xt7qnk361k9d https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qnk361k9d/data/mets.xml Townsend, John Wilson, 1885-1968. 1907  books b98-37-40931404 English Neale Publishing, : New York ; Washington : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Menefee, Richard Hickman, 1809-1841. Richard Hickman Menefee  / by John Wilson Townsend. text Richard Hickman Menefee  / by John Wilson Townsend. 1907 2002 true xt7qnk361k9d section xt7qnk361k9d 



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Richard Hickman Menefee










                   BY

    JOHN WILSON TOWNSEND



Member of The Filson Club and of The Kentucky Historical Society







           "Ambition, thy name is man"












             New York and Washington
        THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
                   1907

 



























       Copyright, i907, by
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY

 




















To the memory of a lawyer-journalist-
            My Father

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                CONTENTS.

                                         Page.

   I.  First Years .I........................    II
   II.  Education . ........................     23

 III.  The Young Lawyer-Politician .    ........  39

 IV.   In the Kentucky Legislature .  ..........  6o

 V.  In Congress .S.......................    8i

 VI.  Webster and Menefee . .    .............. i96

 VII.  In Congress (Concluded) .      ........... 204

VIII.  Return to Kentucky . .     ............... 232

IX.  Sundown   ........................ 255

  X.  Memorials . ........................ 271

  XI.  Menefee, The Man ..    ................ 3i6

      Index .... 321

 This page in the original text is blank.

 



PREFACE.



  Some seven years ago at a little Kentucky country
school, a youth read for the first time about Richard Hick-
man Menefee. The school history of Kentucky that the
youth was reading called Menefee "the young Patrick
Henry of the West," and this title, with the face of Mene-
fee, the youth carried in his memory, dreaming that he
might some day write the biography of the hero of Ken-
tucky history. In the fall of i904, the youth, now a stu-
dent at the institution that succeeded Menefee's univer-
sity, wrote for the college magazine a short sketch of his
hero. Since then he has been collecting the materials for
a complete biography of Menefee, which is now incor-
porated into book form.
  This book has been written for two reasons: first, the
admiration that the author has for the man; second, the
great need of such a book. Menefee alone, of the three
great Kentucky orators, has found no adequate bi-
ographer. With the exception of Marshall's eulogy, and
many sketches, full and just recognition in the form of
a complete "life," with a collection of his speeches, has
been denied him. If this book succeeds in making vivid
and definite what has been merely tradition, I shall not
consider my work done in vain.
  My thanks are due to so many persons for assistance in
the preparation of this biography that it would be im-
possible to recount all of them here. Some, however,
have assisted me so materially that they deserve to be
mentioned at this time. First, to Mr. Richard H. Mene-
fee, of Louisville, the namesake and grandson of Mene-
fee, my sincerest thanks are due. Without his assistance
no true estimate of Menefee could have been formed.
To Col. Reuben T. Durrett, founder and president of the
Filson Club, for permission to work at will in the largest
private library in Kentucky, I am very grateful.
  The following persons have also assisted me greatly:

 



RICHARD HICKMAN MZN`PZU



Dr. R G. Thwaites, of Madison, Wisconsin; Senator
Jos. C. S. Blackburn, of Washington; Judge Edward
Mayes, of Jackson, Mississippi; Professor Thomas S.
Noble, of Cincinnati, Ohio; Mr. Clarke Tandy, of Ox-
ford England, and Miss Mary Louise Dalton, St. Louis,
Missouri. The following Kentuckians have aided me in
various ways: Governor J. C. W. Beckham and Assist-
ant State Librarian Frank K. Kavanaugh, of Frankfort;
Mr. LaVega Clements, of Owensboro; Captain John A.
Steele, of Midway; Miss Johanna Peter, of Fayette
County; Mr. Lucien Beckner and Mr. James French, of
Winchester; Judge John A. Ramsey and Mr. William H.
Daugherty, of Owingsville; Mrs. Albert Hoffman and
Mr. Davis Reid, of Mt. Sterling; Mrs. Robert Harding,
of Danville; Dr. Edward 0. Guerrant, of Wilmore, and
the Misses Kinkead, of Lexington, one of whom is the
only woman historian that Kentucky has produced, have
given me the kindest encouragement that it was my for-
tune to receive from any source while this work was in
preparation. Also to the librarians of the Lexington
Public Library, I am very grateful for the courtesies that
they have seen fit to show me. Two Yale men, both
Kentuckians, the readers of this book may, with me,
thank. One, Dr. Hubert G. Shearin, Ph. D., of Ken-
tucky University, for many valuable suggestions; the
other, Mr. Charles Fennell, of Cynthiana, Kentucky, for
assistance in obtaining several of Menefee's speeches.
  Direct bibliographical reference to the authorities con-
sulted, except to such general works as Collins' History
of Kentucky and biographical encyclopedias, will be
found at the bottom of the pages.
                       JOHN WILsoN TOWNSEND,
                              Lexington, Kentucky.
  November 8, i906.



IO

 

RICHARD HICKMAN MENEFEE

              CHAPTER I

                FIRST YEARS

  Richard Hickman Menefee was born in
Owingsville, Kentucky, December 4, 1809, and
died in Lexington, Kentucky, February 20.
1841.
  The name of Menefee is of Irish derivation,
and the American founder of the family was
George Menifie,' who, in 1629, was one of the
Burgesses that represented James City, in the
Virginia House of Burgesses. Later in life
he became a prosperous merchant.    That
George Menifie was an ancestor of Richard
H. Menefee, there is very little doubt. At any
rate, the Menefees were Virginians, and came
to Kentucky in the latter half of the eighteenth
century.
  The first Kentucky Menefees that did
enough in the world to have their deeds re-
corded, were four private soldiers. In the
pioneer companies that were organized in Ken-
tucky in 1778 on up into the nineteenth cen-
tury, in the company of Capt. Benjamin Logan,
who had charge of a Lincoln County company,
the names of James, Jarrett, and Joseph Meni-
fee are found. In Capt. John Boyle's company,
which was scattered over that part of Ken-
tucky that is now included in the counties of
Garrard, Lincoln, and Boyle, the name of Wil-
t Hening's Statutes at Large, Vol. I, pp. 282, 297.

 
RICHARD HICKMAN MXNXPU



liam Menifee is found. And, although the il-
literate roll-keeper spelled the name with an
"i," instead of an "e," as many cultured Ken-
tuckians have since done, it is almost certain
that these four soldiers were kinsmen of Rich-
ard H. Menefee, and the founders of the Mene-
fee family living in Lincoln County to-day.
  Richard Menefee, the father of the subject of
this biography, was a Virginian by birth and
removed to Kentucky in the last decade of the
eighteenth century. He was by trade a potter
and worked for many years at the old Bourbon
furnace. Richard Menefee finally entered poli-
tics, and in 1801-1802 was elected as the rep-
resentative from Montgomery County in the
Kentucky House of Representatives. In 1806
he was returned to the House, and two years
later was State Senator from Montgomery in
the Kentucky Senate.   This office, which
Menefee held for the next four years, is mem-
orable as being the time in which his great son
was born.
  As has been stated, it was on the 4th of De-
cember, 1809, that Richard H. Menefee was
born, in a log-house situated near a spring.
One or two years after his birth his father tore
down the log-house and built a brick one di-
rectly over the spring. Owingsville tradition
says that Col. Thomas Dye Owings and Rich-
ard Menefee agreed that the future town
should be named for the one who built the
finest house on the clearing they had made
Owings built a finer house than did Menefee
and we consequently have "Owingsville" in-
stead of "Menefeesville," as it might have been.
Besides being the birth place of Richard H.



12

 
FIRST YEARS



Menefee, Owingsville was also the birth place
of John Bell Hood (1831-1879), commander of
the Army of the Tennessee, and author of "Ad-
vance and Retreat," and William Lightfoot
Visscher, the Kentucky poet, who was born the
year after Menefee's death.
  In this competitive brick house Richard H.
Menefee passed his first years. This house,
which was torn down shortly after the civil
war, was situated in the western part of
Owingsville, fronting on Main street.  To-
day not a single brick remains to tell the his-
torically inclined Kentuckian that here, nearly
a century ago, the youngest of the three great
Kentucky orators passed his first years. The
spring from which Menefee drank for the first
twelve years of his life is still flowing, and sup-
plies a fish pond covering about one-eighth of
an acre. Across the State another young Ken-
tuckian, some months older than Mlenefee, was
drinking water from a spring not as large as
the Menefee spring, but the spring from which
Abraham Lincoln drank has become associa-
ated with his name, while the spring from
which Richard H. Menefee drank is seldom
mentioned in connection with his name.
  Menefee's mother's maiden name was Mary
Lonsdale. She was born in Harford County,
Maryland,' in 1788, and came to Kentucky
when a young woman. She met Richard
Menefee, who had just returned from the
Kentucky House of Representatives, and,
about 1806, in her eighteenth year, she mar-
ried him. Their first-born children were twins,
and were named Alfred and Alvin Menefec.



'Mrs. Dr. Robert Peter is my authority for this statement.



13

 
RICHARD HICKMAN MENEFgE



They were born on September 29, 1807. They
emigrated to Missouri in the early thirties and
became farmers.   Alfred Menefee married
there and thirteen children were born to him.
He was a consistent member of the Church of
the Disciples for forty years. One of Mene-
fee'3 letters to him is given in this book.
He died in Perry, Ralls County, Missouri, April
26, 1895. Alvin Menefee died shortly after the
civil war.
  The old Menefee family Bible, which con-
tained the register of the births of the five sons,
has been lost. But Richard H. Menefee was
undoubtedly the third son, and he left the rec-
ord of his own birthday. The opening sen-
tence of his Diary, which is dated December 4,
1840, reads as follows:  "My birthday 31
years old." This statement settles all contro-
versy in regard to the day of his birth.
  Another of his brothers, and probably the
fourth-born son, was John Menefee, who was
shot in a duel with Alexander McClung at
Vicksburg, Mississippi, on December 29, 1838.
The duel was fought with rifles at a distance of
thirty paces, and Menefee was shot in the head
at the second fire. He died a few days later.
McClung was the challenger.
  The youngest son was Allen Menefee, who
came into the world afflicted with infant par-
alysis. Dr. Edward 0. Guerrant, D. D., of
Wilmore, Kentucky, remembers Allen Mene-
fee as a small man, with blue eyes, sandy hair,
and fair complexion-almost a double of Rich-
ard H. Menefee. Before going to Missouri
with his brothers, Alfred and Alvin Menefee,
he was a frequent visitor at the home of Dr.



14

 
VIRST YtARS



Guerrant's father, Dr. H. S. Guerrant, in
Sharpsburg, Kentucky. A letter that Menefee
wrote when he was a member of Congress, to
Dr. H. S. Guerrant, is preserved in this book.
  Thomas F. Marshall, in his eulogy on Mene-
fee, said that Menefee supported an orphan sis-
ter, but his father's will mentioned only Mene-
fee and his four brothers. At this point in the
eulogy Marshall begins to be historically faulty
and continues to be so, with a few exceptions,
to the end of his panegyric.
  1809, the year in which Menefee was born,
is the annus mirabilis of the nineteenth century.
In this "wonderful year" there was born the
greatest group of men that appeared during
the century. Tennyson, Poe, Holmes, Fitzger-
ald, Lord Houghton, Gladstone, Darwin,
Chopin, Mendelssohn, Blackie, Hunter, and
many other distinguished men were born on
both sides of the Atlantic. In Kentucky, Lin-
coln, Edwards, Bledsoe, Mitchel, Steele, Kin-
kead, and Carson, were all born during this
year.
  The year is also famous for other things
than the birth of great men. Mammoth Cave
was discovered by the hunter Hutchins, and
in Danville, Kentucky, Dr. Ephraim McDowell
extirpated the ovary, which was the first o1)-
eration of this kind that had ever been per-
formed in the world. Washington Irving pub-
lished the "Knickerbocker's History of New
York" during this year, which marked the be-
ginning of a national literature in America.
James Madison began his first term as the
fourth President of the United States in March
of this truly wonderful year. So it may be



15

 
RICHARD HICKMAN MtNtVEt



easily seen that Menefee was born at a time
when the men of the world were doing great
things. Of all the years of the past century in
which a man of ambition could wish to be born,
it seems to me that 1809 was the year.
  On the day that Menefee was born the Ken-
tucky legislature, for that year, assembled at
Frankfort. His father; Richard Menefee, as
a Senator from Montgomery and Floyd Coun-
ties, was, of course, at the seat of government,
and was away from home at the time young
Menefee came into the world.
  A young Virginian, Henry Clay, had come
to Kentucky about a decade before the birth of
Menefee and had been sent to the legislature
in 1803-1804, and then to the United States
Senate in 1806 to serve out the unexpired term
of Gen. John Adair. In the winter of 1807
Clays was the Speaker of the Kentucky House
of Representatives, and in 1809 had been re-
turned to the Senate to fill out the Hon. John
Buckner Thurston's term, who had resigned.
  TMenefee's mother, who has been described
bv the historian of Montgomery County' as
being a very beautiful and attractive woman,
educated far in advance of the Kentucky
women of her time, had no doubt heard of the
young Virginian who was just at the begin-
ning of a career that is unparalleled in Ameri-
can history. Mrs. Menefee was a devout Pres-
byterian, and a member of the Rev. Joseph P.
Howe's church. When Richard was quite
young she had Howe baptize him, and when
the good man asked the mother to "Name this
1 Historical Sketches of Montgomery County, prepared by Rich-
ard Reid.  1S82.



i6

 
FIRST YEARS



child," she replied, "Henry Clay Menefee."
This name young Menefee wore until the re-
turn of his father from the Kentucky legisla-
ture, in February, 1810.
  During the winter of 1809-1810, Richard
Menefee served on the Committee of Proposi-
tions and Grievances with Richard Hickman,
who was the Senator from Clark and Estill
Counties. He became very much attached to
Hickman and roomed with him during the
legislative session. The legislature adjourned
on January 31, 1810, and on his return home
Richard Menefee changed the name of the son,
who up to that time he had never seen, from
Henry Clay to Richard Hickman Menefee.
American history, so far as I have been able to
ascertain, does not afford a parallel case to this
incident in Menefee's early life. Gen. U. S.
Grant and John Fiske had their Christian
names juggled with, but not in the same man-
ner in which Menefee had his changed.
  The man for whom he was finally named,
Gen. Richard Hickman, was born in Cul-
peper County, Virginia, on November 5, 1757,
and died at his country home, "Cave Land," in
Clark County, Kentucky, on July 3, 1832.'
His education was meager, and on his arrival
in Kentucky he became a farmer, and a few
years later married Lydia Calloway (Irvine).
She was a sister of the two Calloway girls who,
with Jamina Boone, were captured by the
Indians while boating on the Kentucky River.
  Hickman was Clark County's first repre-
sentative in the Kentucky House of Repre-



'Lewis Family in America.
  2



I7

 
RICHARD HICKMAN MENtFtt



sentatives, serving from 1793 to 1798. He was
one of the Clark County members to the Sec-
ond Constitutional Convention which met at
Frankfort in August, 1799, and which was
presided over by Alexander S. Bullitt, member
from Jefferson County. Many distinguished
men of early Kentucky history were members
of this convention. The main objection to the
first Kentucky Constitution of 1792 was the
mode of choosing United States Senators and
Governors. The second Constitution gave the
election of United States Senators and Gover-
nors to the direct vote of the people, and
changed the time of holding elections from
Mlay to August. The office of Lieutenant-Gov-
ernor was created and President Bullitt was
the first to fill it. The manner of voting was
changed to a viva voce, which was continued
for the next ninety years and was only changed
by the fourth and present Constitution in 1891.
This information in regard to the second Con-
stitution is given here because it was the Con-
stitution under which -Menefee's life work was
(lone, and because the knowledge of it will
throw a flood of light on conditions as they
existed in Kentucky during that period of our
history.
  In 1812 Hickman was elected Lieutenant-
Governor with Isaac Shelby, when the first
Kentucky Governor was elected as the sixth
Governor. During the year 1813 Shelby was
compelled to take up his sword and go on the
field of battle. During his absence Hickman
acted as Governor of the Commonwealth. In
1819 he was returned as a Senator from Clark,
and served for the next four years. The last

 
FIRST YEARS



years of his life were spent on his beautiful
"Cave Land," near Winchester, Kentucky.
Hickman was an old gentleman of the black
stock, and a man whose name Menefee, no
doubt, was proud to wear.
  When Richard H. Menefee' was about thir-
teen months of age, or on January 15, 1811, the
northeastern part of Montgomery was formed
into Bath County-so named because of its
medicinal springs. In October of the same
year the town of Owingsville, situated on a
high tableland, and commanding a splendid
view of the surrounding country, was chosen
as the county-seat of this new county of Bath.
The first circuit court was held at the home of
Capt. James Young in vIay, 1811, and three
sessions of the court were held at his house.
On the seventh of November, 1811, it was
ordered that the next session of the court
should be held at the brick residence of Rich-
ard Menefee. Accordingly, on May 4, 1812,
the court convened in Afenefee's house, situ-
ated over the spring. This court continued to
meet at the 'Menefee home for the next four
years, and was also held there three times after
Richard Menefee's death. From the Menefee
house it convened in the new Bath County
court-house, which had been erected.
  Thomas Marshall thought that Menefee be-
came a lawyer because he was inspired by the
fact that he had at one time borne the name of
Henry Clay. It is my opinion, however, that
Menefee got his first law lessons from these
crude courts which were held in his father's
house, and that he liked the law and coolly and
'Young's History of Bath County.



I9

 
RICHARD HICKMAN M9NXVXX



calmly, with his boyish logic, decided to be-
come a barrister. Another influence that was
probably brought to bear on young Menefee's
decision to become a lawyer was exercised by
Samuel T. Davenport, who was one of the first
lawyers to hang out his shingle in Owingsville.
Davenport was an educated lawyer for his day
and generation and he settled in Owingsville
some time in 1811. He boarded with Richard
Menefee, and at the building of the Menefee
brick house, which was very pretentious
for those days, Davenport wrote a poem
on it. He was finally captured by the Indians
and married a squaw by whom he had several
children. That Davenport encouraged young
Menefee to study law is almost certain. At
any rate, I believe that Davenport and the
backwoods court that w-as held in his father's
house had more to do with making Richard H.
Menefee decide to become a lawyer, than did
the fact that he had, for several weeks, borne
the name of Henry Clay. This fact did, no
doubt, have some influence with his decision.
  In 1812 Richard Menefee's term as Senator
from Montgomery and Floyd Counties was
over, and he returned to his family. He was
a man of action as well as a man of mind, and,
after spending some months with his family,
he was enlisted in Owingsville, on August 26,
1813, as a soldier in the war of 1812, and ren-
dezvoused at Newport, Kentucky, five days
later. He was immediately elected captain of
Company A in the regiment known as Col.
John Donaldson's Kentucky Mounted Volun-
teer Militia. Richard Menefee gallantly led
his company at the battle of the Thames, which



20

 
FIRST YEARS



was fought on October 5, 1813. After the
battle Donaldson's regiment was ordered to
return to Kentucky, and Menefee was mus-
tered out at Newport, Kentucky, on November
4, 1813. He returned to his home in Owings-
ville, and in the following year was elected as
Bath County's representative in the Kentucky
House of Representatives.
  During the year 1814, Louis Philippe, King
of France, visited Bath County. He was the
guest of Col. Thomas Dye Owings, and spent
his time in hunting and fishing. The citizens
of Bath called him "King Philip," and during
the eighteen months which he spent in Bath,
they became very much attached to him. The
attachment was mutual as the French Govern-
ment sent twice for him to return before he did
so. He tried to persuade Colonel Owings to
return to France with him, but Owings de-
clined to do so. One can easily imagine the
"Citizen King" patting young Menefee on the
head and bestowing upon him the proverbial,
"God bless you, my son."
  Richard Menefee died at his home in Ow-
ingsville, Kentucky, in August, 181.5,1 when his
son was nearly six, and not "about four years of
age," as Marshall said. In his will, which was
written on August 18, and recorded in Septem-
ber, 1815, Richard Menefee appointed his wife,
with the assistance of two of his friends, Ed-
ward and Robert Stockton, as his executors.
He requested that his farm and tavern should
be rented, but that the brick house over the
spring should be kept as the family home.
He gave to his wife one-third of his real estate
1Will Book A, in Bath County Clerk's Office.



2I

 
RICHARD HICKMAN MENX:FEX



and to his cripple son Allen he gave a double
portion of his estate. He left to his sister-in-
law, Patsy Lonsdale, who was an unmarried
woman, an old negro servant named Caroline.
By this gift Richard Menefee saved his wife's
maiden name to Kentucky history, as he
simply called her, in his will, "Mary." The
slaves he left to his five sons, but they were not
divided and sold until 1829. Richard 'Menefee,
one of the founders of Owingsville, one of the
wisest law makers of Kentucky's earlier years,
and the father of one of the three great orators
of Kentucky, sleeps to-day in an unknown
grave.
  On October 24, 1819, when Menefee was
nearly ten years of age, his mother married
Col. George Lansdowne,' who was for many
years proprietor of the Olympian Springs, in
Bath County, Kentucky.



' Marriage Record Book i, Bath County Clerk's Office.



22

 

CHAPTER II



                 EDUCATION

  The first twelve years of Richard H. MIene-
fee's life were spent under his mother's watch-
ful eye, and it is certain that she took the advice
of the wisest man of. antiquity, and brought up
her child in the way he should go. She also
lived to see that he did not depart from it. His
elementary education was received at her
hands and, in the fall of 1821, in his twelfth
year, he was sent to the preparatory school of
\Walker Bourne, and not to "a gentleman
whose name was Tompkins." Marshall de-
scribed  the  characteristics  of  Menefee's
teacher, but in some way got his name incor-
rect. Perhaps the famous Kentucky orator
and wit would ask, Juliet-like, "what's in a
name" In love a name is perhaps nil, but in
history a name amounts to a great deal. Elo-
quence and accuracy do not always go hand in
hand.
  The first school in Montgomery County was
opened in 1794, and taught by Robert Trimble,'
who afterward became associate justice of the
United States Supreme Court.   He taught
school the entire year, five days in the week.
Trimble's school was located near the Spring-
field church, which had been opened the same
year that the school was founded, by Rev.
Joseph P. Howe. A few years after Trimble
Historical Sketches of Montgomery County, prepared by
Richard Ried. I882.

 
RICHARD HICKMAN MENEFEX



began to teach, Bourne opened his school in the
same neighborhood.
  Walker Bourne was born on the banks of
the Rapidan River, in Virginia, on May 5, 1790.
He was brought to Kentucky at the age of
seven years by his father, James Bourne, who
was a Revolutionary soldier. Bourne served
as a private soldier in Richard Menefee's com-
pany at the battle of the Thames. He was
also elected as a magistrate in Mt. Sterling,
and was familiarly known as "Squire" Bourne.
His reputation rests, however, on his ability
as a teacher. For years he labored in the
schoolroom and some of the State's most dis-
tinguished men were, at some period of their
lives, his pupils. He is the Kentucky Doctor
Thomas Arnold. One of Bourne's most distin-
guished pupils, Dr. Preston W. W. Hill, M. D.,
and one of Menefee's classmates, wrote an
article on Menefee for the Kentucky Journal of
Education,1 many years ago, in which he testified
to the excellent influence that Bourne exer-
cised upon Menefee.   Dr. Hill said that
Bourne was quick to see that Menefee had the
stuff in him out of which a great man could
be made, and he did everything to encourage
him to study and to think. He would take long
walks out into the country with Menefee, as
Professor James Woodrow did with a young
Georgian, many years later, and whom the lit-
erary world loves as Sidney Lanier. He told
Menefee of the arduous boyhood of nearly all
the great Americans, how they had struggled
with poverty and had overcome it. Bourne
'Article in Mrs. Robert Harding's Scrap Book. Begun in 1863.



24

 
EDUCATION



read to Menefee North's translation of "Plu-
tarch's Lives," which undoubtedly encouraged
the young Kentuckian to aim at greatness.
  Bourne used only three text-books in his
school: Thomas Dilworth's Arithmetic and
Speller and the King James Version of the
Bible. Bourne was a Christian for nearly half
a century and it is safe to say that his students
were instructed in the principles of a catholic
Christianity. He lived to see Menefee attain
his fame, and also to have him testify, to Dr.
Hill, after making one of his most brilliant
speeches, that he was greatly indebted to his
old teacher for his success.
  Richard H. Menefee's classmate that at-
tained celebrity far in advance of any other of
his classmates, was Henry Smith Lane, who
was two years younger than himself. Lane
attended Bourne's school until he was sixteen
years of age, when he studied law and removed
to Indiana. He began practice at Crawfords-
ville, in 1837, and was sent to the legislature.
In 1838 he was elected to the 25th Congress
and served through the second regular session
with Menefee. In Washington the two Ken-
tucky schoolmates no doubt renewed their
friendship, and must have passed many a
happy hour talking over their boyhood school
days spent at Bourne's school. Lane served in
Congress until 1842, when Clay's defeat retired
him from political life for the next sixteen
years. He, like Menefee, was a Whig. In 1860
he was elected Governor of Indiana, and a few
months later he was elected to the United
States Senate, where he served six years. Lane

 
RICHARD HICKMAN MXNIFFEE



died in Crawfordsville, Indiana, June 11, 1881.
'Over in Indiana, Lane used to tell the Hoosiers
of the wonderful young Kentucky orator
whose eloquence fascinated the people of his
native State, and captured the 25th Congress.
  Two other of Bourne's pupils, although
only one of them was Menefee's classmate,
achieved greatness: Albert G. Harrison and
John Jameison. Harrison left Bourne's school
one or two years before Menefee became a
student there, and at the age of eighteen years
entered Transylvania University at Lexington,
where he graduated in the arts and in law.
After a few years of practice at AMt. Sterling, lie
removed to Fulton, Missouri, and in 1837 was
elected as a member of the 25th Congress-
Mlenefee's Congress. In Congress Harrison
made several good speeches on the public land
question. He died in Fulton, Missouri, Sep-
tember 7, 1839.
  Jameison, who was a student at Bourne's
school at the same time that Menefee was a
student there, emigrated to Missouri in 1825,
and five years later was elected to the legis-
lature, and served one term as Speaker of the
House. In 1839 he was elected to Congress to
serve out Harrison's term. After leaving Con-
gress Jameison studied divinity and became a
preacher in the Church of the Disciples.2 He
died in 1855 or 1856.
  Menefee's other classmate, Dr. Preston Hill,
was a leading physician in Montgomery
'Article on Menefee by P. S. Kent, of Crawfordsville, in Mene-
fee Scrap Book.
'Judge Bay's "Reminiscences of the Missouri Bench and Bar."
1878.



26

 
EDUCATION



County for many years, and wrote many valu-
able articles on men of history. His article oil
Menefee, already referred to, brought out the
fact that Marshall had Menefee's teacher's
name wrong, which has also been noticed; and
a few weeks later, Reid's History of Montgom-
ery County, a copy of which was found by
the author in the great Wisconsin Historical
Library, corroborated Hill's statement in this
particular.
  Walker Bourne lived to see five of his "boys"
become celebrated men: Alenefee, Lane, Har-
rison, Jameison and Hill. He died February
6, 1873, in his eighty-third year. He was a
Democrat and Harrison and Jameison ac-
cepted his political faith, but Menefee and Lane
became Whigs.
  Menefee completed his first year at Bourne's
school with great credit to himself. In the
summer of 1822 he probably labored in the
fields of some friendly farmer, and in the fall
of the same year returned to Bourne's school.
'One day, in the latter half of his second year
at Bourne's school, he came home and found
his mother in tears. Inquiring for the cause of
her sorrow he was told that she had been mis-
treated by his step-father, and, seizing a carv-
ing knife he made ready to repay the injury
that Lansdowne had inflicted upon his mother.
A relation, who happened to be in the house at
the time, interfered and serious trouble was
averted. This difficulty caused "the lion of his
nature to first break out."
  Menefee now left the home of his mother,
  1 L. V. Clement's speech on Menefee. Incident related by
Menefee's widow.



27

 
RICHARD HICKMAN MZNXFtZ



and at the age of fourteen years started out to
face the cold and uncongenial world. I fancy
that I can hear him pray the prayer that a Ken-
tucky novelist of the present time put into the
mouth of the "Little Shepherd of Kingdom
Come," when he, at the same age as Menefee,
was turned out into the world: "God, I am
nothing but a boy, but I have got to act like a
man now!"
  Nothing else presenting itself, Menefee ac-
cepted the position as bar-keeper at a tavern
bar in Owingsville. This tavern was probably
his father's old tavern which had been rented
at his death. Here the young Kentuckian sold
drinks at the prices fixed by the Bath County
court, on April 1, 1811.' He sold one-half pint
of whiskey or peach or apple brandy at twelve
and one-half cents, and one-half pint of French
brandy or rum at fifty cents. He, no doubt,
also assisted the tavern-keeper with his various
duties, when there was nothing to do behind
the bar.  One night's lodging, supper, or
breakfast cost sixteen and two-thirds cents;
twenty-five cents was charged for dinner.
Twelve and one-half cents was charged to keep
a traveler's horse in the tavern barn over night,
and the same amount was charged to let him
graze, for twelve hours, in the tavern pasture.
Richard H. Menefee and Patrick Henry are the
only Americans that ever developed from bar-
keepers into orators, within my knowledge.
  Although he was willing to stoop to con-
quer, Menefee was not willing to occupy such a
menial position during his entire life. So, after
attending the bar for about one year, he gave
'Young's History of Bath County.