And even this sum Hall found it very difficult to collect, for, nearly two years afterward he reports a list of delinquents amounting to £12. That the progress of the town was rapid and healthy from the first year of Kentucky Independence, is everywhere demonstrated. And no greater proof of this is needed than the fact that while the assessment of 1797 amounted to scarcely more than $150, that of 1809, 12 years later, reached the sum of $991. The town was now clearly and firmly established, it had within itself the elements of prosperity and it was seen that it must one day become great. Its history is less identified with that of the State, and it comes now to claim consideration on its own merit.
It was during this year that the office of Falls Pilot was created by law, in consonance with the following preamble to the act: “Whereas great inconveniences have been experienced and many boats lost in attempting to pass the rapids of the Ohio for want of a Pilot, and from persons offering their services to strangers to act as Pilots, by no means qualified for this business,” &c. The office was appointed by the Jefferson County Court, and the rate of pilotage fixed by the act was two dollars for each boat, while all other persons were forbidden to attempt to perform this service under a penalty of ten dollars.
During the next year—1798—the Assembly passed an act allowing the formation of fire companies by any number of persons exceeding forty, who should record their names and subscriptions in the County Court. These companies were allowed to form their own regulations, impose fines to the amount of £5, and collect the same by suit before a single magistrate, which fines were to be applied to the purposes of their institution.
Previous to this time there had existed no impediment to the clandestine importation of goods by the way of Louisville; New Orleans being in possession of a foreign nation. In 1799, therefore, Congress passed an act by which Louisville was declared to be a port of entry, and a collector was established at this point.
The history of Louisville has thus been brought up to a period when it occupied a deservedly prominent position among western towns. Nature had fitted it to take the first rank, and its rapid improvement demonstrated its power and capacity to assume that position. Thirty years before the time of which we are now writing, the compass of the white man for the first time broke the soil of Kentucky; the spot whereon this great city now rests was a trackless wilderness. The smooth waters of the broad Ohio mirrored in their bosom only the dark branches of the waving forest. The axe of the woodman had not yet awakened the echoes of the grove. The deer, the bear and the buffalo by day, and the wolf and the panther by night were the only inhabitants of the spot. Less than thirty years elapsed and the wand of the magician had changed the scene. The forest had been felled, the trowel of the builder had been wielded, the streets and alleys of a civilized town occupied the spot where the deer had sported in frolic play, and hundreds of merry voices shouted where only the howl of the wolf had been heard. That a civilized town with a population of eight hundred souls, governed by wise laws, possessing the usages of society, enjoying the luxuries of life and moving onward in its daily walk with the calm stability of its fellows, the growth of a century; that such a town should exist where less than thirty years before the beast and the savage had held undisputed sway, is surely an evidence of progress to which no other country in the world can find a parallel. It is a fact before which the wild romance of the Slave of Lamp almost ceases to be fiction.
Louisville having now arrived at an importance of its own, separate and apart from the State, the remainder of this history will be more strictly confined to matters of a purely local character. And beginning a new chapter with a new century, the rest of these annals will be as rapidly and strictly detailed as justice to the claims of each event will allow.
CHAPTER IV.
The opening of a new century found Louisville with a population of 800 souls, with power to elect her own Trustees, with a revenue arising from her own taxes, and in the enjoyment of all the social and political privileges which were possessed by any of the towns within the Western country. Early in the next year the Legislature of the State, after granting power to the Trustees of Louisville to make deeds and conveyances of the town lots and providing abundantly for the levying and collecting of taxes, proceeded to exempt the citizens from working on roads out of the town, except the road leading from Louisville to the lower landing, and ordered the appointment of a street Surveyor whose duty it should be from time to time to call upon the inhabitants of the town “to meet together on a certain day at a certain place for the purpose of working upon the streets.” And every person failing to obey such call was liable to a fine of six shillings for every such failure. The same Act also set aside the sum of twenty-five pounds (being part of the annual tax) to be appropriated toward the building of a market house on the public ground in said town, under the superintendence of the board of Trustees; and as if still further to show its confidence in the capacity of the town to manage its own growing interests, it also placed the harbor at the mouth of Beargrass entirely under the direction of the Trustees.