James Nourse

James Nourse, who went to Kentucky in spring of 1775 to claim land, seems mostly concerned with food. Understandably so, I suppose, because these early settlers pretty much had to forage what they ate from the land. So Nourse’s journal records a succession of buffalo shot and catfish caught. A catch of huge catfish is another repeating theme in these journals. Nourse’s twenty-pounder, caught in the Kentucky River, is a mere minnow compared to some.

Nourse was not native born. He came over from London to Virginia in 1769. He was a draper by trade, which is to say he dealt in dry goods. Which may explain why he records information about his small clothes:

April 21, 1774. . . .the timber lofty, yet the country not so desirable, being more hilly; very disagreeable riding, especialy in wett weather, the side of the hills being dangerously slippy, and ride which way you will you are continualy mounting or descending—got my linen washed and Miss Gist altered my hunting shirt. The inhabitants so distressed this spring that they are going over the mountain continualy with pack horses for flour. Mr. Taylor gave 20 p hundred P:C for flour at Gregg’s ordinary and 9 p lb for bacon—

According to the glossary of colonial clothing at Colonial Williamsburg:

During the second half of the 18th century a garment referred to as “a hunting shirt” began to appear in North America. The earliest and simplest form seems akin to the coarse shirts that European wagoneers and farmers wore as a protective coverall. In the years prior to the American Revolution this garment came to have a distinct American character. Several of the Independent Companies wore hunting shirts emblazoned on the breast with the motto, Liberty or Death, and several of the early colonial armies chose hunting shirts as their new uniforms. It is, however, with the frontier that this garment is most associated. Unfortunately, few examples of 18th or early 19th century hunting shirts survive and the contemporary written descriptions do not complete the picture. Reconstructions of this garment are largely conjectural.

Two items of interest from Nourse’s account. First his description of relations between Nicholas Cresswell and George Rice:

Monday, May 29th, by six o’clock—rowed till ten, Rice and Cresswell quarreled, Rice Vulgar & ill behaved in the morning—this last I did not hear the beginning of, but from Tom’s acct, Rice first to blame; when I came to them neither would have discredited a Billingsgate education. Rice on my declaring my opinion of his manner before, drew in and it became a Calm—

Billingsgate was a ward of London known for its profane fishmongers.

And this account of the end of Cresswell’s tour of Kentucky:

Thursday 8th Mr. Creswell resolved to return with some Men going by water to Wheeling; divided flour and corn—in the night, George Noland, servant to E. Taylor, and a servant of G. Jones ran off, had taken Mr. Creswell’s share of flour, but being alarmed, they fled to the woods and left it in the canoe.

Friday June 9th Creswell left me the others being out seeking the run-aways, they return without success, engage Welch to go after them—a Man that Johnston sent down for his things and a horse that brot Creswell’s company’s things, when loaded with mine &c. Tom and I set off once more for Harrodstown, very hott, mett about half way 3 young Men, who told us of the Boston engagement and of 39 Negroes being hanged near Williamsburg, said to be 900 of the English troops killed. About 6 arrived in town, eat some beef and hominy at Mr. Slaughter’s, pitcht my tent about 10 yds from them and slept well.

All quotes are from Ellen Eslinger’s Running Mad for Kentucky. Frontier Travel Accounts (University Press of Kentucky, 2004). Eslinger glosses the Boston engagement as the Battle of Bunker Hill but gives no clue as to why 39 slaves were hanged. I do think, though, that slaveholders had some fears that either the British would encourage a slave uprising against American rebels or else that slaves would take advantage of divisions amongst white men to stage a rebellion on their own.

As for the two runaways, I guess we’ll never know what happened to them. In “The Shape of Slavery on the Kentucky Frontier, 1775-1800,� Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 1994;92:1-23, Eslinger indicates that African-American slaves on the Kentucky frontier did not often run away but some few did join with the Native Americans.

As for James Nourse, he eventually brought his family over into Kentucky and became a permanent settler.

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P.S. Kentucky’s outgoing Poet Laureate, Jane Gentry, is featured on The Writer’s Almanac today. Podcast here.