Shortly after Mike Fink was put into circulation there appeared in the Alton (Illinois) Courier, 1852, a prize serial entitled Virginia Rose, by Dr. Edward Reynolds Roe. Having gone through a pamphlet edition, this Cave-in-Rock story was published in book form in 1882 under the title of Brought to Bay, and in 1892 the same story was republished and its title changed back to Virginia Rose. Dr. E. R. Roe—not E. P. Roe with whom he is sometimes confused—was a citizen of Illinois, practiced medicine and wrote a number of books. He died in Chicago in 1893 at the age of eighty. He lived in Shawneetown a few years, beginning in 1843, and it is said he prepared the greater part of this manuscript while residing there.
The book has no preface and the presumption is that all the characters are fictitious. The story deals with the career of a girl, Virginia Rose, who was kidnapped in Shawneetown by her father, the leader of the Cave-in-Rock outlaws. He takes her to the Cave, and it so happened that shortly thereafter the New Madrid earthquake of 1811 occurs. The citizens of Shawneetown, suspecting that the stolen Virginia Rose may have been taken to the Cave, so runs the story, organize a rescuing party. Upon their arrival at the Cave, they, to their great surprise, find the place abandoned. Boxes and barrels were scattered around, their contents undisturbed, and the general appearance indicated that the place had been abandoned suddenly.
In the words of the author: “Remnants of a feast which had never been eaten were lying upon a table; lamps were hanging around burnt out for want of oil.... The hatchway overhead, which communicated with the room above was not closed ... but the avenues which led from it to the inner cave had disappeared. The rock had fallen from above in vast masses and closed all connection between the upper cave and the outer world forever.... What was a hill back of the cave bluff now appeared to be a hollow or depression, as compared to the ground around it.... The outlaws had met their fate—they had perished in the earthquake [except the leader and his daughter who were on the Mississippi at the time] perhaps in the midst of gay festivities, perhaps in the hour of music and dancing! Who could say? Not a soul was left to tell the tale. The men who had come to execute vengeance could not now avoid sympathy for the dead.”
Thus did the author of Virginia Rose make the New Madrid earthquake wipe out the Cave-in-Rock’s “inner cave” or “upper cave” that had been “discovered” and is so extravagantly described by Thomas Ashe!
Between recorded history on the one hand and stories of fiction on the other stands the book Chronicles of a Kentucky Settlement, 1897, by William Courtney Watts. It is a historical romance based solely on local tradition. Although this work is somewhat faulty in its general construction, and may be, at times, somewhat crude in its literary style, it is, nevertheless, one of the most faithful historical sketches of early Kentucky.
The leading characters are Joseph Watts and Lucinda Haynes, who were first thrown together in 1805 when children on their way from North Carolina to the West, Joseph going to Tennessee and Lucinda moving with her parents to Kentucky. A few years later Joseph Watts began a search for Miss Haynes and found her near Salem, Kentucky. After a courtship such as none but lovers in a new country could experience, they were married and became the parents of the author who tells their story. Among other characters is Charles H. Webb, who gave Watts an account of his capture at Cave-in-Rock and escape from the outlaws and who later married the daughter of James Ford.
The gloomiest tragedy in the book concerns the unfortunate Lucy Jefferson Lewis, sister of Thomas Jefferson, whose two sons killed a slave on their farm near Smithland, Kentucky, and cut up the body in an attempt to conceal their crime. One of the Lewis brothers committed suicide on his mother’s grave and the other escaped after he had been arrested for murder and placed in jail. All the characters in Chronicles are presented under fictitious names.[41]
It is probable that every person who saw the landscape of which the opening of the Cave forms a part had his sense of romance and poetry stirred by the sight. To what extent attempts were made to express this emotion in the form of poetry or verse is not known. Only one poem has been found—“The Outlaw,” by Charles H. Jones, of Cincinnati. It comprises about one thousand two hundred lines, published in 1835 in a neatly bound booklet called The Outlaw and Other Poems. In the October, 1835, issue of the Western Monthly Magazine, of Cincinnati, Judge James Hall devotes two pages to a eulogistic review of the book, encouraging the young poet in his work. A more enthusiastic reviewer might have called this an epic of Cave-in-Rock.
In his introductory note Mr. Jones briefly refers to the then well-known fact that the Cave had been for many years the resort of a band of outlaws all of whom were finally either killed or driven out by the Rangers. As to his authorities he states that “the ravages of the robbers are still fresh in the recollection of many of the inhabitants of the lower Ohio valley.”
About one-half of the poem is an “effervescence of poetic fancy,” with here and there a real gem. The plot is dramatic. The story begins in Virginia. Our hero shoots his successful rival in love immediately after the wedding ceremony. Believing he has killed the groom and that the shock has proven fatal to the bride, he flees to the wilds of the West. He drifts down the Ohio, joins the band of outlaws at the Cave and soon becomes their leader—The Outlaw.