Spanning Rivers, Bridging Generations

Joseph and Eleanor Adams of Henderson, Kentucky

Steamboat Clerk

His parents both having died, and seeking relief from rheumatism, 21-year old Joseph Adams of Massachusetts left his native state for southern climes. He arrived in Cuba in October 1838, and a few weeks afterward at New Orleans. Upon hearing that a man indebted to him was residing in Evansville, Indiana, Joseph steamed more than 1000 miles up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers in the hopes of negotiating an agreeable settlement. Unable to locate his debtor, Joseph hired on as clerk for the steamboat William Glasgow, making “one or two trips between New Orleans and St. Louis, and then New Orleans and Pittsburgh.” ¹ In late April 1839, while enroute to St. Louis from Pittsburgh, a fire broke out in the ship’s hold. “Such was the rapid progress of the flames, that nothing was saved but a trifling amount of baggage by a few of the passengers, and the books of the clerk’s office.”² Most passengers were immigrants, bound for a new life in Illinois and Missouri. Joseph was “the last person to leave the burning vessel, and it was by dint of the keenest strategy that he succeeded in gaining the shore unharmed.” ¹

Merchant and Proprietor

Joseph returned to Evansville, and in November 1839 contracted to work for a merchant in neighboring Henderson, Kentucky. Intending to stay only a short time, he became so enamored of the town that he made it his home. Within a year Joseph was running his own mercantile store, and gaining a reputation as an enterprising and civic-minded man.

Marriage

Joseph’s friend and fellow town leader E.L. Starling relates, “On the twenty-eighth day of November, 1844, in the frame residence now owned and occupied by A. B. Sights, on Center, between Elm and Green Streets, Mr. Adams married Miss Eleanor Smallwood Grayson, a lady of marked personal beauty, and great popularity in social circles.”¹ It was a match of dignified pedigrees. Joseph was distantly related to the distinguished Adamses of Quincy. Eleanor (family reference #33(10)) was named for her paternal grandmother, sister of a Revolutionary War general and Maryland governor. Her paternal grandfather was a friend and aide to George Washington, later a U.S. senator. Eleanor’s parents were lawyer and early Henderson settler Robert H. Grayson 33 and Sophonisba Cabell, scion of Kentucky pioneers and political leaders. Through her mother’s line Eleanor was directly descended from the Indian princess Pocahontas.

Grocer, Tobacconist, Farmer

“In 1844 Mr. Adams purchased the old lot on the northeast corner of Main and Second Streets, and built the two-story brick yet standing [1887]…. In this building he opened the first and only exclusive grocery ever kept in Henderson up to that time. [In] 1854… he purchased the tobacco stemmery, situated on Upper Green Street, and …engaged largely in the purchase and stemming of tobacco for the foreign markets.” In 1862 Joseph purchased 750 acres of farmland “lying one and one-half miles out on the Owensboro Road…. During this same year he completed and occupied his magnificent residence, on the corner of Washington and Adams Streets.”¹

Family

By 1862 Eleanor had borne eight children, three girls and five boys. Sadly, one boy and each girl died in infancy, “and the writer knows what a terrible blow the death of [Joseph’s] last and only daughter was to him. He spoke frequently of her, even though she had been dead for years, and it really seemed that the memory of her was continually upon his mind. I have frequently thought that the tenor of his life was completely changed in her death.”¹

Spanning the Ohio

In the 1870s a major Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad spur ended at the foot of Fourth Street in Henderson. In order to continue the journey into Indiana and on to St. Louis, passengers and cargo were ferried on barges across the Ohio. The Kentucky legislature approved plans for a railroad bridge and in 1880 Joseph and his friend E.L. Starling were among nine men tasked with selling stock, directing surveys, and hiring contractors. “In July, 1885, the first locomotive passed over… this immense iron and steel bridge. It is 3,686 feet in length, single track, with sixteen spans, and three smaller or supplemental ones. The channel span… is five hundred and twenty-five feet in length — said to be five feet longer than any other iron or steel span in the world… There are fifteen stone piers, nine of which rest upon immense wooden caissons, sunk to a rock foundation.”³

Bridging Generations

The first locomotive crossing was Monday, July 13, 1885. On Thursday, July 16 Baxter Harrison Adams, first grandchild of Joseph and Eleanor, was born in Henderson. On August 1 some 20,000 people including local, state, and L&N dignitaries, gathered for an celebratory banquet followed by an immense fireworks display. Eleanor, her sons, and grandson surely attended. Joseph, who died the previous summer, was unable to enjoy these final fruits of his civic and familial labors.

Joseph and Eleanor Adams’s story is unique and yet universal. A new climate and a subsequent thousand-mile journey that ended in disappointment resulted instead in a union of two people from distinctly different backgrounds. Together they sank a foundation capable of bridging new horizons for their children and grandchildren, should they choose to follow them.

Eleanor died in 1893, 49 years after her marriage to Joseph. Coincidentally, within 50 years the Henderson bridge proved insufficient for increasing rail traffic and volume. New foundations were poured and an advanced span opened in 1932. An automobile bridge was opened that same year, connecting the sister cities of Henderson, Kentucky and Evansville, Indiana. A new I-69 span is scheduled to be complete in the next few years, relegating the historic auto bridge to local traffic. And so the story continues – over rivers and across generations.

¹ Starling, Edmund L., History of Henderson County, Kentucky (1887, Henderson KY) pg 650-652. Much of the information in this post is drawn from Joseph’s short biography and various notations within this regional history. E.L. Starling was Joseph’s friend and fellow Henderson civic leader.

² The Globe (Washington, DC), 7 May 1839 pg 3.

³ Starling, History of Henderson pg. 505-507