*Note that some of the language and topics are inappropriate in today’s world*
Memories of Henderson
By HENRY C. DIXON
Some customs and doings in Henderson, in my early boyhood days, are some stories connected with that time:
My mother, Elizabeth Robertson Cabell Dixon, died of cholera September 23, 1852, just after I reached my seventh birthday. During her lifetime a shower bath and a tablespoonful of garlic bitters were given her three male children, Arch, Henry and Joe, every morning before breakfast. The shower was administered in this wise: a child was stood up in a large washtub, and a negro servant poured a bucket of cold water on its head. We had no regular bath tub such as is now in use. Indeed, the first one I ever saw or heard of was instituted by my stepmother. It was a wooden one lined with zine about the size and shape of the present tub. I have read the first regular bathtub made in this country was made in Cincinnati in 1843. Modern hygiene, that prescribes plenty of fresh air in the sleeping room,
was not observed in our dwelling house. The bed my father and mother slept in in the winter was a four poster, with a tester on top, and curtains attached thereto, hanging all around the bed was to prevent cold air striking the occupants. The younger children slept in a trundle bed, which, in daytime, was stowed away under the larger bed. The fuel was wood and coal, mostly wood. There were no coal mines in operation in and around Henderson. The coal we got came down the river from Pittsburgh and Cannelton. No ice was manufactured. Wire screens on doors and windows to keep out flies and mosquitos had not been invented. We had no lamps. Candles furnished the lights. No waterworks; the water was gotten from wells and cisterns and hauled in hogsheads from the river. There was only one town pump. It stood in the middle of Main Street, between the corner now occupied by the Farmers Bank and Mann Brothers.
When I was a very small boy, I saw a man I knew well, but whose name I will not mention, held under that pump and nearly drowned by water pumped on him by a lot of vigilantes. His offense was drunkenness and wife-beating. All the business of the town outside of the tobacco business was done on Main Street between First and Third, and on Second between Main and Water. Nearly all of what is now Central Park was big pond. In front of the gas works was a beautiful grove, where, when I was six years old, i saw my cousin Mary Sasseen (nee Towles) crowned Queen of the May. The river was full of fish. When twelve years old, fishing with a small sardine pole and line from a flatboat at the foot of Fourth Street I caught, between daybreak and breakfast, over forty rock bass; they bit ravenously at the small part of the minnow on the hook. On New Year’s Day Main Street between First and Second was crowded with negro slaves and white people buying and hiring slaves. In a small one story building on Water Street, between Second and Third, was the negro pen where “Nigger Traders” sold slaves. To show the agility of the slaves and help the sale, two men slaves played the banjo for the others to dance.
Numbers of large palatial steamers plied between Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville and New Orleans. All the tobacco shipped from Henderson to Europe went by river to New Orleans. Often boats would stay here two or three days taking on hogsheads of tobacco. The boats going down and coming up were crowded with passengers. The fare was of the very best. Each boat carried a string band to make music for dancers. Often a captain, through kindness and courtesy, without charge, would give our young people the pleasure of having a ball on his boat. The most attractive music I ever heard was the singing of the negro roustabouts, hired slaves, as the boats landed or shoved out. Happy days, those were, for the whole country; even for the negro slaves.
Ignorance Killed Washington
It was common in the days of Washington to bleed the sick person. If the patient was not relieved they bled him again. Washington had a sore throat. The doctor opened a vein and bled him.
Next day, throat no better, doctor bled him again. Throat worse, after the third bleeding, Washington protested. “But,’ says Dr. William Maher Lewis,
president of George Washington University, the bleeding was continued right up to his death.” Today we know that the blood and consequent vitality hastened the death of Washington, as it did thousands of others.”—(Literary Digest)
Bleeding was practiced in Henderson when I was a small boy. Several times I saw the operation performed.
A frog story
In the 1850’s, what is now our beautiful Central Park was a large pond extending from a point about forty feet in front of the present jail to Washington Street and from Elm to Main. On the southwest corner of Main and Washington Streets, where the First Presbyterian Church now stands was the residence of Mr. Alexander Burch. Mr. Burch’s wife was a Breckinridge, and a sister of our late fellow townsman, James P. Breckinridge. The pond had any number of bull frogs in it. Mr. Burch was very fond of frog legs, and was a persistent and successful frog fisherman, using as a lure a piece of red flannel attached to the hook.
The story told me in my boyhood days was this: The frogs, rebelling against being caught, held a convention and resolved to place sentries to warn them of Burch’s approach. Seeing him coming, one would holler out, “B-here he comes, B-here he comes.” Another would holler, “B-who? B-who?”
Another, in deep guttural tones, would call out, “Burch, Burch,Burch.” Then in full churus, they would utter their warning cry, “Quelek,’ and all of them dive down int the pond.
Professor Lang and the Firecrackers
In the middle of 1850s, the Taylor House, a two-story
red brick building, stood on the site afterwards occupied by the Hancock House (built when the Hancock House was torn down).
The second story of the Taylor House had a long room fronting on, and running parallel to Main Street, which was used for public entertainment and a dancing
school. When I was nine, or ten, a German, Professor Lang, was teaching dancing there. I was one of the pupils of his younger class and a favorite of the professor During the Christmas holidays, he had both classes, the younger and the older, to meet and dance together. George Gayle and E.L. Starling, about 14 years old, belong to the older class. They gave me a pack of firecrackers and persuaded me (and I was easily persuaded) to light them and put them under the chair on which the professor was standing, calling out in German the figures of the dance. When the firecrackers exploded the professor, with a yell like that of a Comanche, went up in the air and I, the perpetrator of this outrange, was standing about
twenty feet off, leaning against the mantel of the fireplace, looking innocent and unconcerned. Turning to me, whom he had never once suspected, he said: “Henry, I gif you five dollar if you find out what dam rascal put dem firecracker under my chair.” I promised to try to find him, but I never made a report, and he never knew. If it had been developed that I was the culprit, that old German would have nearly killed me, for whipping then was permissable in dancing schools as well as in others. At that time the Market House stood in front of the Taylor House and Central Park was a large pond on which I have often skated when a boy.
The First Time I Acted as Escort
In the fall of 1852, when I was just seven years old, I wrote to Miss Sallie Rankin, a girl about my own age, sister of my good friend and boon companion, C.
Wardlow Rankin, this note, dictated by one of my sisters, and worded in the style then in vogue:
“Compliments of Henry C. Dixon to Miss Sallie Rankin, and would be pleased to accompany her to the Presbyterian supper tonight.” Those were the words of the note; I remember them distinctly.
I received a reply, accepting my offer. So, about seven o’clock that evening, rigged out in my Sunday clothes, proud of my budding young manhood, and beaming with happiness I arrived at the Rankin residence, ardently ready for this new adventure of filling the position of escort. Soon we took our departure, Miss Sallie and I leading the procession, Miss Nannie Rankin her girl friend, and their two beaux following immediately behind us. Not a word did I address to Miss Sallie while enroute to the supper. The celebrated Sphinx was never more profoundly silent than I was on that occasion. The young lady I was escorting was equally non-talkative. Of course, the embarrasment, incident to youth and inexperience, in a great degree, accounted for our silence; but, there was a force at work increasing that embarassment.
From the very start, the couples behind us indulged in whispering and giggling. We knew intuitively, we were the subject of their criticism and mirth, and that any attempt at conversation on our part would simply increase that criticism and mirth, and our discomfiture proportionately. For two hours I had the time of my life at this supper.
But about nine o’clock, when I was in the very hey-day of enjoyment, our washwoman, old aunt Bet, put in an appearance with an order from my father to fetch me home. My father was then convalescing from an attack of cholera, but was strong enough to administer a whipping. The order to come home was an awful jolt to my pride. I knew I would get a whipping if I didn’t obey, so, sacrificing gallantry to safety, I went with aunt Bet and left Miss Sallie could get home the best way she could.
