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.
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
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.