Part 18

On another occasion when sorely pressed he took refuge with a Mrs. Hammack, who was an old-time Methodist living in that part of the country. She treated him so kindly that he decided to let her have a glimpse of his hidden treasures. On the appointed day he blindfolded her and his wife and led them by a very circuitous route to a cave. After they were in the mysterious cave he removed the bandages from their eyes and, by the light of torches, the two women were enabled to see the large quantities of counterfeit silver and gold coins in boxes and chests stored by Duff. He then replaced the bandages and took the two women back to Mrs. Hammack’s house. Mrs. Hammack’s impression was that the cave ran into the side of a cliff but, notwithstanding many efforts, she was never able to retrace her steps to the place. Mrs. Duff related, after her husband’s death, that he had taken her from their home to the cave on another occasion and in the same manner. He then promised her that he would some day show her the way to his cave, but explained at the time that he could not then do so, for his enemies might torture her into a disclosure of his location when he was in it. His intentions were frustrated by his sudden death. There are three different accounts of Duff’s death given by local tradition.

One version has it that he was killed by some of the citizens of the county, near the bluff where he quartered his horses. According to this account, a number of men were pursuing him and when he showed fight they were obliged to shoot him. Another says he was killed by Indians with whom he had quarreled about a dog fight. The following is the version most widely accepted:

Duff, three of his associates, and his slave Pompey, while in Illinois securing white metal, were surprised by about six soldiers sent from Golconda, Illinois, or some other point below Cave-in-Rock. The counterfeiters were captured and taken down the river in a boat. Handcuffs were placed upon all the white prisoners. Pompey had not been manacled because the soldiers carried only four sets of irons and, furthermore, they presumed the negro cared little whether his master was doomed. Near Cave-in-Rock they stopped for dinner. When they landed, all the soldiers went ashore except one who was left in charge of the prisoners and the boat. After stacking their arms near the boat, they went into the Cave to build a fire and prepare the meal.

One of the prisoners whispered to Duff that he found he could slip his irons off. Pompey hearing this, passed a file to him and, taking advantage of the absence of the guard, who went ashore for a few minutes, he filed away at Duff’s fetters and soon succeeded in breaking them. At a signal, Pompey sprang upon the guard and tied him to a tree and then proceeded to liberate the two men chained in the boat. Duff and the other unfettered prisoner immediately seized the stacked arms and rushed upon the men in the Cave who, having no side arms, were forced to an unconditional surrender.

Some of the soldiers were tied and others secured with irons and all thrown into the boat and set afloat. They drifted down the river and, as they were floating opposite the fort from which they had been sent, they were ordered to stop, but of course could not do so. They were fired upon a number of times before the commander discovered their helpless condition. He then sent out a skiff and brought them ashore. In the meantime, Duff and his companions had made their way up the river to the Saline and had got safely home again.

The inglorious outcome of this expedition greatly incensed the commander of the fort and he was determined upon revenge. He accordingly hired a Canadian and three Indians to go up the river to Duff’s Fort and kill him. They were to ingratiate themselves into the good graces of the counterfeiter and watch their opportunity to kill him. If they succeeded they were to return and receive a reward.

They arrived in Duff’s neighborhood and camped below his house. The Canadian soon became friendly with Duff, who did not suspect the object of his presence, and was invited to his house. The genial hospitality of the counterfeiter was fatal to the Canadian’s plan, and each day he found himself less inclined to carry out his murderous scheme. Meanwhile the Indians were becoming impatient. One evening they informed the Canadian that they had concluded to kill Duff the next day, whether he helped or not. He then decided to put Duff upon his guard.

The next morning, although Duff was drinking rather heavily, the Canadian disclosed the plot to him. Duff, seizing a stick, rushed from the house, swearing he would whip the Indians with it and drive them off. He met them coming towards his house, painted and armed for a conflict. Pompey, recognizing the danger his master was facing, rushed to him with a loaded gun, but before it could be used the Indians shot Duff and his slave. “The leader having fallen,” says the author of _A History of Union County, Kentucky_, in concluding his account of Duff, “the rest of the gang were speedily dispersed.”«36»

About a generation after the days of Duff there appeared upon the scene a man named Sturdevant, whose counterfeiting career continued in the Cave-in-Rock country until 1831. In the meantime the flatboat pirates who had used the Cave as their headquarters had disappeared and the mysterious Ford’s Ferry band was drifting towards its dispersement.

The identity of Sturdevant is as vague as that of Duff. Tradition has it that Sturdevant did not counterfeit money in the Cave but that, beginning about 1825, and for a short time thereafter, he used the “House of Nature” as a “Banking House of Exchange.” There he met his confederates and exchanged, at an agreed rate, some of the counterfeit money he made in his fortified home nine miles below the Cave. Judge James Hall, in his _Sketches of the West_, published in 1835, devotes two pages to Sturdevant. His is the best of the few published accounts. It is well worth quoting in full:

“At a later period [that is, after Mason’s time] the celebrated counterfeiter, Sturdevant, fixed his residence on the shore of the Ohio, in Illinois, and for several years set the laws at defiance. He was a man of talent and address. He was possessed of much mechanical genius, was an expert artist and was skilled in some of the sciences. As an engraver he was said to have few superiors; and he excelled in some other branches of art. For several years he resided at a secluded spot in Illinois, where all his immediate neighbors were his confederates or persons whose friendship he had conciliated. He could, at any time, by the blowing of a horn, summon some fifty to a hundred armed men to his defense; while the few quiet farmers around, who lived near enough to get their feelings enlisted and who were really not at all implicated in his crimes, rejoiced in the impunity with which he practiced his schemes. He was a grave, quiet, inoffensive man in his manners, who commanded the obedience of his comrades and the respect of his neighbors. He had a very excellent farm; his house was one of the best in the country; his domestic arrangements were liberal and well ordered.

“Yet this man was the most notorious counterfeiter that ever infested our country and carried on his nefarious art to an extent which no other person has ever attempted. His confederates were scattered over the whole western country, receiving through regular channels of intercourse their supplies of counterfeit bank notes, for which they paid a stipulated price--sixteen dollars in cash for a hundred dollars in counterfeit bills. His security arose, partly from his caution in not allowing his subordinates to pass a counterfeit bill, or to do any other unlawful act in the state in which he lived, and in his obliging them to be especially careful of their deportment in the _county_ of his residence, measures which effectually protected him from the civil authority. Although all the counterfeit bank notes with which a vast region was inundated were made in his house, that fact could never be proved by legal evidence. But he secured himself further by having settled around him a band of his lawless dependents who were ready at all times to fight in his defense; and by his conciliatory conduct, which prevented his having any violent enemies. He even enlisted the sympathies of many reputable people in his favor. But he became a great nuisance from the immense quantity of spurious paper which he threw into circulation; and although he never committed any acts of violence himself, and is not known to have sanctioned any, the unprincipled felons by whom he was surrounded were guilty of many acts of desperate atrocity; and Sturdevant, though he escaped from the arm of the law, was at last, with all his confederates, driven from the country by the enraged people, who rose, almost in mass, to rid themselves of one whose presence they had long considered an evil as well as a disgrace.”

Governor Reynolds notes that in 1831 Sturdevant’s fort was attacked by some Regulators, and that one Regulator and three counterfeiters were killed, and “the suspected gang broken up.”

James A. Rose in his article on “The Regulators and Flatheads in Southern Illinois” says: “Regulators descended on the Sturdevant stronghold only to find that their movements had been spied upon and that they were expected. A number of shots were exchanged; finally a charge was made on the stockade and the door broken down. They found, however, that a small piece of artillery was trained on the stairway leading to the Sturdevant stronghold, and a halt was called and reinforcements asked for. During the night Sturdevant and his band of criminals managed to make their escape. This is one of the earliest records of the citizens of this region taking the law into their own hands.”

Sturdevant was never again heard of in that or any other locality. What became of him is not known. This attack on his headquarters ended forever counterfeiting in the Cave-in-Rock country.«36a»

The Ford’s Ferry Mystery

After Mason left Cave-in-Rock other outlaws still continued to use the cavern as a temporary stopping place or headquarters. An outlaw’s stay at any place is of necessity short. Mason, in 1797, had lived there longer than any other. Those who followed him were more or less migratory. Residents in the vicinity were in no way implicated in the various acts that made the Cave so notoriously dangerous, until the mysterious Ford’s Ferry band began its robberies. Since 1834, when that organization ceased its operations, the Cave has never been identified with outlawry.

To what extent James Ford, the owner of Ford’s Ferry--a crossing place on the Ohio two and one-half miles above the Cave--was connected with this organization was not revealed in his day nor since, and it is not at all likely that it will ever be determined. He is more frequently discussed in tradition, and his life is the subject of a greater variety of opinions than that of any other man connected with the tragedies of the Cave-in-Rock country. According to one version, “Jim Ford was as black as some have painted him,” and, according to another, his connection with the mysterious band had the effect of preventing bad men from committing more crimes than they would have if his influence had not acted as a restraint.

A careful study of the few written records and the many varied oral traditions pertaining to Ford, indicates that when he reached the prime of life conditions had undergone many changes. Outlaws were no longer in a position to carry on their depredations with the freedom that attended the earlier days. Population had increased, and with that increase came a better reign of law. The line between law-abiding and law-breaking citizens was rapidly widening. For about ten years, ending in 1833, Ford apparently stood between the two, and kept in close touch with both. By mingling with the upright citizens he held in some measure the respect of the community, and by acting as one of the leaders of the highwaymen he reaped a share of their booty. In serving the two opposing classes he faced, and finally met, the fate common to such men.

His education and appearance, and his public activities, gained for him the confidence of the community and the standing of a trustworthy man, which he held until toward the close of his life. Before he died many of his fellow-citizens began regarding him with more or less suspicion, and he soon became a man of mystery. After his death his career was extensively discussed throughout the lower Ohio valley. Our account is confined principally to court records and oral traditions. These old records, as far as known, have not been cited heretofore by anyone attempting to tell the story of James Ford.

Tradition has it that James Ford was born some time during the latter part of the Revolution. His father, it is said, was a Revolutionary soldier and moved with his son to western Kentucky about 1803. Thus he appeared in the Cave-in-Rock country about half a dozen years after the Masons and Little Harpe had gone south, but was living in the neighborhood when “Jim Wilson” and some of the other outlaws were holding forth at the Cave. His home was a half-mile southwest of what is now the village of Tolu, Crittenden County, Kentucky. It was a mile from the Ohio and the head of the notorious Hurricane Island, about eight miles below Ford’s Ferry and five miles below Cave-in-Rock. Ford owned a number of good farms in what was then northern Livingston, now Crittenden County. So well was he known along the lower Ohio that Samuel Cuming’s _Western Navigator_, published in 1822, designates the river landing near his home as “Major Ford’s.” The old court records preserved at Smithland show that he was a justice of the peace in 1815 and held the office a number of times thereafter, and that practically every suggestion made before the county court “on motion of James Ford” was carried. He frequently served as appraiser and administrator of estates. Through these and other acts of trust he gained the prestige of a desirable citizen. The improvement of roads was encouraged by him, especially those leading to Ford’s Ferry.

One of the most interesting chapters of the mystery surrounding Ford’s Ferry may be found in a book of personal reminiscences and local traditions of Cave-in-Rock and its vicinity disguised as historical fiction and called _Chronicles of a Kentucky Settlement_. Its author, William Courtney Watts, who possessed an excellent education, was a very successful man of international business experience, born at Smithland, Kentucky, near Cave-in-Rock. Much of his information came directly from his father and other pioneer settlers.

Among the men who figure in the romance, and whom Watts personally knew, was Dr. Charles H. Webb, of Livingston County, of which Smithland is the seat. Dr. Webb married Cassandra Ford, the daughter of James Ford. He related the story of his life to Watts and thus contributed a chapter to history that stands alone. There exists in more or less abundance printed data relative to some of the methods employed by the bands of robbers at Cave-in-Rock to entice boats to land at the Cave and get possession of victims. All these, however, are, as already observed, stories based on statements made, not by men who spoke from actual observation, but by persons who had heard others relate another man’s experience. In Dr. Webb we actually touch hands with a well-known and highly respected citizen who was lured to the Cave by some of the tricks suggested--tricks regarding which few lived to tell the tale and of which nobody else left any direct authoritative account.

Dr. Charles H. Webb and his brother John, both young men, left South Carolina in 1822 for Philadelphia and shortly thereafter set out for the West in search of fortune, with St. Louis as their destination. At Cave-in-Rock, on their way down the Ohio, they met their great adventure and were separated as the narrative records. Dr. Webb, having lost all, settled at Salem. There he subsequently met and knew Watts. The two became fast friends when Watts, much the younger of the two, had grown up. It was from Dr. Webb, in the flower of his middle age, that Watts had this story:

“My brother and I descended the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to Louisville in a flatboat, and after remaining a few days in Louisville we again started on another flatboat, intending to go on it as far as the mouth of the Ohio River or near there.... The boat, a ‘broadhorn,’ was in charge of one Jonathan Lumley, who owned a large proportion of the cargo which consisted of corn, provisions, and whiskey. With Mr. Lumley were three other stout young men as hands, making, with my brother and myself, who had agreed to work our way for food and passage, six persons on board.

“Day after day as we floated along, the better I got acquainted with my companions and the more I found that, under a rough exterior, they were warm-hearted, generous, and confiding fellows, equally ready for a jig or a knock-down, for a shooting match or a drinking bout, for a song or a sermon.

“I was playing on my flute as our boat was nearing Cave-in-Rock, and when within full view of the high rocky bluff, at the base of which is the entrance of the Cave, we observed a woman on the top of the bluff hailing us by waving a white cloth, whereupon our captain, as we called Mr. Lumley, ordered us to pull in close to shore, within easy speaking distance, so as to learn what was wanted.

“Presently a man came from the entrance of the Cave, and called out: ‘Hey, Cap! have you enny bacon or whiskey on board?’

“‘I-yie!’ shouted back our captain.

“Won’t yer land? We’re short on rations here, an’ want ter buy right smart!’ said the man.

“‘Goin’ to the lower Mississippi!’ answered our captain, ‘and don’t want to break bulk so high up.’

“‘But, Cap, we’ud be mi’ty obleeged ef you’d lan’. An’ we’ve got a woman here and a boy who want passage down ter the mouth er Cumberlan’. They’ve bin waitin’ a long time, an’ll pay passage.’

“‘All right then,’ replied the captain, ‘I’ll land; but let them come aboard at once.’

“And land we did some two hundred yards below the Cave, when the captain and three others--my brother being one of them--went ashore and walked up to the entrance. After waiting for more than an hour, and none of our men returning, I asked my remaining companion to go up to the Cave and see what was detaining them. Another hour passed away; the sun had gone down, and night, with clouds, was rapidly coming on.

“I began to feel uneasy, and to add to my uneasiness, a large dog which we had on board began howling most dismally. Presently, by the dim twilight, I saw three men approaching the boat from the Cave. At first I thought them a part of our crew, but I was soon undeceived, for they came on board, and with pistols drawn, demanded my surrender. Resistance was useless; my arms were soon bound behind my back, and I was told that if I made any row my brains would be blown out. I asked about my friends but was only told that they were ‘all right,’ that the captain had ‘sold the boat and cargo,’ and that what little information they had given was ‘enough’ for me ‘to know.’

“I was then blindfolded, and when my money had been taken from me, I was assisted--I should say lifted--into a skiff, into which two of the three men, so I thought, entered. I begged to know what had become of my brother, and told them that he and I were passengers on the boat and no part of the crew proper. I did this hoping that if they knew we were passengers and had no direct interest in the boat and cargo they would think us less likely to return to the Cave and molest them. But the only answer I got was that the ‘fewer questions’ I asked the better it would be for me, ‘by a d---- sight.’

“The skiff was then rowed away--in what direction I could not tell, but in some five minutes there was a pause in the rowing, and soon a slight jar as of two skiffs coming together, followed by a conversation in low tones, the purport of which I could not catch. Very soon, however, one of the men approached me and whispered in my ear. There seemed to be a remnant of mercy in the intonations of his words, rather than in the words themselves. He said: ‘We’re goin’ ter vi’late orders a little, an’ turn yer loose here in the middle er the river. An’ the furder yer float away frum here ’fore yer make enny noise, the better for yer by a d---- sight. Yer’d better lay low an’ keep dark till mornin’ comes.’ The speaker then slackened the cords that bound my arms, after which he again whispered: ‘Yer ken work ’em loose when we’re gone, say in ’bout an hour, but not sooner, er yer may get inter trouble. An’ don’t yer never come back here to ax enny questions, or yer’ll fare worse, an’ do nobody enny good.’

“The man then left me seated in the stern of the skiff, and I could tell from the motion and the rattling of a chain that a second boat was being pulled along side it, into which the man stepped, leaving me alone. I strained my ears to catch the slightest sound, but I could neither hear the click of oars nor the dip of a paddle; the latter, however, might have been used so noiselessly as to be unheard. I was therefore in doubt. I thought possibly the other boat might be floating close to me and that I was being watched. This brought to my mind the man’s caution not to try to free my arms for an hour. I therefore, remained quiet for about that length of time. No sound reached me except the moaning of the night winds among the forest trees that lined each shore, the occasional barking of wolves, and the weird cry of night-fowls--particularly the blood-curdling hooting of great owls....

“After a long and painful effort I succeeded in releasing my arms and freeing my eyes from the bandage. Looking around I found the heavens overcast: the night was so intensely dark that I could see only a dim outline of the shore. I discovered there were neither oars nor paddle in the skiff, but I was floating some two or three miles an hour, and it might be many hours before I would pass any habitation. I therefore made up my mind to lie down in the skiff, try to get some sleep and await the coming of morn. But the distant growling thunder was creeping nearer and nearer; flash after flash lit up the heavens, followed by almost deafening discharges that rolled, crashed, and reverberated along the river and among the forests, which moaned and groaned under the pressure of the rising wind. The waves in the river were momentarily increasing, and were dashing my little skiff about in a way that was alarming....

“I knew if the downpour continued for many minutes my skiff would fill and sink. There was but one way to bail it out--to use one of my thick leather shoes as a scoop. I worked manfully while the rain lasted, which, fortunately, was not for more than an hour.