Epilogue

George and Serena Croghan’s son, St. George Croghan, inherited Locust Grove and moved from New York with his young family in hopes of farming the estate. He failed, and after mortgaging the place, returned to New York to spend years litigating his wife’s inheritance. With no means of support, he joined the Confederate Army in 1861 and was killed that November. The Croghan homestead was rented, then sold, and today stands as a National Historic Landmark museum open to the public. The enslaved Croghan workforce was freed in 1856 by the terms of Dr. Croghan’s will, and although Stephen Bishop and the slave guides eventually opened a hotel for black tourists who visited Mammoth Cave, the farm’s enslaved people moved to the city and disappeared from the history of the place where most of them had been born.

Wilkinson

Casual readers of American history may assume the United States enjoyed relative peace between the end of the Revolution and the War of 1812, but in fact, the West remained in turmoil and Kentucky lay at the center of British, French, and Spanish intrigue. Kentuckians struggled with significant decisions leading to statehood: should they remain part of Virginia, join the United States, or become an independent entity aligned with another nation? Navigation rights on the Mississippi River were at the heart of Kentuckians’ concerns, and as long as the federal government refused to negotiate the matter with Spain, most farmers initially were reluctant to commit themselves and their children to land-locked futures. George Rogers Clark, with the encouragement of his former soldiers, agreed to lead a contingent of settlers to form a colony on the Mississippi. Going so far as to ask Spain for permission to do so (as did Sevier, Steuben, and others), Clark unnerved the federal government.