Ohio History Journal

264         Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

disclosed by the falling in of walls, it is hoped that further explorations

may develop additional tablets and other important relics.

In this connection it may not be inappropriate to state that an in-

scribed stone was taken from another mound of the Grave Creek system

many years ago, and deposited in the museum of Hampden-Sydney Col-

lege, Virginia. It cannot be found, but Doctor Marters, member of the

House of Delegates, who carried the relic to Richmond, testifies to the

fact.

 

JOHN FILSON.

[The following sketch of the life of John Filson is reprinted from The Cin-

cinnati Times-Star of recent date. John Filson was one of the most influential char-

acters in the early history of Ohio and Kentucky, and the following article is well

worthy of permanent preservation.-EDITOR.]

One of the least familiar and at the same time one of the most

fascinating chapters in the history of Cincinnati and of Kentucky is the

story of the life of John Filson, the actual founder of Cincinnati, the

first historian and geographer of Kentucky, the biographer of Daniel

Boone, the man of peace among the warlike pioneers of the Middle

West of the eighteenth century. Filson's name is barely mentioned by

the historians of a later day.  Some of the most complete historical

works, such as that of Bancroft, overlook him entirely. To his memory

there is not a single monument. Even the street in Cincinnati which

was named after him has had its title changed and is now known as

Plum street. The picturesque name, "Losantiville," which he gave to the

city he had laid out opposite the most northerly point of Kentucky, has

vanished from the maps and the gazetteers. Filson's memory is kept

green only through one organization, the Filson Club of Louisville, which

has published a biography of the pioneer, embodying all the known facts

of his life and his services to his country.

One reason why Filson's name has not been preserved in history

to a greater extent may be found in the fact that he was not a fighting

man. In an era when deeds of bloodshed were celebrated to the exclu-

sion of the more peaceful but more useful arts of the teacher, the sur-

veyor and the farmer, such an oversight is quite natural.

Even the date of John Filson's birth is not known. It is known

that he was the second son of Davidson Filson of Brandywine, Pa.,

himself the son of one John Filson) an English pioneer. John Filson,

the explorer, probably was born about 1741, but there is only collateral

evidence of that fact. What his early life and education were can only

be conjectured by piecing together the accounts that have come down

of what colonial life in general was in the middle of the eighteenth

century. It is recorded, however, that he received some instruction in

his youth from the Rev. Samuel Finley, afterwards president of New

Jersey College, and it was from this learned man that he probably obtained

the smattering of Latin, Greek and French he is known to have possessed.

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Editorialana.                       265

 

Essentially a man of peace, he did not take an active part in the

Revolutionary War, so far as any records show. But when his brothers

returned from the victorious fight against British rule, John Filson joined

the tide of emigration that was setting westward towards Kentucky.

Traveling by the most direct route from his home in Eastern Pennsyl-

vania to Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburg, Filson descended the Ohio

River to what is now Maysville, but then was known as Limestone, and

thence struck inland through the forests to Lexington. This was some

time before 1782, less than thirty years after McBride, the first pioneer,

had explored the "Dark and Bloody Ground."

In the year 1782 John Filson is found teaching school in Lexing-

ton and writing the wonderful "Life of Daniel Boone," the militant

pioneer and Indian-killer, whose thirteen years' of exploits in Kentucky

had already made him a semi-mythical figure in the imaginations of the

pioneers. Filson joined in the rush for free lands, and in 1783 entered

claim to 12,3681/2 acres, besides purchasing 1,500 acres in Jefferson county

from Boone. At the same time he began his journeys over the State,

asking more questions, it is recorded, than any man who had ever been

seen in those parts. Having some skill as a surveyor, he laid out bound-

aries for settlers, measured distances by the rude but efficient method of

pacing them off, noted the geographical formations while listening to the

tales of fights with the redskins, and in 1784 issued his "History of

Kentucky," a work that stands today as the indispensable basis of all

written accounts of the beginnings of the West, even as the marvelously

accurate map which accompanied it is invaluable from  its location of

the "buffalo roads," the block houses, forts and outposts and the branch

trails that led off the great "Wilderness road" through the Cumberland

gap.

Filson went to Wilmington, Delaware, to have his book published.

He returned to Kentucky in 1785, driving overland in a Jersey wagon

to Pittsburg, and thence by flatboat to "the mouth of Beargrass creek,"

where Louisville now stands. The new book caused a sensation. It

was translated into French and printed in Paris in 1785. In 1793 an

English writer on North America appropriated Filson's book bodily,

and in the same year a New York publisher brought out an edition.

A Philadelphia periodical published it as a serial without credit, prior

to 1790, the same magazine that printed his "Life of Daniel Boone" and

credited it to Boone himself. Another London publisher brought out a

complete edition of the history, from the narratives in which practically

all later accounts of the pioneers of Kentucky have been drawn.

Filson sold all his possessions in Pennsylvania and turned his steps

towards the "Illinois country." He traveled by canoe and took copious

notes for another book, which never was published. He paddled in the

fall of 1785 up the Wabash to Post St. Vincent, a distance of 450 miles

from Louisville. In the course of his travels he had an interesting ex-

perience with hostile Indians at Vincennes, Ind. In 1786 he returned

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266         Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

to Pennsylvania on horseback, made his will and returned to Kentucky

the next year. Here he roamed about for some time, apparently very

poor, until Matthias Denham of New Jersey, who had bought from

John Cleves Symmes eight hundred acres on the banks of the Ohio,

opposite the mouth of the Licking river, sought for some well-known

men to join him in "syndicating" the property. He chose Filson and

Robert Patterson, a popular soldier. They became equal partners, pay-

ing Denham $33.33 each for a third interest in the 800-acre tract.

Arriving at the tract, Filson again proved his ingenuity by devis-

ing a name for it. Calling his classical learning to mind, he constructed

a cognomen familiar in the local tradition, "Losantiville." It was made

by taking the initial "L" for Licking river, the Latin words "os" (mouth),

and "anti" (opposite), and adding the French suffix "ville" to signify

the city opposite the mouth of the Licking. True, the name was dis-

carded by General St. Clair, the first territorial governor of Ohio, who

selected that of Cincinnati instead, but it was a picturesque and original

name, as names for localities went in those days.

This was in 1788. Chain in hand, Filson proceeded to lay out the

streets of the new city. He builded better than most of the pioneer

town-cobblers. Instead of the narrow, alley-like thoroughfares that pre-

vailed in his day, he projected wide streets, laid out in symmetrical

regularity at right angles. The lower part of Cincinnati stands today

substantially as Filson mapped it. The boundaries that he laid out

began on the east with "Eastern Row," now Broadway, intended to strike

directly north from the mouth of the Licking, and "Western Row," now

Central avenue. What is now Plum street was "Filson street."

Filson's death is shrouded in mystery. With a party sent out by

Judge Symmes to explore the latter's great possessions, he went towards

the Great Miami, surveying and platting the township lines. Near the

upper line of the fifth range of townships, Filson suddenly disappeared

one night. Not a sign or vestige of him was ever seen again, nor did

any word come from him. There had been Indians in the neighbor-

hood, there were ferocious wild beasts not far away, the Great Miami

flowed swiftly and deep. By which, if any of these agencies, Filson met

his fate, is not known. Not long after his death, it was whispered

abroad that he had turned his back voluntarily on the rude civilization

of the frontier and had cast in his lot with the Indians. Contemporary

chroniclers, however, recorded it as a fact that he had been killed by

Indians.

Few mementoes of Filson beyond his published works exist. Fil-

son, however, not only gave Cincinnati its plan and its location, but the

memory of Daniel Boone and the Story of the settlement of Kentucky

were preserved alone by his pen.

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