ON July 8, 1773, Captain Thomas Bullitt, at the
                                                                 h head of a small company of adventurous
                                                                        pioneers, landed at the mouth of Beargrass
                                                   creek at the Falls of the Ohio, and pitched his tent in the pri-
                                             meval forest that covered the banks of the river. The water was very
                                         low at that season of the year, and, at night, to guard against surprise and
                                       attack from the savages, Captain Bullitt and his men retreated to the exposed
                                  rocks in the river, and slept with pickets out. These dozen men were the first ele-
                               ments of population upon the spot where to-day there is a city, with suburbs, contain-
                           ing 275,000 souls. Captain Bullitt was a land-surveyor, and came to Kentucky to survey,
                under the warrant of Lord Dunmore, certain lands which were included in what are now Jefferson and
            Bullitt counties. Before he completed his survey he hlid out a town site comprising part of the present city
of Louisville, which was called " Falls of the Ohio." It is curious to observe that from the very first beginnings of
settlement in Louisville the unusual advantages of the location were seized upon with prophetic instinct. It was before
the days of keel-boats even, but the first-comers recognized the importance of a location that was at the head of navi-
gation, even though the growth of the town must wait upon the settlement of the country west of it and along the rivers.
    From that day in July, 1773, when the feet of the Virginians first trod the forest on the spot where a great and
beautiful city was destined to stand, the history of Louisville has grown to represent the characteristic courage, intelli-
gence, and enterprise of the people who founded the city. When that history comes to be written by the student who
can comprehend the many sides and the many causes of events, it will be found full of the romance of actual heroic
achievements, not only in the adventures of the pioneers who settled it, but in the social and commercial enterprises of
a people who struggled for seventy-five years under the oppression of a domestic institution that was well-calculated to
repress, if not to destroy, all enterprise and practical progress. We shall see, also, that, when the weight of slavery was
removed, Louisville, more rapidly than any other city in the slave-holding States, comprehended the new order of things,
and, before half a generation was sped, had made such an organic change in the character of her interests as to place
her upon equal terms with those cities that had been built up in the North by the intelligence, the thrift, and industry
of free labor.
    Although Captain Bullitt laid out a town site, and a house was built at the mouth of Beargrass the year following, yet
the times were not propitious for settlement, and years passed before the town was to be inspired with life. These years
were full of feeling on the part of the people against the Virginia government, which was accused of indifference towards
the outlying county of Fincastle, which then comprised the present State of Kentucky. Pinally Kentucky was created
a sovereign State three years after the town of Louisville had been laid out and incorporated. The town was founded
upon a tract of one thousand acres of land which had been owned by John Connelly who had forfeited it by being an
active Tory duringthe war with England. Louisville was named for Louis XVI., the ill-fated victim of the French Revo-
lution. There was already a nucleus of French settlers at the Falls corresponding with the movement of French gen-
erally through the North-west Territory. Gratitude to the French king for declaring against England in the War of the
Revolution suggested the name. At this time the number of settlers was very small and there is no way of discovering
the actual population. The number in 18oo has long been accepted as 359, but there are good reasons for believing this
an underestimate, and it is probable that there were nearly a thousand inhabitants of Louisville, and the immediate
vicinity, in i8oo.
    This slight nucleus, that existed in 1789, of the great city that was to be built on the spot, comprised men of quick
intelligence and foresight When the town was founded there is reason to believe that the enormous value of a canal
around the Falls had been suggested. Certain it is that a map of the town, drawn in 1793, presented the projected
canal virtually as it was built thirty-seven years later. It is interesting to know that one of the first agitators of the
canal project was General James Wilkinson, who settled in Lexington in 1784, at the age of twenty-six, after having
made a fine record in the Revolution. His restless, enterprising, and adventurous spirit, sustained by a manner and
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