ohio, December 3, 1878 to Miss Edith B. Miller, the daughter of Sylvester J. Miller. Mrs. Tilghman died in October, 1879, leaving a daughter. Miss Edith B. Tilgh- man, who was married in Paris, France, but who died a year after her marriage, leaving twin boys. Sidell Tilghman was married on the 16th of Novem- ber, 1915, to Miss Leonie F. Callmeyer and they have three children, all born at Madison, N. J., as follows: Leonie Augusta, born January 31, 1917; Maud, born October 11, 1918; and Sidell, Jr., born December 1, 1920. Mr. Tilghman was born at Philadelphia, July 4, 1849, and Mrs. Tilghman was born at Madison, N. J., March 24, 1878. AUGUSTA TILGHMAN HIGH SCHOOL Through the generosity of her sons, Frederick Boyd Tilghman and Sidell Tilghman, a $20,000 site for a high school was given to the city of Paducah in October, 1919. The grounds are located on the west side of Murrell Boulevard between Clark and Adams streets, and the building erected at a cost of $164,000 and named in honor of the donors' mother, was opened September 19, 1921. The cornerstone was placed March 18, 1921. Over the front entrance, the name of the school is neatly 50 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY carved beneath an open book and the glowing torches of education. Augusta Tilghman High school compares favorably with the best of its kind in the country, and is a perpetual monument consecrating the memory of General Tilgh- man's life companion. Facing the east, whence came the lady who gave it its name, and with the beloved land for which her immortal husband died, on its right, this handsome building will stand there for generations as a reminder of that distinguished matron and family who once honored Paducah by making their residence here. Shortly after the opening of its doors the enrollment in Augusta Tilghman High School reached 544 students. A handsome man in ordinary attire. General Tilgh- man was yet a more striking figure when mounted. He rode with a stately dignity, quite unlike the pace indulged in by many equestrians of his day, a day when equestrian- ism was common. His appearance and the slow gait of his horse impressed one as powerful and even majestic, and often upon seeing him there flashed through the mind a remembrance of Byron's Moorish king as he rode benignly through the streets of Granada. He possessed the daring and evanescence of Ariel, and fear seemed to be a stranger to his nature. In Collins' "History of Kentucky" he is spoken of as "an excellent officer, brave and faithful, daring and skillful." HAD FINE TRAITS He had piercing black eyes, darker than Mrs. Tilghman's; he was an even six feet tall, uncommonly athletic and muscular, and weighed 170 pounds. He had a wealth of wavy dark auburn hair. A natural dignity was heightened by faultlessness in dress, and a courtesy excelled by none revealed the tenderest emotions and displayed a most attractive personality. His traits gradually matured into that singularly imposing personality, the effect of which is described by his comrades in language borrowing its similies from kings, cathedrals, and mountain peaks. He was a noble, PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 51 whole-souled, magnanimous man: as pure of honor, as lofty in chivalric bearing as the heroes of romance. His consecration, his sublime unselfishness, his beautiful and grand simplicity, his profound and unob- trusive piety, his dramatic and tragic fall at Champion's Hill, his fortitude in suffering, his submission to the will of God, — all these have supplied theme and story for three generations since the golden heart was stilled. 'Twas at Vicksburg, horror! The loss and the sorrow Of war, of pitless war. With never a doubt His fair life went out, Tilghman, of Kentucky. Both General and Mrs. Tilghmian were members of Grace Episcopal church in Paducah, when that congre- gation worshipped in its first church home on South Second street between Washington and Clark. General Tilghman and L. M. Flournoy were wardens in the church. The windows of the old building were diamond- shaped and beautifully colored. DECORATES CHURCH WINDOWS General Tilghman took an unusual interest in church ornamentation, and he himself selected the colors for the diamonds, personally furnishing the elders with a design he had executed. The sample submitted was readily approved and the work of painting the windows was left in his hands. Incidentally he applied the brush to the windows himself, giving to each an artistic appearance that elicited favorable comment from communicant and visitor alike. Services were held in that building from 1846 until the pioneer structure was torn down in 1872, In 1873-74 the present Grace Church was built, which stands on Broadway near Ninth street. General Tilghman's remains were disinterred in 1901 and taken from Vicksburg to New York City, where they were placed beside those of Mrs. Tilghman and other members of the family, in Woodlawn cemetery. The 52 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY Tilghman plot was purchased in May, 1875, by the two sons still surviving, upon the death of their youngest brother, Horatio Southgate Tilghman. The plot is located near the center of the large cemetery and faces Observation Avenue. A handsome monument marks the last resting place of General Lloyd Tilghman and Mrs. Augusta Boyd Tilghman. The face of the monument bears this in- scription: "Genl. Lloyd Tilghman, C. S. A. Born January 18, 1816. Killed in Battle of Champion's Hill, Miss., May 16, 1863. — His wife, Augusta Boyd Tilgh- man, born January 10, 1819. Died February 1, 1898." Back of the memorial is a small marble headstone measuring fourteen inches high and four inches wide and two inches thick. When General Tilghman's remains were brought to their present resting place the little headstone was carried along and with erection of the monument the sons had it inserted at the base where it protrudes from the grass. For nearly forty years it marked General Tilghman's grave at Vicksburg, The inscription on the little white block is: "Genl. L. Tilgh- man, Killed May 16, 1863." STATUE IS UNVEILED An heroic bronze figure of General Tilghman was unveiled in Paducah Saturday afternoon, May 15, 1909, in the presence of a vast assemblage. The stone base was furnished by the United Daughters of the Con- federacy and makes a fitting support for the huge statue. The statue stands in Lang Park and faces south. The subject is interpreted with such truth and breath, in such an original and distinct style, that it has been pronounced one of the finest portrait statues in America. The right hand is supported by the belt, while the other holding the slouched hat, which was always removed at the slightest demand of reverence, is drawn up close to the body and rests on the sword which represents the one he weilded so honorably. The left foot is slightly advanced as if to denote the forward course he always PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 53 took in conflict. The face is stern and expresses cour- age and defiance. The General is represented in field uniform, top boots, leather gauntlets, with field glasses slung across the shoulders. Nine feet high and weighing 1,800 pounds, the casting in one piece of such a massive memorial was done under the supervision of Eugene Gargani at Green- point, N. Y. The figure is a credit to the work of the sculptor, Henry H. Kitson, of Boston. Mr. Kitson was in Paducah for the unveiling, as were also Frederick Boyd Tilghman and Sidell Tilghman, whose munificence made possible the gift to the city. Many, many years ago an old minister delivered a sermon on the subject of duty, of the higher path, of the old landmarks, of the honor that one should guard. He spoke of a man whose life was unsullied and who was afraid of nothing, save to do wrong; who sprang to arms, and went to death, on a bare question of principle ; who met the shock of battle at Fort Henry, was with the Gray lines at Champion's Hill, and gave his life there in stubborn resistance to retreat. The allusion was to General Tilghman. Alas! The brilliant eyes will blaze no more. The merry smile faded, long ago. That head, that was fit to wear a crown, lies low, for all the years to come. 54 CHAPTER IV COLONEL ALBERT P. THOMPSON AND THE BATTLE OF PADUCAH QUIETLY and unobserved, the anniversary of the most thrilling day in West Kentucky's history passes almost unnoticed save by the fading remnants of the Blue and Gray — those who participated in the Battle of Paducah. General Nathan Bedford Forrest's memor- able raid — how the dashing cavalryman swept forward that melancholy Good Friday afternoon with 1,800 troopers and stormed Fort Anderson at the foot of North Fourth street; how the Federal forces collected there held the stronghold and checked the assault; how a terror-stricken populace hurriedly ferried to the Illinois shore, escaping the deadly hail of missiles and witnessing from a safe distance the grand clash of the military; how the Confederate officer. Colonel Albert P. ("Bert") Thompson was literally torn to pieces when a .32 cannon ball struck him while mounted on his favorite steed, the moans of dying and cries of wounded interspersing the bombardment of the city by gunboats patrolling the harbor, and the sad picture of scores of citizens returning the following morning to find their homes in a mass of flames, the most destructive con- flagration ever visited upon Paducah — nothing com- memorates the event, there is little praise of dashing bravery and scarcely a whisper is heard of the heroism displayed in an engagement electrifying in its every aspect, — General Forrest's raid or the Battle of Paducah, March 25, 1864. Old Fort Anderson was located where Riverside hospital now stands, an impregnable enclosure on the east side of Fourth street and extending from Clay through Trimble street. The breastworks were named after Major Robert Anderson of Jefferson county, Kentucky, who with a band of 128 men surrendered at 56 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, on April 14, 1861, the capitulation of the first Federal fort by a Ken- tuckian, causing Fort Anderson to be named thus in his honor. Originally the Marine Hospital alone occupied the site, but in 1861, shortly after General Ulysses S. Grant took possession of Paducah the breastworks were erected. Dr. Achilles Callaway who had his office at Third and Broadway, but who resided at the Marine Hospital was the "surgeon and steward" at the time the institution was given over to the Federals. Major General C. F. Smith was in command of the Federal army at Paducah when the work of constructing the fort was begun, but with his transferral the work was carried on to successful completion under Major Rear who was commissioned by General Fremont to superin- tend the making of bulwarks. MARINE HOSPITAL BURNS Major Rear had visited this point before the work had started, and it was his opinion that ruled over Major General Smith's as to where the fort should be located. Major General Smith wished to have the stronghold placed at Eleventh and Broadway, but objection was raised by Major Rear, who saw the wisdom of having it on the river's edge, utilizing the hospital for sleeping quarters and any possible emergency. Three years later its strategic position was also realized when the Confederates under General Forrest's able command stormed the fortification from the west, the Ohio river cutting off access from the east where gunboats were in constant patrol. The hospital building, however, was accidentally burned a short time before the raid of March 25, 1864, the brick and stone from the walls left standing after the fire being used to reinforce the fort. The ramparts were dismantled in 1867 and there is scarcely a thing left today that would tell of the once invincible barrier. Fort Anderson was well garrisoned and ready for the eventuality to come. Besides having a ditch fifty PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 57 feet wide around the west and north and south sides, strengthened with abattis work which made it almost impregnable to infantry attack without artillery, the sturdy post was well fortified with eight mounted cannon and an array of artillery. The structure itself measured 400 feet in length and 160 feet from Fourth street to the river. It was the first fort erected in Kentucky during the Civil War. General Grant's arrival with Federal forces "moved the legislature to promptly order that the flag of the United States be hoisted on the capitol," says Kinkead's "History of Kentucky," for the Commonwealth had previously assumed an anomalous position of armed neutrality and sought in this peculiar way to avoid the war and its consequences. The gallant Confederate cavalrymen who composed the forces in the attack on Paducah and Fort Anderson came under the immediate command of General Forrest at Gainesville, Ala, This body first went from that point to Mobile. While at Mobile the men were issued new shoes, hats and uniforms by General Buckner, who was in command of the post. Of genial temperament and thoughtfully kind, General Buckner in addition to outfitting the men in fresh uniforms treated the officers of the regiment to a rare intoxicant, saying that he wished he had enough to give every man a drink. Several of the men had not had an opportunity to ex- change their shabby clothing when they were on the ferry that was to carry them across the bay and just before the boat left Mobile, General and Mrs. Buckner and their little daughter drove up in a carriage. Mrs. Buckner carried a fine bouquet and after talking with the officers and men a few minutes she lifted her daughter out of the carriage, giving her the flowers to present to "the dirtiest soldier she could find." The little girl looked over the crowd of men as best she could and then walked up to C. P. Cloud, Company D., of Paducah, and gave them to him. He was exceedingly proud of the doubtful compliment paid him. Leaving Mobile and coming through Tennessee on to west Kentucky, the Confederates reached Mayfield, 58 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY Kentucky, after nightfall March 24, spending the night there. Fully informed of the military situation at Paducah and with all plans made for a raid of supplies and munitions, the 1,800 cavalrymen under General Forrest struck a double quick pace toward the Federal strong- hold in Paducah. The Southern forces came by way of the old Mayfield road and reached the picket line at Eden's Hill at 2:10 on the afternoon of March 25, 1864. Previously at Mayfield the men were detailed from Company D, Third Kentucky regiment under Lieutenant Jarrett, to go in advance with Colonel A. P. Thompson, and it was this regiment which touched the outer picket lines first and made several of the Federal sentinels prisoners. One of the guards refused to surrender and was killed. REACH PADUCAH IN AFTERNOON In this initial meeting with the Union soldiers. Otto Rosecranz reached the top of the hill and saw a squad coming up the other side. He fired his pistol at them and without returning fire they fled toward the city, two of the men throwing away their sabres and as many losing their hats in the stampede, according to an account of the advance by J. V. Greif of Paducah, who died a few years ago and who was one of the men with the Confederates. A marker at the corner of Guthrie Avenue and Seventeenth street shows the road over which the invading army approached the city. It reads: "This tablet marks the road on which Gen. N. B. Forrest entered in the capture of Paducah, Ky., March 25, 1864." The invading army continued to come nearer the city and upon reaching the site of the old fair grounds which for years lay on the east side of the old Mayfield Road just beyond the present city limits, General Abraham (Abe) Buford joined the division and the forces pressed forward with renewed vigor, capturing pickets along the way. Several squads were captured on Broadway where the Illinois Central Railroad PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 59 Hospital now stands and where the brigade crossed Broadway. Meanwhile the forces in the rear had come up and stretched themselves in a line of reserves extend- ing from what is now Husbands street out to a point on the Cairo road beyond the present C. B. & Q railroad tracks. COLORED TROOPS ENGAGED It was shortly after 3 o'clock when Colonel Thompson reached Fifteenth and Broadway — the city limits then ended at Contest (later renamed Ninth) street, but the Broadway thoroughfare continued west from the corporate limits — and the men now sat in their saddles awaiting darkness. From their mounts they could see the Federals marching to get into the fort, and the cavalrymen clamored to be led against them while the engagement might be staged in the open. They were told, however, that the raid was for the purpose of procuring medical supplies and munitions, and not for prisoners. The Union forces were safely housed while the men scarce a mile away were forbidden to advance. The Kentucky brigade then dismounted. Colonel Stephen G. Hicks of the Fortieth Illinois In- fantry was commanding the fort. The Federals inside the enclosure numbered 665, and the command con- sisted further of Major George F. Barnes, Major J. F. Chapman and Lieutenant R. D. Cunningham, the latter at the head of the First Kentucky Heavy Artillery (colored), 274 men who received their baptism of fire shortly after the Confederate lines were formed at 4:30 o'clock. SEE HOMES THEY LEFT Many of the Southern men were Paducahans who had not seen the city since enlistment. Their homes were here, their families were here. Colonel Thompson himself had left his Paducah home to join the Southern colors, the home he left being midway between where his dismounted men had formed in battle array and where the coveted fort stood. The opportunity to storm 60 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY the stronghold for home and dear ones was irresistible. An assault was imminent. At this moment General Forrest rode up and ordered a flag of truce sent to Colonel Hicks, and knowing the men under Colonel Thompson were principally from Paducah he gave the order that these should deliver the message. Accordingly they started forward, Company D in the lead, but the eager cavalrymen now on foot had gone only a part of the distance when overtaken by a courier with orders for all to return save a detail of six. The captain of Company D then selected the first six men in the company to carry the message, four of whom were Charles Reed, John Brooks, Rufe Stevens and John Garrett, the names of the other two having been lost in the years. The demand for surrender was addressed to Colonel Hicks and signed by General Forrest himself, and read: "Colonel : Having a force amply sufficient to carry your works and reduce the place, and in order to avoid the unnecessary effujjion of blood, I demand the sur- render of the fort and troops, with all public property. If you surrender, you shall be treated as prisoners of war; but if I have to storm your works, you may expect no quarter. "N. B. FORREST, ''Major-General, Commanding Confederate Troops." While the flag of truce was nearing the fort and during its pendency, members of the Third and Seventh Kentucky regiments were engaged in taking their positions. The regiments had 105 men and 75 men respectively. The Eighth regiment was in the central part of the city ransacking commissary stores, taking from the Government stables the horses, mules and wagons, burning the quartermaster's temporary wooden building and capturing an occasional picket. Colonel Hicks' reply was now at hand. It read: "Sir: I have this moment received yours of this in- stant, in which you demand the unconditional surrender of the forces under my command. I can answer that I PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 61 have been placed here by the Government to defend this post, and in this, as well as all other orders from my superiors, I feel it to be my duty as an honorable officer to obey. I must, therefore, respectfully decline sur- rendering as you may require. TTimzQ "S. G. HlCKb, "Colonel, Commanding Post." Simultaneously with the receipt of this refusal the gunboats Peosta and Paw Paw began shellmg the city, movements of the Confederates precipitating the heavy discharge. Most of the shells at first went over the heads of the invaders, but after discovering their high aim the gunboat commanders had the guns lowered and flying gravel picked up by the cannonballs mingled with the hurling shells. General Buford's regiment withdrew from the river's edge and detoured to the Cairo road, the right wing resting on Broadway and the left flanking the road. Rushing forward from this line the division captured a redoubt with two guns. Captain Thomas B. Fauntleroy of Kevil who joined the Southern volunteers when he was sixteen years of age was with General Buford in this onward rush, and was within forty yards of the parapet when after the third unsuccessful attack General Forrest rode up and ordered the guns silenced. The Federal gunboats had ranged their fire directly up the streets so as to clear these avenues of the cavalrymen. The firing was especially heavy up Trimble street. PADUCAH OFFICER KILLED An old maple tree at the southwest corner of Fifth and Trimble streets was pierced by a three-inch cannon- ball coming from a gunboat just below the fort. The tree measures two feet in diameter and the hole which is about three feet from the ground is large enough to place the arm through. It is one of the most interesting trees in the citv associated with the Civil War. A. L Babb, who formerly resided at the northwest corner ot Fifth and Trimble streets found a three-inch cannonball. 62 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY the calibre of the one that struck the tree, while tilling the soil at that place in the spring of 1915. Following the third attack on the stronghold and complying with General Forrest's order to cease firing, General Thompson was seated on his horse surrounded by his staff of officers near the alley on Trimble street between Fifth and Sixth streets. The sun had gone down and darkness was enshrouding the city. Colonel Bell under General Forrest had raided the Federal supply stations scattered over the principal parts of the city. The raid had been successful. The Confederate forces had dropped back from the fort to a distance of 500 feet, finding the ditch at the bulwarks impassable with- out pontoons or ladders. The galling fire of grape and cannister and shrapnel and shell from the stronghold and gunboats inflicted considerable loss. But the general fusillade had subsided considerably, and now General Buford dispatched an order by his assistant inspector general. Captain D. E. Meyers, to Colonel Thompson, ordering him to fall back under cover of a line of houses, where the men could be protected from further Federal fire. Captain Meyers was ordered to proceed to the right of the brigade and down the line to the left, delivering the orders to the colonels until he found Colonel Thompson. This he did without receiv- ing a scratch. Just before his staff officer reached him with the order. Colonel Thompson was struck by a cannonball from a gunboat which fired directly up the road, now Trimble street. Captain Fauntleroy, who was within a few feet of Colonel Thompson, says the cannon- ball struck the mounted officer about the pummel of the saddle. In a vivid account of the officer's fall, the late J. V. Greif related that a column of the Third Kentucky was entering the alley back of the present Frank Kirchhoff, Sr., property at Fifth and Trimble streets, a two-story brick farm house then occupied by Robert Crow. Colonel Thompson had halted and his horse stood a few feet east of the alley entrance, the horse facing the south with the fore hoofs in the gutter. The colonel was conversing PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 63 with several officers and had his cap in the right hand held overhead at arm's length, when the cannonball struck him and the animal. The horse ran half a block to Sixth street and fell, and was later buried on the spot where a marker in the sidewalk determines the place where its gallant rider lost his life in sight of his home. Trimble street was then known as part of the Cairo road and was fenced on both sides. George P. Hainline who died a few years ago was another Confederate who was close to Colonel Thompson and he often told of the gruesome sight of the dead officer. CROSSLAND TAKES COMMAND' Immediately after Colonel Thompson's fall. Colonel Ed Crossland assumed the command. He had just ordered the men to fall back behind the old Lang stemmery, when he was struck in the right thigh by a rifle ball. Several squads of sharpshooters went around Sixth street and nine men succeeded in safely reaching Gus Slusmeyer's house, a brick cottage still standing at 515 North Fourth street. Speaking of the rifle work done from this house, Mr. Greif said he was one of the men under Lieutenant Jarrett who picked off the Federals at the fort a hundred feet away. "Our guns were never idle after we got in position until the enemy succeeded in bringing to bear on our position a gun from another part of the fort," Mr. Greif said. "I was knocked down when a ball passed through the house," he con- tinued, "and as I fell I heard the order of Lieutenant Jarrett to get out. When I got up all were gone. I followed and took a position behind a coal pile with Captain Crit Edwards, telling him I was hurt. He ex- amined me and said I was not injured. It was a great relief to me to know that I was not hurt, for I was struck on the left jaw by some object during the excite- ment and thought it was about all gone." When the men under Colonel Crossland reached the Lang stemmery, a number went in the building and fired into the fort from windows in the second story. One of 64 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY these was Ed Moss of Company D, Third Kentucky, who ^vas killed at a window by a solid shot striking him in the breast. His remains were buried near the building the following morning. About 8 o'clock the cavalrymen left the stemmery and returned to their horses, which had been left where the Illinois Central hospital now stands. Seeing the Confederates gradually withdrawing, the Federals raised their guns and began shelling the horses. Mr. Greif says a shell exploded in the line near him, a piece of sharpnel striking a cavalryman in the hip who was holding several horses, the frightful wound causing his death a few days afterwards. "Another piece of the shell passed between him and my horse," Mr. Greif declared, "cutting off my stirrup leather and breaking the horse's leg between the hock and the stiffle joint. I rode the wounded man's horse out. Tied to the saddle of my own horse was a cedar canteen with my name on the side of it, and when my horse was found on the commons the next morning it was reported to my father, with the suggestion that I had probably been killed. It had also been reported to him during the fight that I had been killed on Broadway below Second street and that my body was in the second story of St. Clair's hall. On investigation it proved to be an artillery man." St. Clair's hall was a three-story theater building which formerly stood at 112-114 South Second street, the third floor being the auditorium, the second used for offices and the lower or ground floor employed as a storeroom and later occupied by a commercial establishment. ANECDOTES OF BATTLE During one of the attacks on the fort a boy named Ewell Hord was at Mr. Greif's left side and asked him to load his gun. "Load it yourself; I'm busy," said Mr. Greif. "I can't; I'm wounded in the arm and can't draw my rammer," the boy said. "Go to the rear, you fool!" Mr. Greif exclaimed. "What better luck do you want? PADUCAHAXS IN HISTORY 65 It gets you out of this!" Failing to get anyone to load his gun he went off to the rear crying. Captain Fauntleroy tells an incident that occurred while the Confederates were within fifty yards of the fort. John Stockdale was beside him and the two had noticed in particular a member of the Eighth Illinois Colored Artillery who raised his head above the parapet, fired his rifle and then dropped from sight again. "If that scamp sticks his head up again he will be sorry for it," said Stockdale as he was reloading his gun. In scarcely a minute the head bobbed up again and Stock- dale made fatal aim. Captain Fauntleroy laughingly declares his companion "must have struck him in a vital place, for he jumped up like a wild turkey and fell out of the fort." A few minutes after General Forrest gave the order to fall back he rode down the line saying, "It's pretty warm out there, is it not, boys?" referring to the terri- tory the Confederates had just left. Someone in the Third Kentucky replied, "Not here. General ; but it's infernally hot just out there a little farther," pointing at the fort. CONFEDERATES WITHDRAW According to the official report of Colonel Hicks dated April 6, 1864, and addressed to Captain J. H. Odlin, assistant adjutant general, the Federal loss was 14 killed and 46 wounded. The Confederate loss was 11 killed and 39 wounded. In his official report sent to President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy, General Forrest says: 'T drove the enemy to their boats and for- tification, held the town for ten hours, capturing a large amount of clothing, several hundred horses, a large lot of medical stores for the command, burning a steamer, the dock, and all cotton on the landing. I could have held the place longer, but on account of the prevalence of smallpox in the place I though it prudent to with- draw." The Confederate forces left Paducah at 11 o'clock, going out the old Mayfield road over which they came 66 P A D U C A H A N S IN HISTORY and bivouacking for the remainder of the night six and a half miles from the city on the property of George Schmidt, now owned by his son, Fred Schmidt. The house around which the cavalrymen encamped still stands. It was built by George Schmidt in 1861, and was then a story and a half three-room log structure, but in recent years has been remodeled and enlarged. General Forrest's horse was tied to a black oak tree in the front yard, on an elevated area, which permitted the dashing raider a commanding view for a considerable distance. The "death wagon" was parked under a small tree to the right of the front entrance, and the groans coming from the wounded and dying in it could be heard throughout the night — faint calls for help like those of the dauntless defenders and fearless assailants who after the Battle of Waterloo and while yet alive found a common grave in the well at the Chateau of Hougoumont. Mr. Schmidt, who with his family now occupies the historic house, was only two years of age when the troopers encamped there. They left the fol- lowing morning, March 26. The noted tree stands about 300 yards from the house and is fifty feet tall, the branches extending over a space forty feet wide. FEDERALS BURN HOUSES With the Rebel dash into Paducah on the 25th — that memorable Good Friday of 1864 — the populace fled for shelter and protection. Some of the residents sought safety in cellars and basements; others hid in secluded spots; but the majority crossed the Ohio river for the Illinois shore, knowing the Confederates would be un- able to ford the river. The night was spent under trees, and bonfires were kindled to add to the comfort of the distracted people, for the evening was unusually cool. Shortly after sunrise the ferryboat brought back a number of residents and so on through the morning, the boat was kept busy. But the spectacle to greet their eyes was wholly un- expected. They knew General Forrest's cavalry had robbed the government of stores and supplies, yet there P A D U C A H A N S IX HISTORY 67 had been no wholesale destruction of property during the engagement of the afternoon nor during the night. To return now and witness the burning of their homes by Federal torches seemed incredible. From the steam- boat Tycoon, H. A. Sweet the clerk wrote "Paducah was in flames when this boat passed at 8 a. m." Many of the citizens had already returned to their homes before the order came to leave them. The order stated they were to be destroyed immediately and the occupants would not have time to remove the furnishings. The burning of sixty houses within a radius of several hundred yards of Fort Anderson was in accordance with an order from Colonel Hicks, who heard the Con- federates planned another attack on the breastworks. The day before, sharpshooters hid themselves in the houses and shot down into the fort, killing and wounding two score and imperiling the Federal hold on the place. "On the 26th the enemy again made a demonstration by surrounding the fort in the distance," says Colonel Hicks' official report. "As soon as I discovered this I ordered Major Barnes, of the Sixteenth Kentucky Cavalry, to send out squads to burn all the houses within musket range of the fort, from which the sharpshooters had annoyed us the day previous." HICKS EXPLAINS COURSE Writing from Salem, 111., June 25, 1868, four years later. Colonel Hicks explained his course to Messrs. Peck & Mattison, attorneys at Evansville. "We were attacked by an overwhelming force," he wrote, "and they took possession of all the houses in gunshot of the fort. We repulsed the enemy and beat them back all day. I saw I would be attacked again and the better to protect myself against their sharpshooters I issued the order." After the war closed the Government was asked for reimbursement by a number who lost their homes. A known Union man succeeded in having Congress pass a bill aiding the losers, but President U. S. Grant vetoed 68 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY the measure as a bad precedent to set, declaring with Colonel Hicks that the usages of war made burning of property a line of defense. The destruction of these houses was a distinct loss to many whose homes repre- sented years of frugality and struggle during Paducah's infancy. Shortly before 7 o'clock on the morning of the 26th General Forrest climbed the large oak tree which stood until December 13, 1921, near the Hendron schoolhouse on the old Mayfield road. This tree, which was cut down during a residence fire to prevent the spreading of flames to the schoolhouse, was used by the Con- federate General for observation purposes. With his field glasses he could follow the squad which carried his second flag of truce to the Federal headquarters, pro- posing to exchange man for man according to rank the forty Union soldiers who were captured in the raid. The Federals had a number of Confederate prisoners of war in the guardhouse, but Colonel Hicks would not comply. He had no power to make the exchange, he said. "If I had, I would most cheerfully do it." The Confederates then withdrew. WHO THOMPSON WAS On the 14th of April another raid occurred. General Abraham Buford coming from Tennessee upon hearing the government had several hundred horses here. Captain Fauntleroy who was also in the first raid, and James Anderson of the old Mayfield road are among the Confederate survivors. It was at noon on a Thurs- day that the Third, Seventh and Eighth Kentucky Cavalry, about 800 strong, made a dash on the enemy. The Federal pickets had fallen back to Fort Anderson w^here Colonel Hicks concentrated his forces. "No attempt was made to capture the fort, the object of the expedition being to obtain the fine horses," says Colonel Hicks in his official report of the encounter. About 150 horses were taken. A mournful interest attaches to Colonel Albert P. Thompson, the gallant cavalry officer who was listed PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 69 among the Confederate casualties in the Batttle of Paducah, or Forrest's first raid, as it is frequently called. "Bert" Thompson, as he was best known to his friends, was born eight miles northwest of Murray in Calloway county March 4, 1829, the son of Sam Thompson, a prosperous farmer. He grew to manhood amid the slopes of West Kentucky, and after studying law soon became prominent at the bar. In early life he was married to Miss Mary Jane Bowman, who died a year after the marriage. A few years later his second wife, Miss Harriet Harding, died. Colonel Thompson was then married to the daughter of Attorney Mayer of Mayfield, and coming to Paducah he formed a law partnership under the firm name Bigger, Thompson and Roe. The two lawyers associated with him were Joseph M. Bigger and John H. Roe, and the firm had offices on the east side of First street between Broadway and Jefferson street. Colonel Thompson lived at the southeast corner of Seventh and Monroe streets. Unfoitunately there is no marker to show the place where his residence stood, tragically enough within sight of which he lost his com- paratively young and promising life. LOVED BY COMRADES Colonel Thompson was one of the organizers of the Fifth Kentucky regiment at Camp Boone near Bowling Green early in the war; he was elected lieutenant- colonel of the regiment. From Camp Boone he was sent to Corinth, Miss., and in the Battle of Baton Rouge led the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Kentucky regiments to- gether with the Thirty-fifth Alabama regiment. He was wounded in the conflict and was commended for his gallantry. In the summer of 1863 his regiment was mounted and became known as mounted infantry but later acquired the name cavalry through constant use of horses. He had a compelling charm of manner and an earnestness and sincerity that won instant admiration and endeared him to his comrades in arms. Those who were associated with him in Forrest's various expeditions. 70 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY speak of him most highly. After his death he was made a General, and this title is carved on his monument. Colonel Thompson's mutilated body lay on Trimble street where he fell until the morning after the Battle of Paducah, when shortly before 9 o'clock John McClung and former Mayor D. A. Yeiser went to the site and gathered the remains, engaging a drayman to convey the torn body to the one-story frame building which then stood where the Postoffice now is located. Mr. McClung was a clerk at L. S. Trimble & Company's wholesale grocery and Mr. Yeiser was then with the old Cope & Neel drug store on the north side of lower Broadway. They visited the place where the Colonel's body lay as soon as they heard of its being left in the disorder which for a few minutes followed his fall. The remains were prepared for burial, and interment took place in Oak Grove cemetery. SLEEPS NEAR MURRAY It was a pity that a man of his rare type should be made to die at the age of thirty-five. Still, life is not computed in years but rather in terms of usefulness. His was a worthy and beneficial life, marked by service to his fellowman. Well might he have said, "Lay a sword in my coffin; for I, too, was a soldier in the great struggle." At the close of the war Colonel Thompson's remains were disinterred and removed to the burial site of his first and second wives, the Bowman cemetery one mile north of Murray on the Paducah and Murray road. It is an obscure and rather neglected lot, and is the burying place of twenty-five members of the old Bowman and Harding and Thompson families. A square base monument ten feet high marks the spot where Colonel Thompson rests. There are four inscriptions in the shaft. The first reads: "Gen. Albert P. Thompson, 3d Ky. Brigade, C. S. A. Fell at Paducah, March 25, 1864, age 35 years, 22 days." Another says, 'Tn view of home, in the midst of his neighbors, he laid P A D U C A H A N S IN HISTORY 71 down his life." Four lines on the shaft reveal the type of man he was — No country ever had a truer son, No cause a nobler champion ; No people a bolder defender, No principle a purer victim. The final wording on the sentinel says "While God keeps his soul the people for whom he died will cherish and defend his memory." And it has ever been so, for no mention can be made of General A. P. Thomp- son without thought of his consecration to God and duty as it seemed to him, no reference to the Battle of Paducah but that the fallen officer's memory stands in bold relief upon the page of Time. Colonel Thompson lost his life in the most significant battle ever fought in west Kentucky, the anniversary of which is clearly recalled by honored participants on both sides — the noble men of the North, the magnanimous men of the South — on earth and in heaven ! HON. WILLIAM S. BISHOP, THE "OLD JUDGE PRIEST" OF IRVIN S. COBB'S STORIES From the original portrait in the Circuit Court Room at the McCracken County Court House. w CHAPTER V 'OLD JUDGE PRIEST" AND HIS NOBLE CHARACTERISTICS 'HO was the affable, lovable dignitary of whom Irvin S. Cobb has written so affectionately and so very much, the once familiar old west Kentucky judge who walked Paducah's shady avenues and handed out justice in the county building two blocks off Broadway? The thoughtfully accommodating "Judge Priest" who figures so prominently in those fascinating short stories; who, for instance, provided a church funeral for an unfortunate girl who requested one; who, agam, had the circus parade wend its way out Clay street that an indisposed boy might view it; whose wit and shrewdness an another occasion, decided an important election when defeat of an honorable figure seemed imminent— who was this kindly jurist that millions have read about and know only by the name Paducah's brilliant son has given him — who was "Old Judge Priest?" Most Paducahans probably know. In the Circuit Court room at the county building hang two portraits. One is a painting of Judge William S. Bishop, the other ot Judge Edward Crossland, under whom the former served during the Civil War. Judge Crossland is also mentioned in the "Old Judge Priest" short stories; he died in 1881 and is buried at Mayfield. Almost any Paducahan of the present generation can tell you that the painting to the left is the principal character alluded to by Irvin S. Cobb in "Old Judge Priest" and "Back Home." But not every one who has looked upon tliai countenance is sure just what characteristics its owner possessed, does not know for certain what his personal attributes were and why Paducah's sage should pen so freely of his life. Indeed, few of the city's residents pause to think while passing the two-story frame house 74 PADUCAHAXS IN HISTORY at 929 Broadway that a score of years ago Judge William S. Bishop resided there, that he walked the brick passageway leading from the steps to the iron fence at the sidewalk for more than twenty years. There is no marker in the sidewalk to indicate where the old judge lived so long, so how should they know? Nor does the average person know that "Old Judge Priest" sleeps out in Oak Grove cemetery, ready to face a greater Judge than this earth ever saw. READS LAW UNDER OSCAR TURNER Born in Trigg county, Kentucky, July 18, 1839, William S. Bishop was the youngest son of seven children born to Joseph and Elizabeth Bishop. He received a common school education in the rural districts and spent his boyhood amid the rocky hills of the Trigg vicinity. As manhood approached he attended Transylvania University, Lexington, and returning from that institu- tion in 1859 he began the study of law under Hon. Oscar Turner in Ballard county. He was admitted to the bar two years later, or in his twentv-second year. At the outbreak of the Civil War, William S. Bishop enlisted in Company F, Seventh Kentucky Confederate Infantry on the 7th of November, 1861. He was in the battles at Corinth (Miss.), Brazos Creek Roads, Baton Rouge and the bombardment of Port Hudson, and shortly before General Lee's surrender was taken captive on the Big Black river, near Vicksburg. Paroled in the spring of 1865, he returned to west Kentucky and began teaching school alternately in McCracken and Ballard counties. The practice of law was not formally begun until 1870. Two years after returning from the Federal prison, he was married to Miss Mary A. Hart, a native of Tennessee but a resident of McCracken county. Ac- cording to the notation referring to the wedding in Judge Bishop's family Bible now in possession of his sister-in- law, Mrs. Courtney Long of Paducah, the ceremony was performed "at the residence of the bride's father, Samuel Hart, by Rev. William Black." The marriage occurred P A D U C A H A N S IN HISTORY 75 January 29, 1867. Four children were born to the couple — Henry L., Emma E., William R. and Joe Bishop. The first and last are the only surviving ones, and they are now living in Memphis. CHOSEN CIRCUIT JUDGE When he was forty years of age William S. Bishop was elected Common Pleas Judge of the First Judicial District of Kentucky, the returns from every precinct in 1879 offering encouragement and expressing con- fidence in his ability. Judge Bishop removed from Ballard county to Paducah with his family in the early eighties, and in 1891 was chosen Circuit Judge of the First Judicial District, serving the full term of six years. It was both as Common Pleas Judge and Circuit Judge that Irvin S. Cobb found the courteously sagacious character around whom he has woven a realm of fact and fancy. Colonel Joel Shrewsbury, an intimate friend of Mr. Cobb's father and from whom the distinguished literatus received his middle name, often called on the judge at his residence, taking Cobb along to hear the two reminisce about their war experiences. In stature, Judge Bishop was of medium height; his chest was deep and broad; his head large, and a model of classical proportions and noble contour. A handsome face, compact brow, massive and expanded, and eyes of light blue, full and clear, were fitted for every feeling and sentiment. His complexion partook of smoothness and bore a healthy glow. The countenance was serious and melancholy; in repose, he resembled the poet Whittier. He was frank and artless as a child, there was nothing affected or theatrical in his manner. WAS GENEROUS AND KIND And then the man! Generous as a prince of royal blood, of a spirit that scorned everything mean or questionable, he was above the littleness of jealousy and rivalry; his love of truth, his fidelity and frankness, were formed on the antique modes of the chevaliers. His kindness and gentle spirit flowed over like an 76 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY artesian well, ever gushing out in sparkling current. He had a quiet way of gathering information with marvelous rapidity. The sun-stroke that makes its impression upon the medicated plate is not more rapid in tianscribing, or more faithful in fixing its image, than was his per- ception in taking cognizance of facts and principles, or his abilty to retain them. His humor was various — from the most delicate wit to the broadest farce, but no one ever heard him use coarse jest or employ Falstaff expression. He was, withal, a gentleman of true Southern type, a glance from whose strong and steady eye awed honesty into the most objectionable creature. Following expiration of his term as Circuit Judge the old jurist resumed the practice of law in which he en- gaged until three months before his death at the age of sixty-three, May 23, 1902. Though he had been in failing health for two years, the immediate cause of death was attributed to complications. He had been at the home of his sister, Mrs. Allen Banks, two miles from Hinkleville in Ballard county for a month previous to the end, thinking perhaps the rural surroundings of his younger days and another locality might induce favor- able change in his condition. BURIED IN OAK GROVE CEMETERY At 10 o'clock Friday morning the kindly folk with whom he mingled learned of his death; at that hour the noble heart ceased to beat and the soul of Judge Bishop soared far and beyond the ken of man. A deep sorrow overhung the community and tears dimmed eyes of legions he had befriended; it was as though a note failed to sound, it was the passing of a warm, magnanimous spirit. At 7 o'clock the following morning the remains were brought to Paducah and taken to the home of his brother-in-law and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Al Coleman, 1103 Madison street. At 10 o'clock the funeral service was held from the Broadway Methodist church of which he was a member, Rev. G. W. Briggs conducting a brief and simple service. The remains were borne to Oak PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 77 Grove cemetery and placed beside those of his wife, who preceded him to the grave by eighteen months. Grief over departure of his life's companion pre- cipitated his own death in degree. Indeed, at the time of her death he had not yet recovered from the shock occasioned by the death of his daughter at the age of twenty, March 19, 1893. A slender maiden in her teens, she became the wife of Hugh L. Perkins of this city on the 3rd day of February, 1891, and her death followed birth of the judge's grandchild. Three stately cedars today cast their benevolent shade over the resting place of Judge and Mrs. Bishop ; their daughter, Mrs. Perkins, and her son who survived her five months; and William Bishop who died several years after his father passed away. The lot is centrally located, a fifteen by thirty foot curbed enclosure on Silent Avenue, and a hundred feet south from the Oehlschlaeger vault. It is unostentatiously marked by the name "Bishop" on the steps, set with a beautiful stone in the middle. The two children and grandchild sleep to the front of the little plot while Judge and Mrs. Bishop rest beyond, their graves covered with green sod above which the blue sky peeps through branches of the evergreens. "THIS WAS A MAN" An hour before Judge Bishop's tranquil funeral the Paducah bar association held a solemn meeting at the city hall and adopted resolutions of condolence and regret at the passing of one "whose career added lustre and brilliance to the already noted eminence of the profession in Kentucky; who, as a jurist, evinced an honesty of purpose and clearness seldom equalled and never surpassed." The resolutions were signed by a committee composed of John K. Hendrick, Thomas E. Moss, Campbell Flournoy, W. A. Berry and J. M. Worten, and bore witness that the deceased was kind, patient and courteous as a Judge in whose splendid dis- position there was not one harsh attribute. The resolu- tions concluded by saying that in him the elements were 78 PADUCAHANS IX HISTORY SO blended that Nature might stand up and say, "This Was a Man." In drawing a mental picture of the old judge one thinks of the apostrophe of Hamlet in pointing to the portrait of his father — See what a grace is seated on his brow, Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man. CHAPTER VI IRVIN S. COBB AND HIS TEACHERS AND OLD SCHOOL DAYS PADUCAH'S most illustrious son came to the old News office — now the News-Democrat — as a cub reporter January 16, 1893, at the age of seventeen. The summer previous he drove an ice wagon for the Fowler-Crum- baugh Boat Store whose place of business was at the northeast corner of First and Broadway, but in the late fall of 1892, he, along with Will J. Gilbert, abandoned the ice wagon and bethought himself of something more lucrative, for something which, it is evident now, he was better adapted. Cold, cold was that January 16; but it was not cold enough to chill the spirit of the rather awkward boy of seventeen who joined the newspaper as both cartoonist and reporter, for from that day onward the star of Irvin S. Cobb has been in the ascendency nor has it reached its perihelion to this day. Strange, curious indeed, the comparatively small number of Paducahans who know anything more than the so-called high spots in the career of the gifted writed who has succeeded Mark Twain as the world's greatest humorist. Odd is it not, that here in his home town his boyhood friends must sometimes jog their memories to recall the witty and sensitively keen fellow of way back there? Here, where the beautiful Tennessee river joins hands with the majestic Ohio was born to Joshua C. and Manie Saunders Cobb a son who was destined to write the best account of the World War, the popular "Old Judge Priest" stories, and such humorous books as "One Third Off," "Roughing It De Luxe" and "Speaking of Operations — ." The old Dr. Reuben Saunders home- stead at 321 South Third street was torn down during February of 1914, and was replaced two years later with a brick bungalow, the sidewalk in front of which 79 IRVIN S. COBB AT THE AGE OF 46 80 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 81 bears a marker that reads: "This tablet marks the birth- place of Irvin S. Cobb, June 23, 1876." At the age of six years and four months he was sent to the old Seminary at the northeast corner of Fifth and Kentucky Avenue, which was torn down in 1886 and replaced by the Longfellow school, which a few years ago was remodeled and converted into the Masonic Hall. His schooling ceased when he was scarcely sixteen — that is, his public and private schooling. Then he mounts an ice wagon, giving up the chilly occupation after a season. This man whose marvelous literary output stamps him as one of the ten greatest writers of the present generation — where and when did he hive his wisdom, and from or under whom? He never saw inside a university, save to lecture there. Without a college education, he has made millions think, laugh, admire. Considering that alto- gether his schooling was less than ten years, the thought naturally suggests itself that Irvin S. Cobb was above the average school boy in native intelligence, that in point of competency and conscientiousness his instructors were far and beyond the mediocre. His school days constitute a heretofore unwritten chapter, simply because he lacked the necessary boldness to speak seriously of himself; are almost forgotten because no one has ever taken the time to delve into the dimming past to see what treasure it does hold. Three of his former teachers are still living and these with several of his intimate friends tell the long neglected story. It is as though a remote receptacle of the brain, unlocked for decades, bursts wide open with a spring and snap and pours out the contents, as sparkling untarnished jewels might come from some ancient treasure chest. Before the crystal mirrors of their memory his juvenile days clearly appear. HIS FIRST TEACHER Irvin S. Cobb's first school teacher was Miss Nannie Clark, now Mrs. Joe S. Bondurant, who still makes Paducah her home. Miss Clark was only sixteen years of age when Irvin was brought to her room in the 82 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY southwest corner of the old Seminary at Fifth and Kentucky Avenue, she having all the children who were in the first, second and third grades. It was her initial attempt at teaching, in which she engaged until her marriage in January, 1887, or for five years. The Seminary was a very old building and originally a girls' school. During the Civil War it was used as a hospital. In 1870 it came into the hands of the School Board and was opened up as the Female High School, but in 1873 it becamie co-educational. The school con- sisted of two brick buildings painted buff and trimmed in white, particularly suited to the style of architecture. Miss Clark had about ninety pupils in her room, and as she taught from the first to and including the third grade it happened that Irvin was her pupil for three successive years. In stature and robustness, Miss Clark avers he compared favorably with the other boys, among whom was James C. Utterback of the third grade and now president of the City National Bank. During his three years in Miss Clark's room, Irvin was especially good at recitations and memory work ; recitations were a Friday afternoon event. "He was always one of my bright pupils and I never failed to give him a recitation for Friday," she says in commenting upon her recollections of him as a primary and second and third grade scholar. THEN TO MISS MURRAY Promoted from the third grade and Miss Clark's room to the fourth, Irvin Cobb was nine years of age when he reached Miss Mary Owen Murray's room. Miss Murray was a very much beloved woman who is remembered most kindly by hundreds of Paducahans and former citizens. She began teaching school at Lovelaceville when sixteen years of age, and taught there for one year, then coming to Paducah, where with the exception of one year she taught till the time of her death. Miss Mary O. Murray, as she was best known to her pupils, was the daughter of Judge Frank Murray and P A D U C A H A X S IX HISTORY 83 Mrs. Margaret Murray. She was greatly interested in educational work and took a keen delight in instructing the students given to her care. Miss Murray taught in the Paducah public schools until ten months before her death and only then abandoned the profession on account of failing health. She died October 8, 1908 and is buried on Mercy Avenue in Oak Grove cemetery. A headstone three feet wide and four feet high stands at the head of the green grave. Aside from the usual inscription there are six words cut into the stone that tell the story of her life — "She hath done what she could." One characteristic in particular set young Cobb out among the other students — his application to study and desire to learn. An earnestness of purpose showed it- self in all he did in the classroom under Miss Murray's supervision. While yet a student in Miss Murray's room and before the year ended, razing of the old Seminary was begun and classes were distributed among the other schools for the remainder of the ternr. Partly through this circumstance, Irvin the following year attended the private school conducted by Rev. Lewis H. Shuck, D. D., which was held only during the mornings of every day except Saturday and Sunday. Dr. Shuck conducted his private school, made up of eight to ten boys the first three years of his ministry here, and both boys and girls later, in the study room of the old First Baptist church at the southwest corner of Fifth and Jefferson streets; the new structure stands on the corner now. The pastor's study was in the rear of the red brick church on whose lofty tower a clock told the hour of day. INFLUENCED BY OLDER FRIENDS Dr. Shuck was with the congregation from October 1882 to October, 1889. He was past middle age during his stay in Paducah ; he was tall and slender, and his features were delicate. He was highly cultured, one of the most brilliantly educated ministers to occupy a Paducah pulpit. Incidentally, Holland Coleman of 84 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY Washington Court House, Ohio, went to Dr. Shuck the same year Irvin did. Not many of the older citizens have forgotten the picture of Irvin Cobb in Soule's Drug Store at 313 Broadway, now occupied by a clothing firm, as the for- mer stood by the side of Colonel Joel Shrewsbury and listened to him relate his war experiences and impart offhand information of which Irvin has probably often since made use. Of course it would be almost an insult to tell any Paducahan that Irvin Cobb's middle initial stands for Shrewsburg. Born November 20, 1838, in what was then called Kanasha Salines, Va., six miles above Charleston, W. Va., Joel Shrewsbury held various clerical positions and early engaged in business. With the outbreak of hos- tilities between the States he went as a volunteer for the Southern cause, attaining the rank of captain at time of muster. He had studied law and passed the examinations with a high grade, but never practiced. COL. SHREWSBURY IMPRESSES HIM. Coming to Paducah in the late sixties. Colonel Shrewsbury became a fast friend of Joshua Cobb and was best man at his wedding in 1872. He was unusually well read, and a story often told of him by the late Col. Henry E. ("Boss") Thompson was that he would answer any question asked him, but if his questioner doubted the accuracy of his reply he would promptly seek an encyclopedia or dictionary. "But he would never answer another question for that person," Colonel Thompson said. Colonel Shrewsbury was not related to the Cobb family. He contributed to the columns of the old News until his death in 1888. He is buried at Charleston, W. Va. Probably no person outside of Irvin Cobb's immediate family had a greater influence over him or left a more lasting impression. Colonel Henry E. Thompson also had a part in shaping Irvin Cobb's career, though he, like Colonel Shrewsbury, was no teacher in the ordinary sense of the word, and did not come in direct contact with the embryo P A D U C A H A N S IN HISTORY 85 newspaper man until young Cobb came to the News office. Colonel Thompson was born at Louisville, Ky., August 16, 1851, the son of George and Susan Thompson who moved to Paducah in 1853. Educated in Paducah, he returned to Louisville at the age of eighteen years and learned the trade of printer — a profession, by the way, that gave the world Benjamin Franklin, Horace Greeley, Brete Harte, Samuel Clemens, Joseph Pulitzer, Elbert Hubbard, and other journalists and authors. Returning to Paducah, Colonel Thompson assumed editorship of the Paducah News and when young Cobb joined the staff he received his first training under a typical master of the old school of journalism. His "Paducah Historically," published in 1910, is a fascinat- ing account of the founding and development of the city. Colonel Thompson died February 25, 1916, and was buried in Oak Grove cemetery. At the time of his death he was president of the Paducah Press Club. The wealth of beautiful floral tributes and the large number of friends accompanying his remains to the cemetery the Sunday afternoon he was laid to rest attested the esteem in which the veteran editor was held. UNDER MISS ADAH BRAZELTON Returning to the site of the old Seminary which had been replaced with the Longfellow school — it was frequently called the Second District school — Irvin entered the sixth grade under Miss Adah L. Brazelton. Among those in her room at this time was Guy Rollston, formerly managing editor of the Paducah Evening Sun and for the past sixteen years a member of the editorial staff of the New York Evening World. Miss Brazelton, who is now principal of the Longfellow school at Twelfth and Jackson streets, says Irvin excelled in literature. "He read a great deal," she added in speaking of the pleasure he derived from this study. He was promoted to the seventh grade with a good average. In the seventh grade he manifested an even greater interest in his studies, so much so that the superintendent 86 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY of public schools granted permission for Irvin to be promoted to the ninth grade, skipping the eighth. It was through this unusual procedure that Irvin Cobb fortunately found himself in Miss Mary F. Dodson's room, which was numbered eight, and located in the northwest corner on the second floor. Miss Dodson is now Mrs. C. A. Anderson of Magnolia, Miss. She was born at New Albany, Ind., the daughter of Milton Cabell Dodson and Sarah Hudson Rush, and came to Paducah and was graduated from the old Seminary, as were two other of Irvin Cobb's teachers — Miss Adah Brazelton and Mrs. Joe S. Bondurant. Incidentally, too, all three began their teaching careers at the Seminary. Among her classmates who are still living in the city are Mrs. Thomas E. Boswell, Mrs. Mamie Dallam Powell, Mrs. Louis M. Rieke, Sr., and William M. Rieke. Miss Dodson taught in the Paducah schools for twenty-two years or until her marriage, when she re- moved from the city, and among members of the School Board during the later years of her teaching were Dr. J. T. Reddick, Richard G. Terrell, Col. Ben Weille and James C. Utterback. The latter, now president of the City National Bank and one of the leading bankers of the State, was also in his boyhood days a student under Miss Dodson. Mrs. Lillard D. Sanders of the present School Board is also a former pupil. MISS DODSON NEXT Early in September of 1888 Irvin appeared at the then new Longfellow school accompanied by his mother, who introduced him and made known their desire to have him enrolled in the ninth grade or Freshman class. Miss Dodson was prepared for his coming by instructions from the Paducah school head who had given consent to the irregular promotion. Irvin was assigned a seat in the last row of desks in the room immediately in front of the door by which he entered. The prodigy was then twelve years old. An acknowledged weakness in mathematics soon be- came apparent. Even a review course in arithmetic and PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 87 a course in algebra could not overcome the handicap under which young Cobb labored, simply because he lacked the foundation on which to build, through failure of eighth grade instruction. His seventh grade teacher was aware of his shortcomings in mathematics, but this was overlooked owing to his excellence in other studies, principally literature. On entering the Freshman class Irvin chose the Latin course, but soon after asked to take in addition the ninth grade course in English literature. This came naturally to him. In discussing his fondness for literature the now Mrs. Anderson declares he "was always intensely interested, quick to grasp the thought and keenly ap- preciative of the best in expression." Fortunately for Irvin S. Cobb, his ninth grade teacher had the tenth grade class the following year. This was on the same floor but diagonally across the hall in the southeast corner. "For Irvin's good and my own peace of mind I had early in the previous year given him a desk immediately in front of mine," Mrs. Anderson said. And here, in the tenth grade, she assigned him a seat in about the same position as that he occupied in the ninth. "I do not know that Irvin enjoyed this very much but I did," Mrs. Anderson says. "He was so well informed, so keenly alive as to what was going on in the world, so appreciative of things going on in our work that we often exchanged remarks sotto voce across my desk." SUPERLATIVE IN HISTORY It was in the tenth grade where a course of general history w^as in order, and here again Irvin was in his element. He possessed a wonderful memory and never forgot an historical name or event; but the fascinating stories of adventure and perils of unknown seas, the splendor of ocurts and kings and queens and belted knights, the thrilling sound of martial music — he reveled in these as though he were witnessing and hearing the vast kaleidoscopic panorama of the past. The Senior pupils came into this room for their recitation in English h4 ^ PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 89 literature and it is quite truthful to say that young Cobb never missed a word that was said and profited quite as much from the recitation as many in the class who had put more or less study upon it. His intellectual power was of the highest order, and his ease of acquisition was remarkable. Like Dr. Samuel Johnson, it is said that young Cobb never forgot anything he ever saw, heard or read. In those days there were no organized athletics at. the Longfellow school and the playground was com- paratively small, but occasionally Irvin Cobb played games calling for greater physical exertion than de- manded in playing "for keeps." Baseball had not be- come the national game, although the boys occasionally tossed the sphere during recess and played rival teams after school hours on vacant lots in the neighborhood. Already at this time, however, Irvin frequently sacrificed the recreation period for "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn," two books in the school library which he particularly enjoyed, just as between the curtains at Morton's theater he used to devote himself to the printed page. Rieke's store is now located on the southeast corner of Fourth and Broadway where the old Morton theater stood for many years until destroyed by fire. Hunched up, with his head between his shoulders, chuckling over his favorites — more than one of his former school teachers and quite a number of his chums remember Irvin enjoying that sport which King Reader alone knows. It is interesting to note the prominence attained by many who went to Miss Dodson. William F. Bradshaw, Jr., president of the Mechanics Trust and Savings Bank and a well known attorney, attended school to her, as did Will and Harry Gilbert, the latter a pianist of exceptional ability whose compositions have gained for him national repute. Richard I. Scott, the actor, was in her classes, as were George H. Goodman, owner of the News-Democrat, and Will E. Cochran of Paducah and John H. Cochran of New York City. Louis W. Henneberger, George S. DuBois, and former Mayor 90 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY James P. Smith attended school to Miss Dodson. The following were also her pupils, though the list could be lengthened to pages: Messrs. and Mesdames David D. Koger, John B. Davis; Dr. and Mrs. Will V. Owen; Mesdames Ed Rivers, Edward H. Bringhurst, Alben W. Barkley, Charles K. Wheeler, Wynn Tully, Ben J. Billings, Maide Bradshaw Murray, Will C. Clark; and Misses Mary K. Sowell and Ina Rollston. An interest- ing fact is that two of the principals in the Paducah schools at this time attended school to Miss Dodson — Miss Mabel C. Roberts of the McKinley School and Miss Catherine Thomas of the Whittier School. Miss Clare Winston, teacher of geography at Washington Junior High School, was also one of her pupils. READ "LIGHT" LITERATURE You have read Mr. Cobb's "In Defense of Old Cap Collier," but do you know that the barn of which he speaks and in whose loft he read of the desperate courage and phenomenal success of the Younger Brothers; of Rube Burrow's monumental audacity and predatory warfare against society; of the outlawry of the noted James boys whose very name inspired terror in the hearts of peaceable citizens — do you know the barn in which he surreptitiously read the unexpurgated lucubrations of Harry Hawkeye and A. W. Buel is still standing? The roof partly removed by the elements and leaning with the years, the old dilapidated structure will probably weather a few more seasons back of the Lenox apartments between Sixth and Seventh streets on the south side of Broadway where the Cobb family lived until a few years ago. The barn is eighteen feet high. The loft proper measures six feet to the gable. The weary structure is twelve by twenty-four feet in size over all and now is used as a coalhouse. It is only fair to add that in Irvin Cobb's earlier years more worthwhile reading matter gave him strength to offset possible mental contamination. With his departure from the Longfellow school at Fifth and Kentucky Avenue in the fall of 1890, Irvin P A D U C A H A N S IN HISTORY 91 Cobb attended the private school for boys and girls in Arcadia adjoining the Schmaus home and which with enlargements is still standing. This institution was conducted by Prof. William A. Cade, who after several years' teaching in Paducah returned to his home state, Alabama, where he died about fifteen years ago. A cultivated gentleman of unusual scholarship, a brilliant thinker and well known student of the drama, Professor Cade organized a Shakespearean club in the city, a club whose life and activities attracted considerable attention in western Kentucky. Quiet and unobtrusive, he was one of those well educated characters that not one out of a thousand rightly values nor fully understands. Professor Cade early became attached to young Cobb. Though no exceptional partiality was shown the "long, lean, lanky boy of awkward actions," the pro- fessor recognized in him the radiance of a student above average intelligence. He chummed with Irvin Cobb, as he chummed with the other boys; he was their intimate associate, their friend. On Friday afternoons Irvin made it a custom to stay over Saturday at "Gray Gabels," a big two-story brick three blocks from the school and at that time the home of Dr. and Mrs. W. H. Sanders, one of Cobb's schoolfellows under Professor Cade. CADE IS INSPIRATION On bright Saturday mornings Professor Cade would accompany the Sanders boys and Cobb and two or three more to the Perkins Creek vicinity, where the party would spend the day hunting and fishing. But it was not a full day unless the boys seated themselves on the creek banks and enjoyed the professor's old Southern songs and Dixieland memories of which he seemed to have an inexhaustible store. As a story teller it is not at all improbable that Irvin S. Cobb received much in- spiration and benefit from the incidents the middle-aged professor related thirty years ago on the banks of Perkins Creek. In the schoolroom under Professor Cade's tutelage young Cobb was especially keen. He excelled in 92 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY literature and history where his ability to retain facts served him well, though here again he stumbled over problems in higher mathematics. He could read and digest ten pages of history assignment while other students read one, for he had even in those days a faculty for glancing at a paragraph and selecting the verbs, nouns and principal parts of speech and getting the thought. He was an exceptionally fast reader; he was the fastest reader in Professor Cade's school. While at school he rarely engaged in fistic strife. One of his classmates vows he "could pacify things with his talk," which was an accomplishment, indeed, in those days of rough and ready American schoolboys. Cobb was a great talker. Even while a ninth grade pupil in Miss Dodson's room he exhibited some pro- ficiency in and decided generosity of speech ; so much so, in fact, that she recalls "the only rule he ever broke was the one with regard to talking to those around him." It was clear that he was well supplied with ideas and wished to make them known. He carried the same habit with him to Professor Cade's institution. Curiously enough, perhaps to Cobb and a few others, the professor would not tolerate random talk during the class periods. His favorite punishment for this offense was memorizing poetry. Looking back to those days, a fellow student of Cobb's tells that the prodigy suffered no great infliction from this means of censure. "Cobb could read it over two or three times and know it," he says. COBB UNUSUALLY RETENTIVE It is said that Thomas Vincent had the New Testa- ment and Psalms by heart, and Henry de Mesmes could repeat the whole of Homer; yet the retentive ability of these mental giants was no greater in comparison than the performance of the boy Cobb at school. One one occasion Irvin was seen and heard expostulat- ing his esoteric cogitations to a number of students intent on hearing what he had to say even though the lesson was in progress. He was promptly called to PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 93 book and given seventy verses of Shakespeare to memorize. It was hardly two hours after the other pupils were dismissed when Irvin had learned the lines by rote. The professor realized need of severer punish- ment in Irvin's case and admonished him that in the future he would be given Latin to memorize. Professor Cade's amazement was even greater when young Cobb quoted the Latin verses. It was real punishment to Irvin, however, when the good professor made him translate it as he gave it from memory ! Professor Cade stressed particularly the use of good, idomatic English in the school room. He also advocated it use outside and during recess, to the extent that the scholars were told to note errors among themselves and report them latter. It was the custom to get up before the class and tell of any grammatical errors or mistakes the other had made. Irvin and a young fellow named Robert Quarles were spoken of as approaching infallibility along this line — the same Robert Quarles, it might be interjected, who later became superintendent of public instruction for Idaho. There was keen rivalry between these two for perfection in English honors, and they frequently en- gaged in arguments and heated disputes. It was follow- ing recess one Monday morning that Irvin rose to his feet and said, "Professor, I have two on Robert Quarles." Of course everybody knew what that meant. "All right, Irvin, what did he say?" asked the thorough master. "Robert Quarles said 'possum' of 'o'possum' and 'coon' for 'raccoon.' " It was unusual indeed to have two blunders on one classmate — especially a classmate like Quarles. VICTIM OF JOKES Irvin was living on Broadway where the Lenox apartments now stand, and it was a two-mile walk to the Arcadia private school. Naturally credulous, he be- lieved almost anything told him about the country. Having covered the distance to the school more times than he could easily enumerate he received what to most boys would be sufficient pedestrian exercise. All the 94 P A D U C A H A X S IX HISTORY same, he rarely missed a Saturday in the great outdoors with the party of boys who met at "Gray Gables" and started for Perkins Creek. The favorite hobby among McCracken county boys in those days was bird egg collecting. Irvin had accumulated an interesting number, but like all the young fellows he had a umulative desire for more and rarer ones. While the hobby was at its height, some boys sought him and displayed what they claimed was a buzzard egg, a very rare specimen. Irvin paid "a fancy price" for it, getting in return a hen egg spotted with ripe blackberries. His comrades often took ad- vantage of his good nature, a disposition which it was hard to ruffle. But perhaps the best joke played on Irvin Cobb was a duck hunt which a number of the boys organized and maneuvered to his expense account. Whether the season had passed or wild ducks in Perkins Creek vicinity re- ceived advance notice of the party's coming, is not related ; but there were no wild ducks that Saturday in proximity to that stream. However, Irvin did not know a wild duck from any other, so the boys decided to have a little sport. After a while half a dozen tame ducks were spied and these were pointed out to Irvin as the wildest of the wild. Getting as close as he possibly could, he banged away. He shot two, going through all the antics of a Zulu in Africa's jungles. The boys did not show their inward amusement. Rather, they complimented him on his markmanship. But they insisted on going home another way than they came — a path that led them past the owner's house. When he saw what young Cobb had bagged he ap- parently made no effort to conceal his anger, and what he told him is as fresh in Irvin Cobb's recollections of "narrow escapes" as anything that ever happened before or since. The juvenile sportsman was obliged to pay the infuriated farmer $1.50. The humor of the situation appears all the greater when it is known that Irvin proudly exhibited the ducks to the farmer, whose anger was only heightened by what he considered an attempt PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 95 to turn the dilemma into an open joke. He scarcely considered the remuneration equal to the loss of his prize ducks, and Irvin had to do a whole lot of talking to pacify the old fellow and convince him of hie misjudgment. It would be an injustice to speak of Irvin S. Cobb's school days and omit mention of his skill at drawing anything that occurred to him. His ability along this line first showed itself while he was a student in Miss Adah Brazelton's room, and again when he went to Miss Dodson. He showed greater proficiency a few years later when with Professor Cade. The incongruity of some of the sights he pictured gained for him the reputation among his schoolfellows as being an artist who drew "funny pictures." It was principally as an illustrator, a cartoonist, that Irvin S. Cobb came to the News office on the 16th of January, 1893. Julius Caesar is said to have added two columns of figures at the same moment, while Napoleon directed three officers at the same time and Lincoln accomplished equal feats of mentality; but shortly after he joined the News staff Dr. P. H. Stewart among others saw Cobb draw a man with the left hand and a woman with the right, both at the same time — a feat of simultaneousness that called for ambidexterity and certain concentration. He could also draw two animals at the same time — a horse with the right hand and a goat with the left, as he frequently did. Irvin Cobb showed aptitude for illustrating his ideas and picturing objects as a school boy. He had a natural bent for literature and abandoned the prospects of be- coming a newspaper cartoonist that he might engage in newspaper reporting. Two years after entering the News office he was managing editor. He is today the author of twenty-four books, a collection of fiction, humor and miscellany that stamps him one of the greatest writers of the generation. HON. JESSE HAMPTON GARDNER, THE FIRST MAYOR OF PADUCAH CHAPTER VII PADUCAH'S MAYORS AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS HON. JESSE HAMPTON GARDNER THE Honorable Jesse Hampton Gardner was born in Clark county, Kentucky, September 23, 1817, the son of David and Hannah Hampton Gardner. His parents came from Rowan county, North Carolina, near the city of Lexington, in 1882, and later removed to the neighborhood of Wadesboro in Calloway county. Jesse Hampton Gardner was reared in the Wades- boro vicinity under the hardy pioneer influences of those days. He very nearly reached manhood before he came in constant contact with his schoolteacher, though by self-instruction he received a working education that served him advantageously in the business ventures he so successfully engaged in later. At 22 years of age he walked to Paducah during the summer season to procure work, an obligation due his former instructor prompting him to leave Calloway county for the town of which he was later to become the first mayor. Mr. Gardner succeeded in obtaining employment cutting wood on Owen's Island opposite Paducah, and the clearing of that isolated land to this day represents his early work and ambitious zeal. The island is girted by trees, but the center acreage is used for the cultivation of corn. The first trees ever felled there were cut down by Mr. Gardner two days after his ar- rival in Paducah. Within a month after coming to the town he was given a position in a hotel, which he held for a time, but being healthy and robust and willing to use his brain and brawn in other ways where the work was more lucrative and chances for advancement better, he then became a watchman on the wharfboat, and from that promoted to clerk in a boat store nearby. 97 98 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY In this way he received his first business acquaintance, a knowledge which he broadened with the years until he thoroughly mastered its principles. Having prospered by honest toil and frugal living, in 1846 he engaged in the mercantile business for himself, and was established in his own store for ten years, or until a disastrous blaze destroyed the building and stock. The ashes were hardly cold when Mr. Gardner had plans drawn for the erection of St. Clair Hall on the site of the burned structure, on the east side of South Second street between Broadway and Kentucky Avenue. St. Clair Hall is frequently mentioned in Irvin S. Cobb's "Old Judge Priest" stories and an endless string of memories are entwined around the old place, which was torn down and replaced by buildings of later construction. When Paducah was incorporated as a third class city March 10, 1856, the honor of being its first mayor was bestowed upon Mr. Gardner. He had previously served as a town trustee and his executive ability was now recognized and justly rewarded. Broad visioned and sensitively keen to anything auguring for the welfare of the community, he soon demonstrated the advantages to be gained by the change in municipal control. Before its adoption Mr. Gardner was an earnest advocate of the new franchise making Paducah a third class city, and he was responsible in no little degree for its adoption by an overwhelming vote of 209 to 35. Paducah became a second class city more than forty years later. Mr. Gardner's administration was of the progressive order. He possessed a business temperament which reflected itself in sound city principles and steady ad- vancement. During his administration the ground on which the News-Democrat now stands was purchased, and shortly afterward a two-story brick building was erected there and used as the first city hall. His fore- sight and wisdom was evident in many ways and he exerted no little energy in furthering measures from which the city benefited. Mr. Gardner resided at the northeast corner of Seventh and Jefferson streets during his mayoralty, later PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 99 removing to the southwest corner of Eleventh and Jefferson streets where he lived until his death. Mr. Gardner retired from the office of mayor in 1859, though he subsequently became a member of the city council and school board, and at the time of his death was treasurer of the latter. In 1861 he was made secretary-treasurer of the New Orleans & Ohio Railroad and remained in this position for five years. He was one of the organizers of the First National Bank when that institution was formed in 1865, and from its beginning served as a director and was vice president from 1870 until he died sixteen years later. He was married in 1853 to Miss Sarah M. Bourland of Lovelaceville, the daughter of Dr. Reese M. Bourland. The wedding took place at Lovelaceville. Eight children were born to the couple, four of whom are living. Mrs. Hal S. Corbett of New York City is a daughter, and Jesse Gardner of St. Louis, and Joe Gardner and W. Armour Gardner of Paducah are sons. W. Armour Gardner was Commissioner of Property in Paducah from November, 1916, to January 3, 1920. In bis sixty-eighth year Jesse Hampton Gardner died in Paducah at 9:30 o'clock Monday evening, March 1, 1886, from heart affection. His demise was marked with the usual expressions of sorrows that come with the passing of a successful man and useful citizen. His life indeed had been one of usefulness to his family, community and Commonwealth, and the example he set has no doubt been an inspiration to his progeny, all of whom have held and are holding prominent positions both in Paducah and elsewhere. He preceded his life's companion to the grave by thirty years, Mrs. Gardner dying November 4, 1916. She was born March 29, 1835. Funeral services for Mr. Gardner were held the fol- lowing Wednesday afternoon and interment was in Oak Grove cemetery, where a twenty-foot shaft stands as a sentinel at his last resting place. A slab marks the grave and on it is an arch-like design in which the word "Father" is carved in relief. The shaft bears the date of his birth and death, and also the concluding lines of 100 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY Bryant's "Thanatopsis" slightly changed : "Like one who wears the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." The Gardner lot is on Ivy Avenue, directly across from the Benjamin H. Wisdom lot. The first mayor Paducah knew and the first to die, it was eminently fitting that his four successors should be present when the casket was lowered into its quiet resting place. HON. JOHN W. SAUNER The Honorable John W. Sauner was born in Nash- ville, Tenn., May 31, 1824, the son of John and Eliza Sauner. He was named for his father, whose trade of carpenter he learned after his parents came to Paducah in 1836. He was twelve years of age when his parents removed to the bustling little Kentucky town and here, as a lad, he soon proved by his energy, industry and good sense that he was destined to be something more than a plain citizen. Twenty-three years later, at the age of thirty-five, he became the second mayor of the city. Mr. Sauner abandoned the carpenter's trade when he was selected deputy sheriff of McCracken county, an office which he held for seven years during which he distinguished himself by successfully managing the various affairs and carrying out the many duties incumbent upon an officer in that capacity. He was then chosen sheriff, and here again he showed unusual ability as a public officer and met the require- ments of the commission in a way by no means ordinary. In the execution of the laws, the serving of judicial writs and processes, and the preservation of peace he was as fearless and faithful as any man who ever held the shrievalty. He also served four years as city marshal. Elected in 1859 as the second mayor of Paducah for a period of two years, Mr. Sauner conducted the office in a manner both creditable to himself and the city, and was justly rewarded for his attention to the public service by re-election in 1861, He served until 1863 when he retired, but in 1867 his name was again placed before PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 101 the citizens and he was given the office by a handsome vote. The efforts he put forth during his third adminis- tration w^ere such as to elicit commendation from every side, and in 1869 when he aspired to the office for the fourth time his candidacy proved equal to re-election. He retired from the chief executive office in 1871, having served eight years in all as mayor of the city to which he came as a barefoot boy. As chief executive he strove to continue the city's established policy of steady growth and upright conduct, which he carried forward with zeal and unerring precision. An incident of historic interest occurring during the latter part of Mr. Sauner's first administration was the printing of General U. S. Grant's proclamation to the people of Paducah, advising them of the military course he would pursue during his occupancy of the city. General Grant had read the notice to a small gathering at the southeast corner of First and Broadway, a marker now indicating the spot where he stood. However, many of the citizens had crossed to the Illinois shore with the coming of Union troops, and General Grant requested Mr. Sauner to come to his headquarters where he ex- plained that the meager audience hearing the proclama- tion made it necessary that it be published and given the public. Mr. Sauner promptly complied with the General's wishes and had a sufficient number printed and distributed. A copy of the faded proclamation, yellow with the years and torn by handling, is in the possession of Rodney C. Davis. Mr. Sauner was elected jailer of McCracken county in 1882, demonstrating a faithfulness and efficiency rarely equalled. He was twice married, his first wife to whom he was married in April, 1843, being Miss Phoebe E. Forrest. A daughter was born to this couple. Miss Nellie G. Sauner, who in marriage became Mrs. John T. Zelner. During his early residence in Paducah Mr. Sauner resided at the northwest corner of Third and Madison streets, later removing to 431 South Sixth street where he lived for three years. While residing at the latter 102 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY place he personally superintended the building of a residence for himself diagonally across the street at 420 South Sixth street, an attractive frame house which after thirty years exhibits his talent and skill as an artisan. Mr. Sauner died at 5:30 o'clock on Thursday after- noon, July 17, 1890 in the new home he had completed only a short while before. The funeral services were held from his residence at 5 o'clock the following Friday afternoon. Archdeacon Taylor of the Episcopal church conducting the services and burial taking place in Oak Grove cemetery. The grave is situated on Rest Avenue near the western edge of the burial ground, the section that was formerly the principal part of Oak Grove. It is south of the Atkins monument and at the head a six-foot shaft bears chiseling which gives the dates of birth and death. The word "Sauner" in four-inch letters a foot from the ground can be seen from the roadway and the steps leading into the little plot are marked in a similar way. HON. JOHN G. FISHER The Honorable John G. Fisher was born in Wurttem- berg, Germany, October 1, 1816, and at the age of eighteen immigrated to America, locating in Philadelphia where he learned the trade of baker. He remained in the Pennsylvania metropolis for four years and removed to Paducah in 1838. Mr. Fisher followed the occupation of baker until 1857, when he established a brewery at First and Jefferson streets, returning to the bakery business after an absence of sixteen years from his first trade. His bakery store was located at Third and Kentucky Avenue. Mr. Fisher's honest interest in public affairs and his administrative ability were clearly recognized in his election to public offices, for aside from being chosen mayor on three occasions his name is found among the first board of town trustees and later when Paducah was incorporated as a third class city he was a member of the city council for four years, discharging the duties at- tendant upon that office with credit to himself and un- PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 103 feigned satisfaction to his constituency. He was also city tax collector. Becoming a candidate for the highest office within the gift of the city, Mr. Fisher was elected mayor in 1863 for a period of two years, at the end of which he was implored to again offer his name. His consent for- closed his re-election and he was given the office until 1867, four years during which the city experienced a decided growth and many public improvements. Friends succeeded in having Mr. Fisher become a candidate for mayor again in 1875 and his continued popularity and success as a public official gained for him the office by a surprisingly large vote. Election to the mayoralty was for two years, as before, making Mr. Fisher's incumbency six years in all. Mr. Fisher was married in McCracken county in 1842 to Miss Mary F. Greif, and nine children were born of this union. Frank M. Fisher, formerly publisher of The Evening Sun and later postmaster, and now presi- dent of the Ohio Valley Fire and Marine Insurance Company is a son. The section of Paducah known as Fisherville was named after the city's third mayor as were also the old Fisher Gardens which even today hold memories of happy events of long ago. This recreational center, sometimes called Belleview Garden, was located south of what is now Husbands street and extended south to Cross Creek, running east from halfway between Sixth and Seventh streets and west to a point between Ninth and Tenth streets. The park covered nearly ten acres. There is nothing to show where it was located, save the large brick brewery cellar a hundred feet east of the intersection of Ninth and George streets. A large dancing pavilion with sawdust floor was but one of the attractions at the famous grounds, for the small lake at the foot of the hill was used for swimming purposes, and tenpins, horseshoe throwing, fastening a ring over a hook and other wholesome games requiring skill, strength and agility were indulged in by young and old alike. Target shooting drew many marksmen to the 104 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY grounds. The park was reached by buggy or on foot, though on special days an omnibus carrying forty passengers ran regular trips from First and Broadway. The Fourth of July never failed to draw fewer than six thousand people from all parts of the county, the patriotic addresses at Fisher's Garden on that day ring- ing in the ears of survivors of both causes in the Civil War and other citizens while the fireworks display the same evening was a show of pyrotechny never to be for- gotten. On these special occasions extra policemen were employed by the management and it was the custom to select the city's most troublesome characters, the park officials explaining that the disturbing element was thus kept employed and the less annoying feared the new police not so much through authority they possessed but rather because of the reputations they bore, Mr. Fisher died at his home, 421 South Fourth street, at 5 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, November 17, 1896. Injuries received in a fall a few days before precipitated the end. The funeral was held from the residence on Thursday afternoon at 2 o'clock, the Reverend J. C. Tully conducting the services. Interment was in Oak Grove cemetery and the pallbearers were Charles Reed, Joseph H. Johnson, J. R. Smith, M. Bloom, Ferd Hummel, Sr., and Captain Jack Lawson. Bespeaking the dignity and character of the former mayor who sleeps nearby, the Concord granite stone at the head of the green grave on Rest Avenue tells who is buried there, when he was born and the date when he died. It is a massive memorial, seven feet high and conspicuously set. HON. MEYER WEIL The Honorable Meyer Weil was born in Hohenzollern, Prussia, June 29, 1830, but in 1847 he immigrated to America and came to Smithland, Ky. After residing at Smithland for several years he went to Wadesboro and then to Mayfield, engaging in the mercantile business in the latter towns and accumulating a competency be- fore coming to Paducah in 1863. Immediately upon PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 105 locating here he again entered the mercantile business, but soon turned his attention to the tobacco and broker- age trade, and for a number of years did a large and successful business in this line. In 1870 Mr. Weil was elected a member of the city- council from the First Ward. His close and careful attention to duties and his interest and earnestness in financial and public affairs so pleased the people that he was requested to become a candidate for mayor. He consented and in 1871 was elected for a term of two years. He proved a zealous guardian of public interests and his judicious administration restored the credit of the city, previously at a low ebb. Re-elected in 1873 for another two years, one term intervened and he was again chosen as mayor in 1877. During Mr. Weil's initial term the first city hospital was erected in March, 1872. The building was situated on South Fifth street beyond Husbands street and was built at a cost of $3,317.63. The seed he had sown in each previous administra- tion showed good fruit and through his efforts probably more than any other the city was brought to a financial position second to that of no municipality in the State. That his administration of affairs was sound, and the policy he pursued wise needs no other proof than that it was endorsed by his election to the chief executive office on four occasions. Following expiration of his third term, he was again elected in 1879 for a period of two years. While a resident of Wadesboro in 1853, Mr. Weil was married to a Miss Wilson, but she lived only a year after the marriage. He was married the second time to Miss Rose Funk in 1860 while residing at Mayfield, and three sons and two daughters were born to this couple. During the State elections in August, 1887, Mr. Weil was put forward by the Democratic party, of which he was a staunch supporter, and chosen representative in a heated contest over three opponents. In 1889 he was re-elected, and McCracken county probably never had a more faithful and fearless representative in the State 106 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY capitol. He was always on the alert for anything af- fecting his consituency, proving himself an earnest advocate for a reduction of unnecessary expenditures and limiting State taxes. As a member of the Kentucky Legislature Mr. Weil distinguished himself by his pithy remarks in impromptu speech; he was unusually keen, and his sentences be- came celebrated through their forceful content and brevity. On one occasion when excitement was running high over a bill proposing reduction of the tax rate, the opposition reached heights of eloquence in disap- proving a change. In an unguarded moment one "high tax" orator, in pointing out the danger of a deficit, mentioned the name of a State ex-treasurer who appro- priated a sum of the public fund to his own use. Instantly Mr. Weil was on his feet. "That's just where the trouble is," he thundered. "We don't want money in the treasury; we want a deficit. Who ever heard of any State treasurer running away with a deficit?" This clever retort won the House and added to his reputation for quick, sharp, pungent speech. It was natural that Mr. Weil should oppose long sessions of the Legislature ; unnecessary wrangling seemed a waste of the people's money to him, and he favored adjournment when there was nothing before the House. One day during the middle of the session of 1887-88, Mr. Weil was in high disgust. Some parlia- mentary sharp-shooting was in progress and he fidgeted in his seat, looked at the clock and felt the need of adjourning. Finally there came a lull. "I object!" he shouted at the Speaker from his desk. "To what does the gentleman object?" inquired Speaker Johnson from the chair; "there is nothing at present before the House." To which Mr. Weil retorted: "That's why I object. What's the use of a hundred men sitting here like dummies with nothing before the House? What are we here for, I'd like to know? We'd better go home. This is robbery." With the conclusion of his last term in the State Legislature Mr. Weil returned to Paducah and devoted PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 107 his time to looking after his property interests, of which he had acquired considerable. Mr. Weil died in Paducah at 3 o'clock Monday morning, April 13, 1891, death resulting from brain fever with which he was stricken a week previous to the end. In January he suffered an attack of rheumatism which gradually became more severe and made death a welcome relief. His passing, however, occasioned deep sorrow through the city and State, for he was beloved by all and bore malice toward none. Himself modest and of a retiring disposition, it was his especial request that there be no display at the funeral services. His wishes were carried out so far as it was possible, but at 3 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon not more than a tenth of the friends assembled at his late residence at 417 North Sixth street could crowd into the house to pay slight tribute to a friend and fellow citizen. Rev. W. E. Cave, of the First Presbyterian Church, spoke feelingly of the life and character of the former mayor. The remains were borne to Oak Grove cemetery where Reverend Cave offered a prayer and the benediction was spoken. The grave faces Mercy Avenue and is marked by an imposing memorial. The active pallbearers included Judge J. C. Gilbert, Captain R. G. Rouse, Major J. H. Ashcraft, M. K. Scott, M. Livingston, R. Loeb and Herman Wallerstein. Former Mayor D. A. Yeiser, who was then the city's chief execu- tive was one of the honorary pallbearers, as were ex- Mayors Joseph H. Johnson and Charles Reed. Daisy Fitzhugh Ayres, a well known newspaper writer formerly of Louisville but now of Washington, paid a glowing tribute to Mr. Weil in the Courier- Journal. She knew him best as she saw him on her visits to the State capitol at Frankfort. "Mr. Weil was tall and yet stockily built," she wrote in part. "He never sought to make friends, and yet made them by the score. He never did anything without appearing to be in deadly earnest, and he was just as earnest at heart about it as he appeared to be." The tribute made a column in the Louisville newspaper and was widely quoted. It was but 108 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY one of the press references touching upon the life and work of a faithful, trustworthy public servant, ever cognizant of the confidence reposed in him and ever desirous of keeping his official record unstained. That he should accomplish much good as a servant of the people was only becoming Hon. Meyer Weil, for he was an honest advocate of justice and right. HON. CHARLES REED The Honorable Charles Reed was born in Paducah, ■November 4, 1842. He was a son of W. H. Reed, one of the pioneer contractors in Western Kentucky. Enjoy- ing public school advantages until twelve years old, he quit the schools at this age and found employment as an apprentice in the tobacco trade, at which he was occupied until the Civil War when as a youth of nineteen he laid aside his daily tasks for the hazordous routine of a Confederate soldier. He was first under the command of General Lloyd Tilghman but later became a member of Forrest's cavalry and participated in the raid on Paducah. He fought in the sanguinary battle of Shiloh, and in the lessor conflicts at Corinth and Harrisburg. At the close of the Civil War he had attained the rank of Captain. Returning to Paducah he found himself with an en- viable record for loyalty but without financial means. During his tobacco apprenticeship he showed ability and learned the habits of industry, which he utilized in such a way that in 1872 he became associated with the firm of Hobbs, Morton & Reed in a large woolen manufactur- ing plant. He relinquished his connection with the woolen mills in 1876 and purchased half interest in the Richmond House at First and Broadway, later becoming sole proprietor. Still later Mr. Reed took charge of the Palmer House, where his ability in caring for the transient trade made the hotel one of the leading hostelries in the central States. Charitable, public-spirited and always active in the welfare of his native city, Mr. Reed was chosen as a councilman before being called to the office of mayor, to PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 109 which he was elected for the first time on March 21, 1881. In this latter and broader capacity he had oppor- tunity to display those executive gifts with which he was endowed, and the initial term of his mayoralty was marked by decided civic advancement on every side. Several thoroughfares were opened and fresh gravel placed upon the worn streets. The city had outgrown the valiant though inadequate bucket brigades and voluntary fire departments by many years, and realizing the hazards of allowing the city to go on under such protection, Mr. Reed was instrumental in establishing the first paid fire department in Paducah in 1882. In appreciation of his service to the city he was again chosen mayor in 1883, the successful administration of public affairs as exhibited in his first and second terms causing him to be rewarded with the office for the third time in March, 1885. His record was so commendatory and he had gained so many friends that he was chosen for the fourth time in 1887, serving four terms in all or eight years. In the year 1886 and during Mr, Reed's third admin- istration, the cross streets in the city were renamed and places of residence and business numbered. Previously what is now known as First street was called Main, Second street bore the name Market, and Third and Fourth streets respectively were from the time of their laying out designated Locust and Oak. Fifth street was Chestnut, Sixth was Walnut, Seventh was Poplar, Eighth was Hickory, and Ninth bore the name of Churchill Avenue. Under the direction of Postmaster William C. Clark free mail delivery was established July 1, 1886, and the carriers receiving routes were John W. Baynham, W. P. Hummel, Ed Bonds and Pete Derrington. Upon retiring from the mayoralty in 1889 Mr. Reed resumed his hotel business and as manager of the Palmer House he operated that hotel until two years before his death. He was obliged to give up active management owing to ill health. Shortly after the Civil War, Mr. Reed was married to Miss Jessie Wood, the daughter of Captain Elijah 110 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY Wood. Mrs. Edmund P. Noble of West Broadway is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Reed. Mrs. Reed died September 14, 1890. Hon. Charles Reed was one of the best known citizens Paducah ever knew. Coming in contact with the traveling public through his hotel connections and al- ways laboring for the advancement of the city, he was peculiarly fitted for making and retaining friendships. For thirty years a man of affairs, graduated in the school of experience, he knew how to manage important matters and bring out the advantageous points in any endeavor. Many of the older citizens recall the genial ways Mr. Reed had of entertaining friends. One of these was his employment of military bands which played the familiar airs of the Civil War in front of his hotel at First and Broadway. The veterans would assemble and enjoy the treats, though the pleasure he himself received from the old-time music was not exceeded by that of any of his former Confederate comrades. Mr. Reed died at the home of his daughter at 10:05 o'clock Thursday evening, October 28, 1908. Brain fever was the cause of death. He had returned from Chicago where specialists advised him there was no remedy, but was not confined to his bed until a few days before the end came. The funeral occurred at 3 o'clock Saturday afternoon, Rev. David Cady Wright of Grace (Episcopal) Church officiating. The remains were placed in a vault slightly to the left of and near the entrance in Oak Grove cemetery. The following Con- federate veterans were the pallbearers: Dr. J. G. Brooks, Captain Harrison Watts, Charles F. Jarrett, General H. A. Tyler of Hickman, Judge R. J. Barber and W. H. Patterson. The former mayor and ex-Confederate veteran was laid away in the uniform he wore during the civil conflict. The expressions of regret attending the death of Mr. Reed were State-wide, and his fine traits met with praise in the press. A Paducah newspaper spoke of "the ease and ability with which he presided over a body of men" PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 111 and called him "a born parliamentarian." Another spoke of his unostentatious philanthropy and extolled that generous spirit that was his through life. A Hen- derson (Ky.) newspaper said "he was a man of fine business mind and habits, thoroughly posted on the governmental affairs of Paducah," and added that he was "genial and clever and possessed a heart as big as the land in which he lived." HON. JOSEPH HENRY JOHNSON The Honorable Joseph Henry Johnson was born in Pittsburg, Pa., July 8, 1829, the oldest of nine children born to William and Chloe Neal Johnson. He was educated in the public schools in Pittsburg and at the University of Pittsburg, attending the latter while learn- ing at intervals the trade of machinist in a large foundry and machine shop where his father was superintendent. At the age of eighteen he went to St. Louis, Mo., and soon became superintendent in a leading machine shop there. In this capacity he not only demonstrated skill as an expert machinist, but displayed ability as manager of such a plant, and also gained experience which served him well in later years. A natural mechanical impulse made the acquisition of knowledge along these lines comparatively easy. Coming to Paducah in 1856, Mr. Johnson built the Plain City Foundry which he operated until the Civil War. He then became interested in steamboats and was part or sole owner, and captain, of several well known boats plying the Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee rivers. The last steamboat he owned was the David Watts, a Paducah-built craft which carried Government supplies throughout the civil conflict. After this steamer was destroyed by ice at St. Louis in 1866, Captain Johnson returned to his foundry which he successfully managed until its destruction by fire in 1868. The following year Captain Johnson built the Phoenix Foundry on the ruins of the Plain City plant, at Second and Tennessee streets. In this he was associated with his brother, William Johnson. The Phoenix Foundry 112 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY later became the Johnson Foundry & Machine Company, with Charles S. and Mendal W. Johnson, sons, and J. P. Wilson, son-in-law, as associates. This partnership continued until he retired from the business in 1889, when he was elected the sixth mayor of Paducah for a term of two years. Captain Johnson's management of public affairs was marked by numerous improvements of a lasting character. His term of office was purely a business one, for he had always evinced an interest in the upbuild- ing of the city and encouragement of new factories and better terminal facilities. The Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway, originally the Paducah, Tennessee & Alabama Railroad, came to Paducah in 1889, the city in January subscribing $100,000 toward the project. He expended no small amount of his means in providing this new railroad for the city. The street railway system was also electrified during Captain Johnson's administration and a power plant erected on Broadway where the present barns are situ- ated. The first electric street cars appeared on the Paducah streets July 4, 1889, substituting the old horse- drawn cars. Captain Johnson assisted in forming the Relief Fire Company, one of the two pioneer volunteer fire fighting organizations defending the city from disastrous con- flagrations until the present paid department was insti- tuted in 1882. Captain Johnson not only seconded organization of the volunteer department but served as a valiant fireman in extinguishing many threatening blazes. As a representative of his ward in the City Council, Captain Johnson advocated a number of remedial measures still sustained, and in this capacity achieved a record for faithfulness and earnestness of purpose. He was a member of the Paducah School Board for twelve years, part of the time serving as president. The old Johnson Foundry & Machine Company plant was destroyed by fire on Tuesday evening, July 15, 1902, the blaze originating from an unknown source. It was PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 113 discovered by the crew on the passing steamer Monie Bauer, but the fire had gained such headway that the venerable plant was in ruins before an alarm was sounded. In stature, Captain Johnson was a large man, weigh- ing two hundred and forty pounds, and standing five feet ten inches in height. He had a florid complexion, with the light hair and blue eyes of the Anglo-Saxons. God and environment had endowed him with a happy, genial disposition and he made friends easily and apparently knew almost every body in Paducah, as well as being known by them as "Captain Joe". Like most physically large people his heart was fasKioned in pro- portion to his body, and he was charitable and kind- hearted at all times. Captain Johnson was married in St. Louis, July 5, 1851, to Miss Elizabeth A. Yandell, whose father John Yandell came to St. Louis from Nashville, Tenn. He was connected with the company erecting the first telegraphic wires between Nashville and St. Louis, choosing the latter city as a place of residence when communication was established. Six children were born to Captain and Mrs. Johnson, two dying in infancy. The oldest son, Charles S. Johnson died in 1912, and Mendal W. Johnson died in 1906, while Mrs. Chloe N. Wilson, a daughter, died in 1910. J. Y. Johnson of St. Louis is a son. Captain Johnson's wife was born October 20, 1835 and died April 28, 1906. Captain Johnson died at his home in Paducah at 3:30 o'clock Monday morning, December 8, 1902. A heart affection and dropsy were the cause of death. He had been in ill health for two years at his late residence, the two-story house still standing at 401 South Fourth street. Funeral services were held the following Tuesday afternoon at 2:30 o'clock, the remains being taken to the First Christian church where a large crowd has assembled to pay their last respects to one who had been loyal to his city and generous in his dealings with his fellowmen. The pastor. Rev. W. H. Pinkerton made a brief address. Captain Johnson had been a member of the First 114 P A D U C A H A N S IN HISTORY Christian church and for twenty years was a leader in the choir. The city officials attended the obsequies in a body to do honor to the departed soul of a man whom they all respected. Burial took place in Oak Grove cemeteiy on Magnolia Avenue, where a white stone four feet high with the name "Johnson"' carved upon it now points the spot where the sixth mayor of Paducah sleeps. The pallbearers were Mayor D. A. Yeiser. former Mayor Charles Reed, Judge D. A. Sanders, T. W. Baird, J. V. Greif and Ed Woolfolk. HON. DA^TD A. YEISER. SR. The Honorable Da\id A. Yeiser. Sr.. was born at Danville. Ky.. October 13. 1845. the son of Philip D. and Eleanor Hilliard Durham Yeiser. His mother having died at Danville, the family removed to Eddyville. Ky. He attended the public schools at Eddj-^ille and came to Paducah. January 1, 1862. He was destined to become the seventh mayor of the city, an honor which was bestowed upon him five times and in which capacity he served longer than any chief executive who ever held the office. David A. Yeiser. Sr.. obtained his first employment as a clerk in Cope & Neel's store which in the olden days stood at 127 Broadway, later becoming a clerk at the W. A. Bell drug store at 102 Broadway. Meanwhile, the Cope & Xeel store was sold and changed its name to Puryear & Newman, and Mr. Yeiser returned to it at the earnest solicitation of the proprietors. In the Fall of 1866 Mr. Yeiser engaged in the drug business for himself, procuring the building at the south- west comer of Third and Adams streets. Three years later, or in 1869, he removed his stock to the two-story brick building at the southwest comer of Third and Jackson, a location spoken of in Ir\-in S. Cobb's popular ''Old Judge Priest" stories. While he enjoyed a good business in his first location, the latter building just one block south seemed more fitted for carrying a full and complete line of drugs, ? A : : A E A : .^ : x histo et iis toilet _ -- ar.i =:n'r^-= ind within a few years he became •: : ists in west Kentuci^. The denic..-. ^_ ^^ —. . -^othecary exteiMled to other parts of the city. rr opened another store at t. .'east comer oi rii Roadway. He retired fr-._ :„c drag - -— ^;- , - yeais ago, pursuing other activftie - . . ts to mofre diverse interests - has c : - If. Becoming^ a ^^ .-- ,: -- City C - ~r represented the Fifth '^ard in a <: : - giving freely of his ^ prosecution of thos^ - _ : _ permanent good. Hi? ; - : - t :es "«"a5 of such an enviable z.}.'.:- :.}.' : - prevailed upon him to offer h: - r cis - ---,„---, and in 1891 he was to the vote. He seive:. . ~ ' - _ oceapying the oii-ec ..__ l.r ^^ _ -.— . --. t.. ;. - terms in all or thirteen years, the t~ tzes of charter. first to a third class city and in 19u2 ro a second class municipality, bringing abo:it the rt^t -.-— -er :f vears he was in office. One of the principal achievement- j the nrst six years of Mr. Yeisers £"' — '-"-~:.~~. - ":"e TTmal sewer system construction. . ._ - r . sleeping with the progress and growth of the city. The building of this sewer system followed by constrnction of ad- ditional lines during Mayor Lang's tenn of o±5ce. meant improvement of health conditions and better sanitation. and contribated in no meager way toward the elimination of many diseases incidental to nnheaiihful surroundings. The work of sewering the remainder of the city was begun August 6. 1922 under Mayor F. W. Katterrohn- The number of streets improved daring Mr. Yeiser's thirteen years in office would make a long Kst in them.- selves- Standing as a memorial to his forea^t, the entire stretch of South Third ^reet with more than a mile of brick paving is still a serviceable thoioiighfare. Broadway from Fifth to Eleventh street was improved with bitulithic, as was Kenracky Avenue from First to 116 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY Tenth, and also Jefferson from Second to Eleventh. Many of the gravel streets were re-surfaced with fresh gravel, while a number of new streets were opened and several lengthened. An improvement that has grown steadily as the corporate limits of the city extended is the method of lighting the streets. When Mr. Yeiser entered upon the duties of mayor a few lamp-posts topped with gas lamps afforded light after dark on the public highways. He recognized the need of an electric light plant whose magic current would properly brighten the streets, and upon retiring from office more than two hundred arc lights supplanted the once familiar and antiquated gas lamps. Another permanent improvement reflecting the business spirit of Mr. Yeiser's mayoralty is the block stone levee running from First street to the river's edge between Jefferson street and Kentucky Avenue. Visitors arriving by steamer are instantly impressed by its civic beauty, while its endurance under the burden of heavy freight traffic is shown by its present stability. The stones replaced the gravel grade, being more serviceable and adding to the beauty of the river front. The present brick market house, representing an expenditure of $25,000, was built under Mr. Yeiser's last term of office, or during the year 1905. Riverside hospital on North Fourth street by Clay was erected the same year. Three new fire stations were erected under Mr. Yeiser's leadership, two small parks were added to the city's property and a number of public drinking fountains were installed. The Washington Junior High school was erected during his incumbency. Mr. Yeiser was married in 1871 to Miss Belle Cole of Paducah, who died shortly after marriage. He was married the second time to Miss Mary E. Coleman of Hawesville, Ky., September 25, 1876. Mr. and Mrs. Yeiser and family reside at their beautiful country home just beyond the city limits in Arcadia. Mr. Yeiser now is one of the eight supervisors of McCracken county, an PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 117 appointive office in the performance of whose duties he gives his unqualified attention and ripe judgment. There may be men of greater ability and far more integrity than Hon. David A. Yeiser, but the mayor's office in Paducah never knew^ one. HON. JAMES M. LANG The Honorable James M. Lang was born in Paducah, July 15, 1857, the son of William C. and Martha Muse Lang. He was the third child and second son of the three boys and two girls born, and was reared on a farm in McCracken county. He was educated in the public and private schools of Paducah and the county. James M. Lang entered politics through various activities and committee work for the city and county, and when a very young man he served as a member of the City Board of Health. In 1887 he was elected a member of the Paducah Board of Education and gave ten successive years to the furtherance of public school work. In the first primary election ever held in Paducah to nominate city officers. Judge Lang was selected in 1897 as the Democratic nominee for mayor and proved a successful choice at the general election. He then re- signed the presidency of and membership in the Board of Education, assuming the duties incident to the office of mayor December 6, 1897, serving for four years through 1901. The first sewer system was contracted by Judge Lang's immediate predecessor, but the Second District sewer was entirely constructed during 1898-1899. The first improved streets, notably Broadway, with brick from First to Fifth, were constructed during his term and paid for out of the city treasury instead of the present plan of paying by adjacent property. Cement sidewalks were also laid on Broadway alongside the newly paved section, the initial tryout of this material for sidewalk construction in Paducah. A short time before Judge Lang became mayor the city extended its boundary limits west, south and north, 118 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY incorporating West Broadway and the territory known as Mechanicsburg and Rowlandtown. Thus it became necessary to extend light and water to these sections, and insure adequate police and fire protection. Nearly all of the suburban gravel streets were constructed under ordinances written by Judge Lang as mayor. These streets included North Eighth and North Tenth, to the city limits, and the western sections of Monroe, Madison and Harrison streets as well as North Fourteenth, Hara- han Boulevard, and Sixteenth street. Lang Park became the first public park within the city lim.its. With the aid of Rev. G. W. Ferryman of the First Baptist church. Mayor Lang obtained the Carnegie Library building for Paducah, and the beautiful site on which the structure now stands was selected by him and purchased by the city. In courtesy for the interest he displayed in procuring the library and making the choice selection of its site. Mayor Lang's successor, Hon. David A. Yeiser, appointed Mr. Lang secretary- treasurer of the Library Building Board. At the beginning of Mayor Lang's administration the city had for a number of years carried a $20,000 debt in bonds bearing 5 per cent interest on the cost of erecting the City Hall, and this was wholly paid during his term, leaving the city property fully paid for. The city's outstanding railroad bonds were refunded at a lower rate of interest. The present police patrol system was adopted and the cornerstone of the building erected at that time bears Mayor Lang's name. In the construction of the sewerage system the city bore the cost of the main sewer from Ninth and Ken- tucky Avenue, including manholes and pumping station, and at its expense linked the Union Depot and Littleville by constructing fills through the almost impassable chasms, and hard surfacing the highways. Yet with all this the administration succeeded in establishing the record of an average tax levy of 91 y^ cents per year for city purposes, with all licenses at the lowest figures. Retiring from the mayoralty in 1901, Judge Lang for twelve years remained active in politics of the com- PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 119 munity in behalf of the aspirations of his friends and the nominees of his party in local, State and National campaigns. In 1913 Governor James B. McCreary tendered him the appointment as county judge to succeed Congress- man-elect Alben W. Barkley and at the same time he was offered the postmastership of Paducah, a rare combina- tion of circumstances and a distinct compliment. He accepted the judgship completing Judge Barkley's term, and has been elected three terms of four years each to succeed himself. Judge Lang was married to Miss Georgia McKee of Paducah in October, 1882. They reside at 1008 Clay street. Incidentally, Judge Lang is the only citizen in the county who as mayor has been the chief executive of Paducah, and as county judge the chief executive of McCracken county. HON. JAMES P. SMITH The Honorable James P. Smith was born in Paducah, November 14, 1874, the son of James R. and Mary E. Orr Smith. He attended the public schools and was graduated from the Paducah High School in the class of 1891, and two years later was graduated from the Perkins & Herple School of St. Louis, Mo. Upon completion of his studies Mr. Smith returned to Paducah and became associated in the wholesale grocery firm of J. R. Smith & Son, and at the death of his father June 3, 1904 assumed management of the business which he still controls. His business ability is reflected in the manner in which he has managed the affairs of the establishment and its steady growth. Mr. Smith was elected the ninth mayor of Paducah in November, 1907, entering upon the duties of that office the following January. His administration was non- partisan in character, and this fact added to an inde- fatigable zeal for the city's welfare marked the adminis- tration as one of the most successful in the history of the city. The four years were notable for the harmony that 120 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY existed in all departments and the number of improve- ments realized. The administration relied upon the veto on six occasions and in each instance was sustained. Among- the outstanding features of Mayor Smith's administration was the excellent condition in which the streets were maintained, these and other improvements and developments being paid for out of the general fund. At the same time, old bonds were retired and issuance of new certificates was unknown. Murrell Boulevard was improved and made one of the most beautiful thorough- fares in the city with its spacious lawn in the center and smooth roadways on either side. Broadway from Ninth street to Eleventh was improved, while streets in all parts of the city underwent general repair. Improvements along other lines during Mayor Smith's administration make a long list, including erection of Central Fire Station on Kentucky Avenue and No. 5 Fire Station at 1712 Broadway. Mr. Smith incidentally re- moving politics from the police and fire departments, and increased the wages of city employes. Exclusive of equipment, Central Fire Station alone represented an expenditure of $19,000. Mr. Smith stressed firmly the danger of inadequate fire protection and in 1909, the second year of his administration, he had gained his point to such an extent that the fire losses for that year amounted to only $27,198. Remodeling of the City Hall including the addition of the third floor and installation of an elevator as well as refurnishing the building throughout, was another achievement in 1909 which reflects the progressive spirit prevailing during Mr. Smith's incumbency. These im- provements brought on an expense of $15,284.48, while disbursements for the whole of 1909 amounted to $263,139.35. The concrete bridge over Island Creek was also built and the steel bridge on Broad street spanning Cross Creek was erected in answer to a long desire for a shorter route from Mechanicsburg to Union Station. Previously, it was necessary to come from Broad street to Jones in order to reach the passenger depot, a path as much out of way in comparison as the PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 121 circuitous route necessary by sea from New York City to San Francisco before construction of the Panama Canal. The addition to Oak Grove cemetery at the west of the entrance enhanced the value of that burial ground, as did the building of the receiving vault and construc- tion of the waiting room just outside the gates. Permanent improvements were noted at Riverside hospital where driveways were placed, a fire escape installed and a nurses' home provided. A tuberculosis sanitarium w^as established and also a smallpox hospital, the latter on the Hinkleville road three miles from the city. Organized charity was begun and a visiting nurse was engaged to call upon those in need of assistance. Riverview Park, between Broadway and Kentucky Avenue on the east side of First street was made pleasing to the eye, grass being sown and concrete sidewalks run around the grass area with the permission of the Illinois Central Railroad, which owns the spot. Several miles of concrete sidewalks were laid, especially in Mechanics- burg, and the block map system for uniform and intelligent taxation standard was adopted. The ad- ministration succeeded in having the State pass a law giving property owners ten years in which to pay for street and sidewalk improvements. The city stables on South Third street were purchased, a combination police and fire box call system was in- stalled throughout the city, saloon licenses were raised from $150 to $500, and banking arrangements were bettered. A floating debt of $40,013.03 was paid in full during Mr. Smith's term, while a cash balance of approximately $2,500 remained in the general tax fund upon his retirement from office. Shortly after Mr. Smith entered office the gunboat Paducah, the city's namesake, was presented with a beautiful $1,500 silver service set, the presentation taking place in New Orleans on Friday evening, January 17, 1908. The gunboat was named in honor of Paducah at the instance of Hon. Charles K. Wheeler, then congressman from the First District of Kentucky. Miss Anna May Yeiser, daughter of Mr. Smith's predecessor 122 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY Hon. D. A. Yeiser was sponsor, being attended by Mrs. Henry Craig Yeiser of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Miss Florence Yeiser and Miss Aline Bagby of Paducah. Others in the party that met the vessel at New Orleans were Mr. JWheeler, who made the presentation address; Henry Craig Yeiser of Cincinnati, Col. Urey Woodson of Owensboro, Ky., and Miss Frances Gould of Paducah. The U. S. S. Paducah was launched October 11, 1904 at Morris Heights, New Jersey, and was built at a cost of $392,698.97. One hundred and seventy-four feet long, the gunboat has a 35-foot beam and a draft of 12 feet, displacing 1,085 tons. The present commanding officer is Capt. Guy A. Eaton, U. S. N. R. F. The Paducah's complement of personnel when employed in the regular navy was nine officers and one hundred and fifty-two men. Since the World War the vessel has been used in the training of naval reserves. Mr. Smith was married to Miss Helen E. Rose at Golconda, 111., on November 22, 1899. She is the daughter of James A. and M. E. Rose of Springfield, 111. Mr. and Mrs. Smith have six children: James R., Elizabeth R., Mary Orr, Gus T., Charles R., and Richard C. Smith. The Smith home, known as *'Bide-a-Wee," is located three miles from Paducah on the Lone Oak road. Mr. Smith is identified with numerous commercial enterprises and is one of the most successful business men in the city. HON. THOMAS N. HAZELIP The Honorable Thomas N. Hazelip was born at Munfordsville, Hart County, Kentucky, April 6, 1877, the son of Z, T. and Mary J. Hazelip. His father was a Methodist minister and early in life stressed the im- portance of proper education and influenced in no small measure the career of his son, who was to become the tenth mayor of Paducah. Thomas N. Hazelip was raised in and educated at the public schools of Bowling Green, Ky., and was graduated from Ogden College at that place in June, 1898 with the degree of B. A. He then studied law in the office of Simms & Covington at Bowling Green, and upon PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 123 admittance to the bar in November, 1900, practiced the profession in that city for a short period. Mr. Hazelip then went to Hopkinsville where he practiced law until 1903, at which time he entered the Internal Revenue Service and held the positions of storekeeper, ganger, and department collector of internal revenue. Mr. Hazelip was married May 25, 1905, to Miss Sidney Terrell of Paducah, and since that time has made the city his place of residence. While still in the Revenue Service he opened law offices in Paducah under the firm name of Browning & Hazelip. With the removal of David Browning from Paducah, Mr. Hazelip formed a law partnership with Oscar Kahn in January, 1912, which continues under the name Hazelip & Kahn. In November, 1911, Mr. Hazelip was elected mayor, serving in that capacity for four years. During the administration Don P. Marton served as treasurer, David A. Cross judge, L. A. Washington engineer, and Maurice Mclntyre clerk. Judge Cross died November 4, 1913 shortly after his term of office expired, and is buried in Oak Grove cemetery. Mr. Marton is now located m Los Angeles, Calif. During Mr. Hazelip's term of office the first motor- driven fire truck was installed— the La France truck marked "Hazelip," now in use at the No. 2 station. This was the initial move in what has since served to place Paducah among the best fire-protected cities in the United States. In spite of the kindly sentiment held for admirable horses once kept in all of Paducah's fire stations, the safety of human beings and of property demanded the city to keep pace with its progress and growth, and the entire department has since been motorized. A sewer fund was started from general revenues which netted a saving of $60,000. The tax rate was reduced to $1.70 per $100. Numerous street improvements were made, and ordinances were passed for laying bitulithic paving on Broadway and Jefferson streets from Ninth to Fountain Avenue, a section of the city noted for its beautiful 124 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY residences and among the most popular promenades and thoroughfares in Paducah. The high water of 1913, that memorable year in which the gauge at the foot of Broadway marked the highest stage ever recorded — 54.3 feet at 7 o'clock Monday morning, April 7 — did considerable damage to many of the gravel streets. In some places holes were found and loose gravel washed from the surface, but under Mr. Hazelip's administration these streets were repaired and placed in excellent condition before his term of office expired. These improvements were made without an additional tax assessment. The highest river stage previously recorded was on February 23, 1884 when 54.2 was registered. While Mr. Hazelip was still in office the Commission Form of government was adopted and formally inaugur- ated January 1, 1915. With the new order of municipal control Frank N. Burns became Commissioner of Safety and George C. Wallace assumed control of the Depart- ment of Property. Don P. Marton was chosen Com- missioner of Finance and the Department of Works head was L. A. Washington. Retiring from the office of mayor, Mr. Hazelip was elected city commissioner in 1917 and served two years as Commissioner of Property, and in January, 1920, he became city attorney, an office which he held until the following June. Mr. Hazelip was appointed United States marshal of the Western District of Kentucky, February 7, 1922, with headquarters in Louisville. In this capacity Mr. Hazelip has given the same attention and thoughtful considera- tion that marked his administration of the highest office in the gift of the Paducah people. HON. ERNEST LACKEY The Honorable Ernest Lackey was born in Paducah, June 8, 1867, the only son of Dr. George W. and Mary J. Brian Lackey. He attended the public schools, his first teacher being Miss Fannie Bailey at the building which formerly stood on South Third street near Elizabeth. PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 125 His other school teachers included Miss Charlotte Exall, Miss May Blossom later Mrs. Charles Rieke, and Miss Mary Coleman now Mrs. D. A. Yeiser. Early in life Mr. Lackey became a traveling salesman, and for twenty years represented Hecht Brothers, formerly of Paducah but now of St. Louis. In 1910 he engaged in the real estate and insurance business and is still a member of the firm Foreman & Lackey which was established at that time. Meanwhile, Mr. Lackey represented the Fourth Ward as a councilman during 1906 and 1907, serving as an alderman from 1908 to 1915. He was chosen president of the Council Chamber and served in this position for one year, and was honored with the presidency of the Aldermanic Board for a period of four years. Elected the eleventh mayor of Paducah in 1915, Mr. Lackey entered upon the duties of that office January 1, 1916, but in June of the same year the Kentucky Court of Appeals decided against the election. However, Governor Owsley Stanley re-appointed Mr. Lackey to serve until the next election, November 4, 1916, and six days afterward the successful candidate Hon. Frank N. Burns took office. While Mr. Lackey's incumbency was less than a year, a number of achievements are outstanding and speak for the able management of public affairs. The plan to relegate the horse-drawn rigs in the fire stations was carried to successful completion, motorization of the remaining departments being undertaken. A motor car was also supplementted for the police patrol which for years had been drawn by a team of horses. It was during Mr. Lackey's administration that the Municipal Hospital on South Second street was established, and through the efforts of the Morals Commission composed of Mrs. Margaret Ford, Dr. Delia Caldwell, Andrew M. Nichols, Rabbi Lee J. Levinger, Rev. Clinton S. Quin and Commissioner Sanders E. Clay the work of renovating Paducah morally was carried forward with an earnest spirit behind it. Mr. Lackey 126 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY was the promoter of the hospital or home, and Mrs. Ford, a trained worker, was placed in charge. The project proved more than an experiment, for it afforded pro- tection and opportunity for many unfortunates. The administration let the contract for paving Broadway from First to Fifth streets with the resilient wood blocks which lighten traffic on that busy thorough- fare and eliminate much of the noise usually attending constant passing of hundreds of trucks. While bitulithic paving of Jefferson streets from Ninth to Seventeenth was not begun until 1917, the contract for this work was let under Mr. Lackey's administration. Concrete sidewalk improvements were made on several streets before Mr. Lackey retired from office January 10, 1916. Mr. Lackey was married September 10, 1889 to Miss Carrie Kreutzer of Paducah. They have six sons: Brian, W. Herndon, E. Ezell, Pierce E., Hecht S., W. Prewitt, and F. Ernest Lackey, Jr. Mr, and Mrs. Lackey reside at 2103 Broadway. HON. FRANK N. BURNS The Honorable Frank N. Burns was born at Clifton, Tenn., August 11, 1879, the son of Frank N. Burns and Sallie Harbour Burns. His mother was a sister to E. B. Harbour, formerly of Paducah but now of Los Angeles, California. Coming to Paducah in 1890 at the age of eleven years, upon the death of his parents Frank N. Burns resided at the Harbour home. He attended the Paducah public schools and then went to the Martins Mill Academy of Tennessee, going to Valparaiso University from there and receiving the degrees of B. S., A. B. and L. L. B. at the latter institution. He also took the entire course of higher mathematics at Valparaiso with a view to teaching this subject. After teaching school a year in northern Indiana, Mr. Burns entered the University of Michigan where he continued the study of law for three years, having had two years of this course at Valparaiso. The legal profession appealed more to his nature, and upon PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 127 graduation he located in Chicago and practiced law for five years with one of the leading firms in the Central West. He returned to Paducah in 1908, Mr. Burns was chosen city alderman during 1912, 1913 and 1914, and in the latter year under a change of municipal control was elected the first Commmissioner of Safety of Paducah. He entered upon the duties of this office January 1, 1915 along with Commissioners George C. Wallace of Property, Don P. Marton of Finance, and L. A. Washington of Works. In 1916 Mr. Burns was elected the twelfth mayor of Paducah, and assuming the office he served until the last year of his four year term when he resigned to accept the office of railroad commissioner for the State of Kentucky. He was elected railroad commissioner in November, 1919. During his administration as mayor Mr. Burns suc- ceeded in establishing an incineration plant, a nurses' home and a contagion hospital for children. Latest equipment for a bacteriological laboratory was purchased by the city for Riverside hospital. A concrete speaker's stand or pavilion was erected just inside the entrance at Oak Grove cemetery, the need for such a shelter having been recognized for some time. The Tennessee street trunk line sewer was con- structed during Mr. Burns' term of office, and Broadway and Jefferson from Eleventh street to Fountain Avenue were paved with bitulithic in 1917. Gravel streets underwent a general overhauling, new and compact material being placed upon many of the thoroughfares where the traffic seemed heaviest. During the World War the city maintained municipal coal and milk depots, and the City Hall becam'e a veritable clearing house for reports of Government agencies and similar bureaus. Two notable improvements in the city during Mr. Burns' term of office occurred in 1919, when the Illinois Central railroad built its commodious roundhouse at a cost of $250,000 and erected its handsome and modernly furnished hospital. The Illinois Central hospital, located 128 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY at Fifteenth and Broadway, is a fire-proof structure representing an expenditure of $165,000. Mr, Burns was married June 26, 1907 to Miss Natalie E. Fischer of Ann Arbor, Mich. They have one son, Frank N. Burns, Jr., born March 17, 1915. They reside at 507 North Seventh street. Besides performing the duties of State railroad commissioner, Mr. Burns is a member of the law firm of Reed & Burns and is associated in other businesses in Paducah. He is recognized as one of the ablest lawyers in the city, logical and keen, and is well known through Kentucky. HON. F. W. KATTERJOHN The Honorable F, W, Katterjohn was born in Louis- ville, Ky., November 13, 1860, the son of Frederick William and Christina Maria Reitman Katterjohn, He was the third child in a family of six sons and one daughter, and was named after his father, F. W, Katterjohn attended the public schools in Louisville until he was ten years old, when the family removed to Paducah on Good Friday, April 9, 1871. He attended the schools in Paducah for two years, first at the old two-story frame house that stood at the northeast corner of Fourth and Ohio streets across from the present Lee school, and then at what was known as the Kentucky University where the Washington Junior High school now stands. Thomas I. Barry of Paducah and the late Lawrence B. Pierce of St. Louis, attended the old Fourth street school at the same time Mr. Katterjohn was a pupil there. Prof. H. F. Lyon conducted the school at Fourth and Ohio streets until it was abandoned in 1872 when he became a teacher at the Kentucky University, and through this circumstance incidentally taught Mr, Katterjohn both years that he spent in the Paducah schools. At the age of twelve, F, W, Katterjohn began work at his father's brick yard and assisted in hauling brick for the construction of the Lee school building in 1874, PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY 129 Later learning the trade of bricklayer, at the age of twenty-one he was a general contractor, a business which he followed until he became personal adviser to Chief Engineer John F. Wallace in the construction of the Panama Canal. He sailed for Panama, November 9, 1904, returning to Paducah in May of the following year. As a building contractor, F. W. Katterjohn built many of the most attractive homes and business houses in the city. Under contract Mr. Katterjohn built the Paducah Water Company plant in 1885, and started construction of the Palmer House on May 1, 1887. He built the old Longfellow school, later known as the Three Links Building and now the Masonic Building in the same Spring. He also had the contract for the First Presbyterian Church at the northeast corner of Seventh and Jefferson streets which he erected in 1887. The B. Weille & Son building was erected by Mr. Katterjohn in 1893 and in the same year he erected the Temple Israel synagogue at the southwest corner of Seventh and Broadway. The Rhodes-Burford store was built under his supervision in 1895, and the Kentucky Theatre building in 1900 and in the same year he erected the Paducah Brewery Company building at the northeast corner of Tenth and Monroe streets, now oc- cupied by the City Consumers Company. Mr. Katterjohn also had the contracts for building the Smith & Scott Tobacco Company building and the addition to the Illinois Central Railroad shops. When the street rail- way was electrified, Mr. Katterjohn was engaged to build the power plant and install the machinery in the structure which stood on Broadway where the car barns are now located. Mr. Katterjohn was the organizer of the Katterjohn Construction Company of which he was president, and promoted the Greenville Construction Company until he retired from active participation in both enterprises, August 7, 1922. Becoming tax collector of Paducah in 1894, Mr. Katterjohn performed the duties of that office for two m) PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY years. Previously, in 1887 and 1888, he represented the Fourth Ward in the School Board, carefully guarding the interests of taxpayers in the matter of public schools. In the November election of 1919, Mr. Katterjohn was elected mayor of Paducah to succeed Hon. Frank N. Burns, taking the office on January 5, 1920. His entrance into the chief executive's office was dis- tinguished by the business spirit he brought with him, and while all the fruits of his administration cannot yet be counted he has accomplished several creditable and praiseworthy achievements. The paving with concrete of South Fifth street from Kentucky Avenue to Clark street was followed by similar improvements on South Fourth from Kentucky Avenue to Washington, and Washington from Third to Fifth streets. The same hard surface material was used in paving North Third, North Fourth and North Fifth streets from Jefferson to Monroe, and Monroe from Second to Fifth streets. These street improvements add dignity to the sections immediately surrounding the business district. But far and away the crowning achievement of Mr. Katterjohn's mayoralty lies in his indefatigale efforts in behalf of new sewer construction, for he is the father of the movement to girdle the entire city with sanitary improvements. The completion of this task will mean realization of the greatest project ever undertaken by the City of Paducah. The $600,000 sewer bond issue was voted upon November 8, 1921, the vote in favor being 2,854 as against 1,182 opposed. A two-thirds majority was nec- cessary. An ordinance proposing the plan was introduced by Mayor Katterjohn, and active work was begun August 6, 1922 at the foot of Flournoy street. Com- missioner of Public Works Henry A. Pulliam is chief engineer. Mr. Pulliam, who is only twenty-eight years of age, is an experienced engineer with several years service abroad. He was elected Commissioner of Public Works at the November, 1921, election, and at the same PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY VM time R. Wynn Tully was re-elected Commissioner of Finance, Claude C. Pace was chosen Commissioner of Safety and L. A. Washington was tendered the office of Commissioner of Property. Mayor Katterjohn is at the head of the Department of Public Affairs. The erection of Augusta Tilghman High school and the new Lincoln (colored) High school can be ascribed to the period of Mr. Katterjohn's mayoralty, as can also the handsome $65,000 Immanuel Baptist church on the east side of Murrell Boulevard between Clark and Adams streets, which was formally opened for worship February 12, 1921, and the new St. Matthew's Lutheran church at the southeast corner of Fifth and Jackson streets, dedicated October 16, 1921. The First Church of Christ (Scientist) at the northeast corner of Fourteenth and Broadway was opened for services April 16, 1922, and ground was broken May 21, 1922 for the new $35,000 Murrell Boulevard Christian Church at the northeast corner of Murrell Boulevard and Ohio street. Mr. Katterjohn was married to Miss Elizabeth Rock of Paducah, November 5, 1884. They have one son, W. Roy Katterjohn, and two grandchildren, Frederick William Katterjohn and Wilmouth Katterjohn. Mr. and Mrs. F. W. Katterjohn have resided at 327 South Fifth street since 1885, building the present home in 1900. Mr. Katterjohn has known personally each of the twelve mayors who preceded him in office. The first six mayors have passed to their eternal reward. A glance at the commercial life and growth of Paducah mirrors marked activity in this respect. Caron's City Directory issued in August, 1922, places the population at 30,986, a substantial growth over the Government census of 1920 which gave the number of inhabitants at 24,735. The latter bureau gave the number of dwellings at 5,797, an increase of 537 in ten years. The capital invested in manufactories amounted to $7,260,000 and the number of persons employed at the seventy-eight industries was 5,253. Bank deposits in 1910 were $3,168,600, while in 1920 the figures had mounted to $8,786,345. The clearings 132 PADUCAHANS IN HISTORY of these institutions were $10,789,517 in 1910, while a decade later these figures reached $78,187,379. In 1921 the assessed valuation of real estate in Paducah was $15,670,905. More than ninety carloads of strawberries were shipped from the Paducah market during the season of 1922, and the bumper peach crop easily surpassed that of any other year. Paducah, that gem in the diadem of American cities, is experiencing the greatest prosperity since its founding more than a hundred years ago, and the city is indeed fortunate at this time in having at the head of its government an eminently successful business man.