liam Menifee is found. And, although the illiterate roll-keeper spelled the name with an "i," instead of an "e," as many cultured Kentuckians have since done, it is almost certain that these four soldiers were kinsmen of Richard H. Menefee, and the founders of the Menefee family living in Lincoln County to-day.

Richard Menefee, the father of the subject of this biography, was a Virginian by birth and removed to Kentucky in the last decade of the eighteenth century. He was by trade a potter and worked for many years at the old Bourbon furnace. Richard Menefee finally entered politics, and in 1801-1802 was elected as the representative from Montgomery County in the Kentucky House of Representatives. In 1806 he was returned to the House, and two years later was State Senator from Montgomery in the Kentucky Senate. This office, which Menefee held for the next four years, is memorable as being the time in which his great son was born.

As has been stated, it was on the 4th of December, 1809, that Richard H. Menefee was born, in a log-house situated near a spring. One or two years after his birth his father tore down the log-house and built a brick one directly over the spring. Owingsville tradition says that Col. Thomas Dye Owings and Richard Menefee agreed that the future town should be named for the one who built the finest house on the clearing they had made. Owings built a finer house than did Menefee and we consequently have "Owingsville" instead of "Menefeesville," as it might have been. Besides being the birth place of Richard H.

Menefee, Owingsville was also the birth place of John Bell Hood (1831-1879), commander of the Army of the Tennessee, and author of "Advance and Retreat," and William Lightfoot Visscher, the Kentucky poet, who was born the year after Menefee's death.

In this competitive brick house Richard H. Menefee passed his first years. This house, which was torn down shortly after the civil war, was situated in the western part of Owingsville, fronting on Main street. Today not a single brick remains to tell the historically inclined Kentuckian that here, nearly a century ago, the youngest of the three great Kentucky orators passed his first years. The spring from which Menefee drank for the first twelve years of his life is still flowing, and supplies a fish pond covering about one-eighth of an acre. Across the State another young Kentuckian, some months older than Menefee, was drinking water from a spring not as large as the Menefee spring, but the spring from which Abraham Lincoln drank has become associaated with his name, while the spring from which Richard H. Menefee drank is seldom mentioned in connection with his name.

Menefee's mother's maiden name was Mary Lonsdale. She was born in Harford County, Maryland,' in 1788, and came to Kentucky when a young woman. She met Richard Menefee, who had just returned from the Kentucky House of Representatives, and, about 1806, in her eighteenth year, she married him. Their first-born children were twins, and were named Alfred and Alvin Menefee.

1

1 Mrs. Dr. Robert Peter is my authority for this statement.

They were born on September 29, 1807. They emigrated to Missouri in the early thirties and became farmers. Alfred Menefee married there and thirteen children were born to him. He was a consistent member of the Church of the Disciples for forty years. One of Menefee's letters to him is given in this book. He died in Perry, Ralls County, Missouri, April 26, 1895. Alvin Menefee died shortly after the civil war.

The old Menefee family Bible, which contained the register of the births of the five sons, has been lost. But Richard H. Menefee was undoubtedly the third son, and he left the record of his own birthday. The opening sentence of his Diary, which is dated December 4, 1840, reads as follows: "My birthday 31 years old." This statement settles all controversy in regard to the day of his birth.

Another of his brothers, and probably the fourth-born son, was John Menefee, who was shot in a duel with Alexander McClung at Vicksburg, Mississippi, on December 29, 1838. The duel was fought with rifles at a distance of thirty paces, and Menefee was shot in the head at the second fire. He died a few days later. McClung was the challenger.

The youngest son was Allen Menefee, who came into the world afflicted with infant paralysis. Dr. Edward O. Guerrant, D. D., of Wilmore, Kentucky, remembers Allen Menefee as a small man, with blue eyes, sandy hair, and fair complexion-almost a double of Richard H. Menefee. Before going to Missouri with his brothers, Alfred and Alvin Menefee, he was a frequent visitor at the home of Dr.

Guerrant's father, Dr. H. S. Guerrant, in Sharpsburg, Kentucky. A letter that Menefee wrote when he was a member of Congress, to Dr. H. S. Guerrant, is preserved in this book.

Thomas F. Marshall, in his eulogy on Menefee, said that Menefee supported an orphan sister, but his father's will mentioned only Menefee and his four brothers. At this point in the eulogy Marshall begins to be historically faulty and continues to be so, with a few exceptions, to the end of his panegyric.

1809, the year in which Menefee was born, is the annus mirabilis of the nineteenth century. In this "wonderful year" there was born the greatest group of men that appeared during the century. Tennyson, Poe, Holmes, Fitzgerald, Lord Houghton, Gladstone, Darwin, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Blackie, Hunter, and many other distinguished men were born on both sides of the Atlantic. In Kentucky, Lincoln, Edwards, Bledsoe, Mitchel, Steele, Kinkead, and Carson, were all born during this year.

The year is also famous for other things than the birth of great men. Mammoth Cave was discovered by the hunter Hutchins, and in Danville, Kentucky, Dr. Ephraim McDowell extirpated the ovary, which was the first operation of this kind that had ever been performed in the world. Washington Irving published the "Knickerbocker's History of New York" during this year, which marked the beginning of a national literature in America. James Madison began his first term as the fourth President of the United States in March of this truly wonderful year. So it may be

easily seen that Menefee was born at a time when the men of the world were doing great things. Of all the years of the past century in which a man of ambition could wish to be born, it seems to me that 1809 was the year.

On the day that Menefee was born the Kentucky legislature, for that year, assembled at Frankfort. His father, Richard Menefee, as a Senator from Montgomery and Floyd Counties, was, of course, at the seat of government, and was away from home at the time young Menefee came into the world.

A young Virginian, Henry Clay, had come to Kentucky about a decade before the birth of Menefee and had been sent to the legislature in 1803-1804, and then to the United States Senate in 1806 to serve out the unexpired term of Gen. John Adair. In the winter of 1807 Clay was the Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives, and in 1809 had been returned to the Senate to fill out the Hon. John Buckner Thurston's term, who had resigned.

Menefee's mother, who has been described by the historian of Montgomery County1 as being a very beautiful and attractive woman, educated far in advance of the Kentucky women of her time, had no doubt heard of the young Virginian who was just at the beginning of a career that is unparalleled in American history. Mrs. Menefee was a devout Presbyterian, and a member of the Rev. Joseph P. Howe's church. When Richard was quite young she had Howe baptize him, and when the good man asked the mother to "Name this

1 Historical Sketches of Montgomery County, prepared by Richard Reid. 1882.