GENERAL JOSEPH KERR.
BY WM. E. GILMORE, CHILLICOTHE, OHIO.
[The following article from the pen of
Mr. Gilmore appeared in the
columns of The Daily Scioto Gazette of
March 21, 1903. As this article
presents the history of Senator Kerr, no
where else to be found, it is
thought sufficiently valuable to deserve
permanent preservation and is
therefore herewith republished.- E. O.
R.]
At length my inquiries and
correspondence, begun in 1886,
for the purpose of recovering something
of the personal history
of General Joseph Kerr, a very early
resident of Chillicothe, and
in his day a very prominent and
important one, has met with some
success through the kind assistance of
Mr. Henry Clay Carrel,
an eminent architect, of 1123
Broadway, New York, who is a
son of the well known Captain Hercules
Carrel, formerly of
Cincinnati, and a great-grandson of
General Kerr.
It has been strangely difficult to get
information in regard
to this notable person, owing to many
peculiar causes. In the
first place he himself was utterly
indifferent as to whether his
fellow citizens or any others knew
anything about him or not.
In the second place, while his correct
name was Kerr, almost
every person who knew him spelled and
pronounced it Carr, and
this fact gave infinite trouble to his
descendants afterward, in
proving up title to a large land grant,
made by the Republic of
Texas to soldiers of its revolutionary
war with Mexico.
He was defeated in long litigation for
that magnificent farm
just east of this city, known as the
Watts farm, and the defeat
almost impoverished him, and greatly
embittered him.
He had been unjustly treated, he
thought, in large contracts
for supplies to the army of the U. S.,
operating under General
Hull. He had quarrelled with Gov. Thomas
Worthington, to
whose remnant of senatorial term he had
been elected by the
General Assembly of Ohio, and finally
he, with his family, had
made two or three changes of residence
after leaving Chillicothe
in 1824, and if he ever wrote a single
letter back to any one here,
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