We then returned to town, walked through it, and entered the state house, from the cupola of which we could distinctly count every house, the number of which was exactly ninety, most of them well built with brick, and some with rough but good marble of a dusky cream colour, veined with both blue and red, and capable of a good polish, which is abundant in the neighbourhood. The old wooden houses are rapidly disappearing to give place to brick, since about two years ago. Until that time, attempts had been made at every annual sitting of the legislature, to remove the seat of government elsewhere, ever since the year 1793, the first after the separation of this government from the state of Virginia. These attempts having failed, and there having been no renewals of them in the last two sessions of the legislature, the proprietors, under a security of Frankfort being established as the permanent capital of the state, have become spirited in improvement, and the buildings erected since are on a scale and of materials worthy of a capital.
The publick buildings here, are a state-house, a court-house, a gaol, a market-house, the state penitentiary, and a government house occupied by Mr. Greenup, who now holds that office.
The state-house of rough marble, is about eighty-six feet front, by fifty-four deep. It is an oblong square with a square roof, and a cupola containing a bell rising from the centre. The house is plain, but roomy and commodious. On the first floor are the treasurer’s, register’s, auditor’s, and printing offices. {171} On the second, the rooms for the representatives of the state, and the federal court of appeals, and on the third are the senate chamber, the general court and a school room.[130]
The court-house is a plain brick building near the state-house.—A piazza of five arches opens on the hall for the county courts.—The clerk’s offices are on the same floor.—The jury rooms are on the second floor, and on the third is a mason’s lodge.
There are four publick inns, which in point of size, accommodation and attendance, are not surpassed in the United States, and there are several large houses, where people under the necessity of attending the courts, or detained for any time in Frankfort, can be accommodated with private lodgings. The erection of a permanent wooden bridge over the Kentucky has been lately commenced, which will be about one hundred and forty yards long from bank to bank, the surface of which is about fifty feet above low water mark. The present bridge of boats is about sixty-five yards between the abutments, and the river now at low water is eighty-seven yards wide. Three brigs have been built above the bridge, and sent down the Kentucky, the Ohio, and the Mississippi, but the Kentucky is not navigable during the low water of summer and fall. Coals are brought down it nearly three hundred miles and delivered in Frankfort at sixpence per bushel, but wood being yet tolerably plenty, they are used only in the penitentiary and by the blacksmiths.
There are several curious strata of marble, rising from the margin of the river, like steps of stairs, towards the top of the bank on the town side. The marble is covered by a stratum of blue limestone, which has {172} over it a superstratum of reddish clay and gravel mixed.
After dinner we visited the penitentiary accompanied by our landlord and Mr. William Hunter, a respectable printer and bookseller, and a genteel man, to whom I had brought a letter of introduction.[131] In our way we passed the government house, which is a good, plain, two story, brick building, and near it we met governour Greenup, who saluted us with much familiarity. He is a plain, respectable looking elderly man, much esteemed throughout the state.[132]
The penitentiary is contained within a square area of an acre, consequently each side is two hundred and eight feet long. The work shops and store houses occupy the front and the other three sides are enclosed by a stone wall sixteen feet high, surmounted by a sort of entablature of brick about three feet high, rounded on the top and projecting about a foot from the wall on each side to prevent any attempts of the convicts to scale the wall. There are now twenty-four miserable wretches confined here for various limitations of time, in proportion to the enormity of their crimes, but none exceeding ten years, the longest period limited by law. The cells of the criminals are in a two story building with a gallery on the inside of the area, extending the length of one of the sides. Some of the convicts were playing fives, and the rest amusing themselves otherwise in the yard. It was Sunday, a day always devoted to amusement by those outcasts of society, who have their daily task exacted from them with rigour during the rest of the week. They are taught, and work at every trade for which they have a taste, and of which they are capable, so that some who were useless burthens on society previous to their confinement, carry with them, on their return to the world, the means of earning a decent subsistence; though at {173} the same time, perhaps the majority, instead of being reformed, become more prone to vice, through despair of ever gaining their lost reputation. The institution had like to have failed about two years ago, through the insufficiency of the superintendants, when a captain Taylor, a man of good property in Mercer county, who was an enthusiastick admirer of it, was prevailed on by the governour to undertake the management and superintendance, and it has since not only supported itself, but has earned a surplus, which goes into the state treasury. Taylor is a stern man of steady habits, and a great mechanical genius. He superintends every class of workmen himself, and has invented several machines for the improvement of mechanicks. He has nailors, coopers, chair makers, turners, and stone cutters, the latter of whom cut and polish marble slabs of all sizes, and he has taught most of them himself.
He is a large and strong man, about fifty years of age, and either through eccentricity, or to give himself a terrifick appearance, he wears his dark brown beard about two inches long, from each ear round the lower part of the chin. It is surely a strange taste, which prompts him to separate himself from his family and the world, to exercise a petty tyranny over felons, and to live in such constant apprehension from them, that, as I was informed, he always carries pistols.
We resisted the polite and friendly importunity of Mr. Hunter, to spend the day with him, and quitting Frankfort, we took a different route to that by which we had come, which brought us, after riding ten miles mostly through woods, to Coles’s, who keeps an inn on this road, in opposition to Daly, on the other. But any traveller, who has once contrasted his rough vulgarity, and the badness of his table and accommodations, with the taste, order, plenty, and good attendance of his mulatto competitor, will {174} never trouble Mr. Coles a second time, especially as there is no sensible difference in the length or goodness of the roads, and that by Daly’s, is through a generally much better settled country.