INTERPRETATION OF THE “DREAM.”

(Nashville American, May 16, 1897.)

  1. James Robertson.
  2. George Roulstone.
  3. James Gattys McGregor Ramsey.
  4. Allen Anderson Hall.
  5. Elihu Embree.
  6. John Bell.
  7. William Blount.
  8. Alfred Osborn Pope Nicholson.
  9. Landon Carter Haynes.
  10. Gustavus Adolphus Henry.
  11. Meredith Poindexter Gentry.
  12. Daniel Smith.
  13. Thomas Hart Benton.
  14. Hugh Lawson White.
  15. Andrew Jackson.
  16. Thomas Jefferson.
  17. William Blount Carter.
  18. John Calvin Brown.
  19. Charles Johnson.
  20. Stephen Cabarrus.
  21. William Branch Giles.
  22. Samuel Livermore.
  23. Henry Washington Hilliard.
  24. Rachel Jackson.
  25. Mary Grainger.
  26. Catharine (or Katherine) Sherrill.
  27. Margaret O’Neill (or O’Neal).
  28. Nancy Ward.
  29. George Washington.
  30. Marie Jean Paul Roche Yves Gilbert Motier de Lafayette.
  31. Thomas Walker.
  32. Estevan Miro.
  33. Francis Nash.
  34. Meriwether Lewis.
  35. Fernando (or Ferdinand or Hernando) DeSoto.
  36. Robert Cavelier de La Salle.
  37. John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun.
  38. Thomas Sharpe (or Sharp) Spencer.
  39. Abraham Castleman.
  40. John Donelson.
  41. Willie Jones.
  42. Russell Bean.
  43. Felix Robertson.
  44. James Leiper (or Leeper).
  45. Daniel Boone (or Boon).
  46. David Crockett.
  47. John Rains.
  48. Samuel Doak.
  49. Tidence Lane.
  50. Francis Asbury.
  51. Samuel Carrick.
  52. Moses Fisk (or Fiske).
  53. Philip Lindsley.
  54. Matthew Fontaine Maury.
  55. Gerard Troost.
  56. Paul Fitzsimmons Eve.
  57. James Baxter Bean.
  58. John Catron.
  59. Felix Grundy.
  60. David Campbell.
  61. Roger Brooke Taney.
  62. Samuel Spencer.
  63. John Haywood.
  64. Benjamin Franklin.
  65. Thomas Hughes.
  66. John Mitchel.
  67. Albert Pike.
  68. George Washington Harris.
  69. Samuel Houston.
  70. John Sevier.
  71. William Hall.
  72. Robert Looney Caruthers.
  73. James Knox Polk.
  74. Andrew Johnson.
  75. James Chamberlain Jones.
  76. William Gannaway Brownlow.
  77. Edmund Rucker.
  78. Nathanael (or Nathaniel) Greene.
  79. John Coffee.
  80. David Glasgow (or Glascoe) Farragut.
  81. Robert Armstrong.
  82. William Bowen Campbell.
  83. William Walker.
  84. John Adair.
  85. Montgomery Bell.
  86. Charles Roberson.
  87. William Carroll.
  88. James Overton.
  89. George Washington Campbell.
  90. David Shelby.
  91. Joseph Reddeford Walker.
  92. Dorothea Lynde Dix.
  93. Robert Hatton.
  94. Albigence Waldo Putnam.
  95. Alexander McGillivray (or McGilveray).
  96. Peter P. Pitchlynn.
  97. Timote (or Timothy) Demonbreun.
  98. Louis Philippe.
  99. John Arnold Murrell.
  100. Virgil Adam Stewart.

In the matter of the orthography of the foregoing names, latitude is allowed wherever it is proper to do so. For example, the famous “backwoodsman of Kentucky” was in the habit of signing his name “Boon” or “Boone,” as the fancy struck him; Capt. Leiper was known as “Leiper” or “Leeper” indifferently, the latter having been the signature to the Cumberland Compact; the surname of “Bonnie Kate” is always printed as “Sherrill” by historians (the “Sherril” of Putnam being manifestly a typographical error), although her father wrote his name “Sherrell”; that romantic scoundrel, Alexander McGillivray, was almost as versatile in the matter of autographic variants of his family name as was Shakespeare—Capt. Allison, in his “Dropped Stitches in Tennessee History,” speaks of having examined two autograph letters, one of which is signed “McGillivray” and the other “McGilveray”; the middle name of the “big foot hunter” is “Sharpe” or “Sharp,” as may be; the Moses Fisk of history appears in the catalog of Dartmouth College as “Fiske”; and while the actual name of the “pretty Peggy” of Jackson’s time seems unquestionably to have been Margaret O’Neill, Parton invariably prints it “O’Neal.” On the other hand, there are several cases in which it is not at all difficult to determine the absolutely accurate orthography. Instances are the Christian name of Meriwether Lewis, a facsimile of whose autograph may be found in Appleton’s “Cyclopedia of American Biography,” and who invariably signed his name as it is here given, although the Tennessee legislature, with that faculty for blundering which seems an inevitable characteristic of Tennessee legislatures at all periods, inscribed his tombstone “Merriwether”; the Earl of Loudoun, for any other spelling of whose name there is no shadow of authority; John Mitchel, the Irish patriot; Willie (pronounced “Wylie”) Jones, whose Christian name many persons seem to regard as a diminutive of “William” (even Phelan makes this error); Demonbreun, which is the form the name of the pioneer of French Lick assumed when its bearer, who was “De Mont Breun” in France, came to America—the various curious shapes in which the name is given by Haywood and Ramsey being merely vagaries of the fancy of these worthies, who had an ingenuous habit, where proper names were concerned, of “spelling by ear”; and notably the “misspelled name” referred to in 32, which, given by Haywood, Ramsey and Putnam in various forms (all of them incorrect), is rightly given in Martin’s history of Louisiana—unquestionable authority in all matters relating to that period. A photographic reproduction of Miro’s autograph signature may be found in a recent issue of that valuable publication, Professor Garrett’s “Magazine of American History.” One name which is incorrectly printed in all the histories is that of Charles Roberson. Capt. John Allison informs me that the old court records at Jonesboro show that he invariably signed his name as I have given it above. It may be well here to state that the general belief that Charles Roberson was a relative of Gen. James Robertson is incorrect.

In connection with the identity of the editor referred to in 4, attention may here properly be called to a remarkable blunder in Crew’s History of Nashville, where the positive assertion is made that Jeremiah George Harris, in 1840, “issued the first campaign paper ever issued west of the Alleghanies, named Advance Guard of the Democracy, and this occasioned the issue from the office of the Banner of The Spirit of ’76, a Whig campaign paper.” This statement is the exact reverse of the fact, the first issue of The Spirit of ’76 (Allen A. Hall’s paper) having made its appearance March 14, 1840, while Harris’s paper did not see the light until the 23d of the following April, it having evidently been suggested by, instead of suggesting, the rival campaign paper. This blunder is the more singular from the fact that bound volumes of both papers were easily accessible to the writer in the library of the Tennessee Historical Society—and he does not even give the name of Harris’s paper correctly!

There can be no doubt that Elihu Embree was really the first abolition editor. To settle definitely a matter which all of the histories and biographical dictionaries (so far as I have examined, without exception) misstate—they invariably call Benjamin Lundy the pioneer in anti-slavery journalism—I quote here a passage from an extremely rare book—Lundy’s Autobiography. After narrating his experiences in St. Louis, in 1819, which caused his determination to return to his home in Ohio, Lundy says: “Before I left St. Louis I heard that Elihu Embree had commenced the publication of an anti-slavery paper called ‘The Emancipator’ at Jonesborough, in Tennessee; but on my way home I was informed of the death of Embree, and I determined immediately to establish a periodical of my own. I therefore removed to Mount Pleasant [Ohio] and commenced the publication of ‘The Genius of Universal Emancipation,’ in January, 1821.... When the friends of the deceased Embree heard of my paper they urged me to remove to Tennessee and use the press on which his had been printed. I assented, and after having issued eight monthly numbers of the ‘Genius’ I started for Tennessee. On my arrival I rented the printing office and immediately went to work with the paper.”

Careless reading of Ramsey has led astray a large number of people with regard to the minister referred to in 49. Speaking of the expedition of Col. Christian for the relief of the Watauga settlers in 1772, Ramsey says: “The Rev. Charles Cummings accompanied the expedition as chaplain, and was thus the first Christian minister that ever preached in Tennessee.” Granted—but while this is doubtless true, the question is not who “first preached in Tennessee,” but who first “preached regularly to a Tennessee congregation,” and that this was Tidence Lane, in 1779, is clearly demonstrated elsewhere by Ramsey. Goodspeed, indeed, using Ramsey’s facts, but changing his language, asserts in terms that Cummings had charge of a congregation “within the limits of the state”; but Goodspeed is in error in this, as he is in very many other statements. In Park’s “Historical Discourse,” a work which is the result of the most careful and painstaking original research, the statement is explicitly made that the congregation to which Goodspeed refers as having enjoyed the ministrations of Cummings “in the Holston valley as early as 1772,” was really not located in Tennessee at all. It was “in Virginia, near the site of the present town of Abingdon.” Dr. Park, himself a Presbyterian, would not be likely to fail to claim for a minister of his own denomination any credit justly due him.

In order to be absolutely frank, I desire to correct an error—the only one, I believe, in the “Dream,” and one fortunately of little moment. The man who “founded the first academy for females in Tennessee” (52) was not a classmate of Daniel Webster, as stated; although the misstatement was made on what I considered good authority.

R. L. C. White.