Tracking the Mysteries: The Legacy of John Filson’s 1784 Book and Map

4 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY J ohn Filson, whose short life involved more than its share of mishaps, was one of many individuals who tried to make their fortunes west of the Appalachian Mountains in the late eighteenth century. His biographer, John Walton, ably assembled the story of his life as a schoolmaster, surveyor , and adventurer from rather meager documentary evidence . Though Filson charted and described Kentucky (still part of Virginia at the time), wrote about areas now in the states of Ohio and Indiana, and spent much time in Pennsylvania and Delaware, no one named a physical landmark for him until the twentieth century. Even “Losantiville,” his name for the town he was laying out across from the mouth of the Licking River at the time of his final mishap, failed to survive ; in 1790, Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, vetoed the name in favor of “Cincinnati.” (For a brief time, early plats of Losantiville showed a street named after Filson, but his partners in laying out the town changed it to Plum after his demise.) In the next century, however, The Filson Historical Society in Louisville memorialized his name upon its 1884 founding as the Filson Club. In the early 1920s the city of Louisville made further amends when it established George Rogers Clark Park and named a street bordering the park Filson Avenue. Today, “Filson” is the highest category of membership in The Filson, ahead of Clark, Shelby, Clay, Audubon, and Boone, in descending order of monetary commitment. Indeed, Boone might not have made the list at all had Filson not sketched his life and adventures in The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke. As Willard Rouse Jillson noted, Filson saved Boone from oblivion.1 In fact, Filson’s 118-page book and the accompanying map—the subject of this article—constitute his true monument. The flurry of interest in the trans-Appalachian West among Europeans and Americans dwelling on the east coast in the decade after the American Revolution provided Filson with a receptive audience for his book. Initially printed in 1784 in Wilmington, Delaware, it was soon reprinted in France, Germany, England, and New York, and Gilbert Imlay used it in several editions of his Topographical Tracking the Mysteries The Legacy of John Filson’s 1784 Book and Map Irene Tichenor Portrait of John Filson (1753-1788), attributed to Aurelius O. Revenaugh (1840-1908), commissioned by Reuben T. Durrett. THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY IRENE TICHENOR WINTER 2009 5 Description of the Western Territory of North America. Other authors also plagiarized and quoted the text. Notwithstanding its impact in the late eighteenth century, Filson’s book lay neglected during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century until Kentucky history enthusiasts, most notably Reuben T. Durrett, Rogers Clark Ballard Thruston, and Jillson, stirred up new interest in it. Historical pursuit of the map, engraved in Philadelphia in 1784 and so rare that many thought it did not exist, took on a life of its own. Many interested people, including two chiefs of the Library of Congress’s Map Division, have tried to sort out its numerous iterations or “states,” each created when the engraver altered the plate and the printer produced more copies. Title page of John Filson, The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke . . . (Wilmington, De.: James Adams, 1784). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY TRACKING THE MYSTERIES 6 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY The Book The book was a modest but enthusiastic piece of promotional literature for an area that garnered fresh interest after Britain lost the Revolutionary War and could no longer attempt to keep Americans near the Atlantic coast. Filson had emigrated to “Kentucke” from his native Pennsylvania and purchased Kentucky land scarcely a year before the book appeared. While Filson had some surveying skills, he could not have personally surveyed the area described in the book in the short time he lived in Kentucky. Instead, he traveled from station to station asking questions and astutely enlisting the help of several men who knew at least parts of the territory well. Since his arrival in 1769, Daniel Boone had committed to memory the region’s forests, flora, fauna, rivers, and their tributaries...