A Discovery in the Allen County, Kentucky, Courthouse

By J. Trace Kirkwood

Occasionally, chance opens a portal to our past. A door swings open, shedding light on lost portions of our rich history, reminding us that we, indeed, stand on the shoulders of our forbearers.

A discovery of documents in the Allen County Clerk’s Office opened such a door. In the spring of 2004, a small flood in the courthouse basement soaked some of the county’s early 20th century records. The County Clerk, Beverly Calvert, promptly called the agency for which I work, the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA). The agency is always on call for these types of emergencies and responds as fast as possible to protect and preserve any records in jeopardy. Ms. Calvert and I formulated a way to rescue some of the old county records in the courthouse basement.

In the first phase of our plan, we unfolded dozens of bundled records – a variety of handwritten and typed documents of various sizes and colors – that had gotten wet in the flood. During this tedious process, which took from June until the end of July, I discovered approximately 45 documents relating to the cholera epidemic that swept through Kentucky in 1833. Inexplicably, the documents had been pressed between two bundles of unrelated estate settlements dating from 1911. There were no clues to shed light on why they were there, but their location within the bundle insured their preservation over the last nine or ten decades.

I have worked as a curator or an archivist for over 15 years. I have had the privilege of finding documents relating to Henry Clay, two century old surveys of creeks and trails in Kentucky, and even the oldest known theater broadside in Kentucky. The magic never fades. That was the case with these old documents in the basement of the Allen County Courthouse. Unfolding a bundle of records and looking upon paper and handwriting darkened for decades is mysterious and exciting. As soon as I had the brown lump of paper in my hands I knew I would be tracking down a story.

The door creaked open. These floppy 19th century documents written in brown ink proved a glimpse into life in Allen County during a trying time for the citizens of Scottsville. They were, however, only a glimpse. The fascination of these documents was matched with the frustration of an incomplete record. It seemed as though we were looking through a timeless telescope that could not be swiveled nor lowered nor raised. Like so much of history we learn a little and ask a lot.

In 1833, cholera made its way through Kentucky for the first time. The disease originated in India in the 1820s and spread to Great Britain by 1831. By the following year, it spanned the Atlantic Ocean and turned up in New York City. Newspapers in Kentucky speculated on the scourge’s arrival. They tracked it as best they could as it spread into the Ohio Valley and down the river. According to Nancy D. Baird’s article, “Asiatic Cholera’s First Visit to Kentucky: A Study in Panic and Fear,” in the 1974 Filson Club History Quarterly, the disease spread throughout the state, starting in Maysville in the spring and summer of 1833.

Practically nothing is known about the cholera epidemic in Allen County and Scottsville. Newspapers from the county and region reporting on the outbreak do not exist. The county’s records have major gaps in them, because in an effort to derail a court proceeding, a defendant torched the Allen County Courthouse in October 1902. His efforts erased a good portion of Allen County’s 19th century history. While his target was the circuit court clerk’s office, the fire spread into the county clerk’s vault. Citizens saved some of the county’s records, but the blaze destroyed many more.

People knew the disease was coming, but because they did not understand how or why it was transmitted, they did not know how to stop its spread. Cholera spread not only from person to person but also through the contamination of water supplies. Increased rainfall amounts – common in the spring and early summer – caused water levels to rise and waste from privies contaminated the fresh water wells. The disease spread quickly. By June, 1833, it reached south central Kentucky, according to accounts in Lexington newspapers.

When the disease appeared in Scottsville in June 1833, Alfred Payne, who was County Surveyor, and Lorenzo D. Henderson, took action to help the town’s people. Payne acquired patents from a famous doctor in Nashville, and in that same city, Henderson acquired the ingredients to make the medicine.

Payne was born ca. 1775 in Virginia and was likely already in the area when the General Assembly created Allen County in 1815. Tax lists from Allen County show that he owned one horse worth $75. The few 19th century Allen County records reveal that he bought and sold large amounts of property throughout the county, a common practice for surveyors at that time. Land purchasers often paid them with a percentage of the land surveyed, so they probably spent a lot of time at the clerk’s office filing indentures and deeds. Deed books show that this was case with Payne.

Tax lists also show that Payne’s taxable wealth fluctuated over the next two decades. Just one year after the creation of the county, the tax commissioner assessed Payne for 750 acres of land along Bays Fork Creek, one slave, and one horse. His total property value was $2,335, a substantial amount for the time. By 1820, the county taxed Payne for nearly 2,000 acres, and he owned 10 lots in the town of Scottsville. One lot was worth $1,000, but lot #161 was worth a paltry four dollars. That year he also owned three slaves and a “retail” store. Payne’s property net value was $6,700. By 1833, the year of the cholera epidemic, he owned only two lots in Scottsville worth $800. Tax and property records indicate that Payne was a fairly wealthy man.

Unfortunately, less is known about Lorenzo D. Henderson. He was most likely a transitory person, not an uncommon thing in 19th century Kentucky. Deed and tax records, along with the ones discovered in the courthouse basement, indicate that he was in Scottsville for a 17 month period that included the cholera epidemic. He owned a dry goods store in Tompkinsville and owned Lot #3 on the square in Scottsville. Deeds show that Lot #3 included a “dwelling” and “out houses”, which was a general reference for other buildings on the property and not privies. Henderson also held chattel mortgages on the personal property of several people in Allen County. He likely owned a store in Scottsville and extended credit to people as long as they had collateral.

On June 24, 1834, Henderson sold his store in Tompkinsville to Rice Maxey and William F. Evans of Nashville. On July 2nd of that year, he sold the lot with the dwelling and “out houses” to Henry E. Douglas and Larkin F. Wood for $1,200. On November 12, 1834, he sold Lot #20, which was just west of the square in Scottsville, to Evans and Maxey, who were trustees of a John Hardin in Tennessee. That is the last shred of evidence of Henderson being in Allen County.

No records suggest that Alfred Payne and L.D. Henderson were business partners or even knew each other prior to June, 1833. The cholera epidemic may have been the only thing to bring their worldly paths together.

According to the papers discovered in the courthouse, Lorenzo Henderson traveled to Nashville in June, 1833, as an agent for Payne. He purchased $53.25 worth of ingredients necessary to make medicines to treat cholera. On June 28th he purchased from Dr. Samuel P. Ament in Nashville hemlock; white pond lily root; poplar bark; lobelia seed; healing salve; six gallons of brandy; and nerve powder, perhaps to enhance the brandy.

That same day, Henderson purchased jars, bottles, and vials from H.A. Casseday’s store. He spent $29.75. He maintained a small ledger book – also contained in the discovered documents -- to keep track of his purchases and expenses. Henderson kept very close track of each item.

Alfred Payne figures even more prominently in the bundle of papers. A bill from the Ferguson and Long Tavern shows that on June 29, 1833, he paid $2.62½ for two days of supper, board, and a bed, which was never a guarantee at many taverns of that time. Payne also paid $8.00 for stage passage to Nashville. The papers do not make it clear whether or not Henderson and Payne traveled together.

In June, Payne paid Dr. Ament so he could be an agent for Dr. Samuel Thomson of Nashville. Thomson was well known in Tennessee as an “herbalist.” Instead of using and teaching the famous Dr. Benjamin Rush’s methods of blistering, blood letting, and purging, which had been in common use since the 1790s, Thomson prescribed concoctions and medicines generated from plants and trees to treat disease. According to the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, Thomson had as many as 29 agents selling patents to his medicine throughout the state. The papers discovered in the courthouse include 19 blank patents, which Payne had the right to sell for $20 a piece to anyone wanting to use Dr. Thomson’s remedies – hence the term “patent medicine.” A slip of paper among those discovered showed that Payne purchased 25 patents. So, he sold six.

The papers also included a July 9, 1833, letter from Edmond Hall, who may have lived in Bath County, Kentucky, describing some of the gruesome symptoms of cholera. He wrote, “Cholera usually comes on with diarrhea, the discharges of which are of a white color resembling rice water…spasms or cramping in the second stage which comes on in the lower extremities, gradually rising up into the stomach.” The disease was often fatal, and victims died within a hours of the first symptoms. It was a horrifying epidemic. Hall recommended treatment with calomel, rhubarb, chicken water, and turpentine all applied at various intervals of the illness. It makes one wonder if the cure was part of the problem.

Perhaps Alfred Payne ignored Hall’s treatment because he dutifully transcribed Dr. Thomson’s remedy for cholera on a sheet included in the once wayward bundle of documents. He wrote, “the patient must be well rubed [rubbed] with spirits of turpentine” and “place the patient between wooling blankets.” At this point patients may have demanded the brandy and “nerve powder” Henderson purchased in Nashville.

Although there is no concrete evidence to whether or not cholera spread into Allen County in 1833, it is hard to imagine that two men went to such great lengths to purchase large quantities of medical ingredients in anticipation of an epidemic. Perhaps they speculated and designed to make money from cholera’s arrival. Why would they have made such an effort to document their expenses then submit them to public scrutiny in the county clerk’s records?

Perhaps they used their own funds to acquire medicine and patents in Nashville then sought reimbursement from the county. Maybe Allen County was a forerunner in the public health movement that swept the state following subsequent cholera outbreaks. Either no one has mined the answers to these questions from other records or the answers do not exist.

Lorenzo D. Henderson disappeared from the county’s records in 1834. He was probably one of the thousands of souls the advancing west swept out of Kentucky. Alfred Payne, on the other hand, maintained his position as county surveyor until his death in late 1849, according to deed and will records at the Allen County Courthouse. Curiously, the 1840 U.S. Census enumerated Payne in Smith County, Tennessee, which was adjacent to Allen County before that state created Macon County in 1842, but he never relinquished his position as county surveyor in Allen. He wrote his will on May 17, 1848, and left his estate to his daughter Martha Anderson, a widow. He also left money to insure the education of his grandchildren. His family probated his will at the Allen County Court session in January, 1850.

Like many discoveries of old documents, these raise more questions than they answer. This should only be the first step into further investigation of this chapter of Allen County’s history.

The discovery of these documents inspired members of the Allen County Historical Society to roll up their sleeves and unfold and re-box thousands of documents housed in the Allen County Clerk’s office. Beverly Calvert directed their efforts, which helped guarantee the long term preservation of their county’s heritage. Ms. Calvert and Judge/Executive Johnny Hobdy made sure the “Cholera Papers” received special attention. They had KDLA clean, de-acidify, and encapsulate the records so that the public can enjoy these wonderful documents. KDLA returned them to the clerk’s office in 2005.