Cloverport, KY

A few years ago I visited the tiny river town of Cloverport, Kentucky, located on the banks of the Ohio River.  It was here that Abraham Lincoln’s family crossed the Ohio River on their move to Indiana in December of 1816.

I’m not kidding when I say this is a tiny town.  It’s so small that people noticed us as being out of place immediately, and some asked if they could help us with directions.  I suppose that the only strangers that come this way are either dedicated Lincoln fans or motorists who have gotten lost.  Cloverport isn’t even on the Lincoln Heritage Trail, the designated series of highways in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois that link towns associated with Lincoln’s pre-presidential history.   Look Cloverport up on Google maps and you’ll see what I mean about it being off the beaten path.

I wasn’t there to see the place of the Lincoln family crossing, but rather to track down the roots of my own family, the Hustons and the Murrays.   Although there isn’t much happening around Cloverport these days, back in the very early 1800’s it was an important shipping point.  From here, local goods were put on flatboats and taken down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans.  They were sold there, along with the flatboats, and the men returned on foot by way of the Natchez Trace.  My 5 G grandfather Joseph Huston was an early settler and operated this settlement’s first ferry across the Ohio.  In fact, in the early days the town was called Joesville in honor of Joe Huston.

Our first stop was just north of town to find the Murray family graveyard.  As we peered into the deep thicket on the side of the road where I thought the graveyard might be located, a local stopped to ask what we were doing.  I explained our search and he pointed us to the place where he thought it was located but warned that it was pretty much overgrown.  He was right and we had to push our way through the thick overgrowth and sticker bushes to find the gravestones scattered across a deeply eroded hillside.  Most of the stones were difficult to read but eventually I found the grave of my GGGG grandfather David R. Murray. 

David Murray (1790-1871) was born in Kentucky and trained as a wheelwright but later he and his brother John gave up their trade to become merchants.  It is said that when they first began to sell goods they had to travel to Philadelphia on horseback to make their purchases, which were then brought by wagon to Pittsburgh and from there sent down the Ohio on flatboats.  David Murray first married Joe Huston’s daughter, Eliza and her grave was also located in this old gave yard.  She died at the age of 28.    

Our next stop was to walk along the riverbank just below the main part of town where local history signs had been placed along a “Cloverport History Path.”  I was surprised to read on one sign that the Lincoln family had actually met and stayed overnight with the Murray family before they made their crossing.  Other references to this are sparse, but I did find, in an old book entitled Kentucky, A Guide to the Bluegrass State, published in 1939, the following:

“In 1816 when the Lincoln family, consisting of Thomas, his wife, Nancy, their son and daughter, moved from Hodgenville to Indiana, they were ferried across the Ohio River here (Cloverport).  Lincoln was driving a yoke of oxen hitched to a cart, to which a cow was tied.  Several decades later Col. David R. Murray, who had been a boy living here when the Lincolns passed through, gave the description of the event: “On account of the unusual size of the oxen, a crowd soon gathered to find out who these people were and where they were going.... Old Minerva, a colored slave, who had been attracted to the scene, seeing the condition of the children, went back into the house and came back immediately with a plate heaping with slices of homemade bread covered with butter, a pitcher of milk, and some cups.  She seated the children on the steps of my father’s house and fed them.  When they left Hardinsburg, they drove to Cloverport to get across the river.  In those days there were no ferry boats and passengers, whenever any came along, were set across in a canoe.  Then the Lincolns reached the ferry, a raft was made, with the assistance of several people, and the wagon placed upon it.  With one man in the canoe to pull and one man on the rear of the raft to push with a long pole (the river was low at the time), the Lincolns were ferried across to the Indiana shore and landed.  Then they came back, and the two oxen and the cow were made to swim over.”

What about Joe Huston’s ferry?  Couldn’t the Lincolns have taken that across?  Maybe it was no longer operating by then.  Joe Huston had died in 1813.  Obviously some of the details are foggy at best but I’d like to assume that there was some contact between the Murrays and the Lincolns.

My ancestor is David and Eliza Murray’s daughter Jane who married into the Fairleigh family.  But, it is interesting that one of David Murray’s sons, Eli Huston Murray, obtained the rank of General, fighting for the Union Army in the Civil War.  Then, in 1868 Eli Murray was appointed as U. S. Marshal for Kentucky.  After that, he served as the governor of Utah from 1880 to 1886.  David Murray’s son, John Allen Murray, became a judge and another son David Jr., became a lawyer, state senator and later adjutant general of Kentucky.  There seemed to be great opportunities, even for these men growing up in tiny Cloverport.  I wondered if the town's current young people could envision such grand prospects for themselves.

By the time we had completed our tour of the Cloverport sights, it was lunchtime and we were hungry.  We asked a man on the street where we could get a good bite to eat and he directed us to a little café on the south side of town near the railroad tracks.  I think it was called Becky’s.  Of course there were lots of curious looks when we entered the old fashioned little place as again we were recognized as outsiders.  I had a grilled cheese on white bread, a Coke, side of chips and a slice of dill pickle.  It was that kind of menu, that kind of place, and it was good.   

-Mary

Downtown Cloverport, KY

Col. David R. Murray's Gravestone in Cloverport, KY.