by Tony Nalley
“This guy knew the King of France too Colby! Look!” I said. “King Louis of France likewise granted the American inventor a patent.”
“You see there!” I continued. “The history of Bardstown is directly linked to France!”
“But weren’t a bunch of the Kings of France named Louis?” Colby interjected. “How do we know that this was the same one who met with the priest from St. Joe?”
“Hmmm…” I said as his line of reasonin’ began to make sense to me. “…alot of their Kings were named Louis! You’re right! This one’s not the same guy that met with Flaget. Look!” I said excitedly. “I read that the French Revolution started in July of seventeen hundred ninety-three and they executed their King! They cut off that King’s head! This was probably the one that they killed, cause it says here that ‘Fitch was given the patent in 1791’! The King that met with Flaget could’ve been his son, maybe? I don’t know for sure, but I do know that they didn’t meet until 1798 or 1799 in Cuba!”
“This is kinda like a history puzzle aint it, puttin’ everything together?” Colby stated as a question and then he rolled his eyes. “Cause it’s boring me to tears! And Oh! By the way…” Colby related. “…you’re standing on this guy’s grave!”
Colby was right!
Directly beneath this Monument lay the body of Poor Old John Fitch. He was buried beneath the streets of Bardstown, right in the middle of its court square! I’d heard that he’d committed suicide by way of a drug overdose, cause some of the local people here had stolen his lands.
Standin’ there on his grave, well it kinda gave me the creeps!
We crossed the street to the Library and walked up its marbled steps. They were made of a grey marbled stone, smooth but not so much so that you could slip on em’ or nothin’.
We opened up the two tall window glass doors to the Library and we stepped into its foyer. To the right of us sat a large winding staircase that circled upwards to the left. The rail was wooden and allowed its travelers to look out over the Library’s lobby as they held on to its smooth touch along the journey both up and down from its second floor venue.
It turns out that Colby would spend a great deal of his time at the top of that staircase; just lookin’ over that banister …tryin’ to sneak a peek down women’s blouses and things, to try and see their boobs! Like I said before, he was my friend and all but he was also ‘a great big nut’!”
Anyways, we opened up the second set of tall glass doors and entered into the lobby. And suddenly! Everything got very, very quiet. The ladies behind their podium desks looked up at us sternly as we entered the room, but we continued on anyways …we just got a whole lot quieter about it!
To the left of us sat wooden tables and chairs for reading books and for studying. While the room itself was aligned with tall book cases and shelves …with row after row of hard back books!
I spent the next couple of hours collectin’ as many books for researchin’ as I could think of, from ‘werewolves’ to church bells to John Fitch and Stephen Foster! And I even went through some of the library’s old newspaper files on microfiche.
Meanwhile, Colby was ridin’ up and down on the small elevator that resided at the center of the library! He rode up and down on it at least a couple hundred times! And he even came really close to gettin’ both of us kicked out of there too!
Once I had gotten myself situated and comfortable, I looked up information on John Fitch.
“John Fitch (1743-1798) was an American inventor who had been unable to attain a US patent for a steamboat design he had envisioned, but had received a patent for it from France with the help of a man by the name of Aaron Vail, a merchant with whom he had done business with in New England. Fitch set sail for France in seventeen hundred ninety-three just as the Reign of Terror began, and met with Vail. But his attempt to build the steamboat in France would fail, due to the Revolutionary changes in the French government, so he sojourned onward to England in pursuit of more funds, leaving his plans and drawings with Vail, as well as papers he had detailing sixteen hundred acres of land of which he had laid claim to in the United States territories.
Fitch’s plans for the steamboat were lent out by Vail to a Mr. Robert Fulton, who would go on to become Fitch’s strongest rival. The papers of land claim would henceforth disappear. Fitch returned to Kentucky after repeated hardship to sell his lands to fund his research but found ‘Squatters’ occupying his properties. Legal entanglements ensued, but the outcome would not come to fruition. As by way of an opium overdose in July 1798, John Fitch’s fate would be sealed by that of his own hand.”
“John Fitch’s fate would be sealed by that of his own hand.” I re-read again. “Did it really happen that way or had someone killed him?” I wondered. And I read again that “…the papers of land claim would henceforth disappear...”
The plan for the City of Lystra in NelsonCounty had been created in 1795. That’s what I’d read in Mama’s encyclopedias anyways. And that was followed by the death of John Fitch in 1798.
“Could it have been murder? And who were the ‘Squatters’ who’d occupied his lands?” I thought out loud. “Had they been the ones who had built the new city of Lystra?”
I had spoken too loud! I realized that as I looked about the Library room to see the faces of those who had heard me, those within hearin’ distance of my words! I became very cautious of my surroundings then. As the looks I’d been given, had made me uneasy. But I returned to my books again soon enough and continued my research of the past.
“John Fitch traveled to France in 1793, just as the Reign of Terror began.” I thought. “And just what exactly was the ‘Reign of Terror’?”
Within a book titled “The French Revolution”, I found many references to ‘The Reign of Terror’.
“The Reign of Terror (5 September 1793, to 28 July 1794) was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution." Estimates vary widely as to how many were killed, with numbers ranging from 16,000 to 40,000; in many cases, records were not kept or, if they were, they are considered likely to be inaccurate.”
And I further read that:
“The guillotine became the symbol of the revolutionary cause, strengthened by a string of executions: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans) and Madame Roland, as well as many others, such as pioneering chemist Antoine Lavoisier, lost their lives under its blade.”
“Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans.” I said to myself. “It was his father they killed!”
“During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with both real and imagined conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies. Within France, the revolution was opposed by the French nobility, which had lost its inherited privileges. The Roman Catholic Church was generally against the Revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they take an oath of loyalty to the nation. In fact, many French priests were imprisoned or executed.”
“I wonder if that was why Father Flaget left France.” I thought.
Colby had disappeared from sight. He’d probably gone upstairs or somethin’ I figured, cause he sure wasn’t nowhere to be found!
I had to put all of this in order myself I reckoned; I didn’t know if everything had begun in France in 1793 or not, but everything seemed to be pointing to this one moment in history! It was as if it were a focal point. A moment in time that linked all of these things together!
Flaget and Louis Philippe had both left France in 1793, while Fitch had came and left again that very same year!
“Perhaps Flaget, Phillippe and Fitch had met one another while in France.” I reasoned.
The meeting between this ‘Prince of Blood’ and Father Flaget happened in Cuba in 1799, six years later. “That was the same year that the Talbott Tavern was built in Bardstown
!” I realized.
“Had Lystra been built before Bardstown was founded? Had it been built while the town was still known as Salem? Salem was famous for its ‘witch trials’! Could this be the missing link I have been looking for? The plan for Lystra was created in 1795.” I continued. “Could Flaget have been given somethin’ from the ‘prince of blood’ that he was supposed to bring to Bardstown, near the location where the new city of Lystra was to be built?” I wondered.
I was putting together a timeline for Lystra, but I didn’t know for sure what Flaget had brought with him. I knew that it had to be somethin’ important enough to involve the future King of France. And it was important enough to the people who had followed it that they made plans to have a city built here in secret, apparently several years in advance of Flaget’s journey to Bardstown.
I surmised too, that they could’ve been involved in the death of John Fitch. Could he have been murdered over the rights to his lands?
I knew it was mostly circumstantial evidence, and almost completely speculation …but it did seem possible!
However, how exactly this connected up with the Civil War and to the ghost in my family’s barn, I didn’t have a clue!
None of the stories I had read would’ve given reason for a soldier of the Confederacy to have been bound to our lands for eternity!
Unless …unless there was somethin’ about what Flaget carried; somethin’ that he was given to him …by the ‘Prince of Blood’?
“And could that have been the reason why the new city of Lystra was destroyed?” I wondered. “Could someone have been lookin’ for what Father Flaget carried?”
I browsed through several other books then …lookin’ for information on Bardstown’s history durin’ the times of the Civil War. I knew that Jesse James and his older brother Frank had visited here quite often during and after the war, and that Jesse had stayed right across the street from where I sat, right there at the Talbott Tavern! But I didn’t know much else about it.
But as I dug further into it though, under the heading of bandits and outlaws I found an article regarding ‘Magruder, Sam ‘One Arm’ Berry, and Sue Munday’! They had also been in Bardstown durin’ the days of the Civil War.
“During the cold months of 1864, the men wanted adventure and rode into Bardstown. Magruder stated that “nothing short of some blood from us, to deplete us, and bring our ardour into some correspondence with the weather, or some blood from our Federal friends to gorge and satisfy us-nothing short of this would answer that day.” The guerillas attacked the courthouse in Bardstown, where thirty Federal soldiers took refuge. During Magruder’s charge, the Federals wounded Berry. Magruder and the rest of the guerillas retreated from Bardstown.”
I thumbed through more pages and I read through several other articles, skimmin’ through them quickly as I read. But nothin’ seemed to fit into my line of reasonin’. I couldn’t find a connection. I couldn’t find anything connectin’ these outlaws to anything else that I had surmised.
However, I did find an article regardin’ our famous song writer: Stephen Foster. But I’d have to say that I almost didn’t pay it any attention cause Stephen Foster didn’t have anything to do with France or ‘werewolves’ or the Civil War, at least wise that I could figure! But I did read that …‘The only time that Stephen Foster had the opportunity to journey through Kentucky, was when he and his mom had come through here when he was a kid. But, they didn’t stop in Bardstown at the time cause of the cholera epidemic of 1833. Some of his cousins even died at the Federal Hill Plantation from the disease that year!’
I further read that:
‘He came through Kentucky once more in the early 1850’s by steamboat, as he and his wife journeyed down the Ohio River on their way to Louisiana. But they where only listed as bein’ off of the boat …for an hour and a half, per the boats log book while they were docked at port in Louisville. …so there wasn’t enough time for him to have gotten to Bardstown and back to Louisville again by carriage or by horseback.”
“If he didn’t really come to Bardstown,” I wondered as I spoke out loud. “…then what’s the ‘Stephen Foster Drama’ about?”
“And how could he have written the song about the Plantation Home in Bardstown if he’d never actually visited the Federal Hill Plantation?” I wondered to myself.
I guessed that those were questions for another time. Reading about this was givin’ me a headache!
But as I was readin’ about that boats’ log book, somethin’ did cross my mind. “Could there be a record or a log entry of a ‘werewolf’ listed in NelsonCounty?”
I got up from my chair and walked over to the small room by the Librarian’s desk and I searched through some old microfiche records and newspaper clippings. After about twenty minutes or so, I came across an article dated October 1965. It was the only article that I could find on record.
They called the creature the ‘The Whortlechort’ cause up and until that time no one from around this area had ever heard of a ‘big foot’ and no one would’ve believed they’d seen a ‘werewolf.’ “The sighting occurred in an area of NelsonCounty where farmers raise tobacco and allow cattle to graze along the creek beds.” The article read. “On this particular October night in 1965 two brothers had driven their pickup truck to their grandmother’s farm to find a cow that had wondered off while expecting to have a calf. They parked their truck and headed up a fence row to a clump of trees where the cattle usually bedded down for the night.”
“As we moved up the fence row, we spotted something in sort of hunched position.” One of the brothers stated. “There were alot of buck bushes growing around the field and we couldn’t see too well. We didn't think it was a cow but we didn't know what else it could be.”
“About 100 feet away from the object their dog started barking and would not follow any closer. All of a sudden the creature rose up on two legs and began running! It stopped under an arch formed by two trees and faced its trackers. Brown hair covered its entire body as it stood nearly eight foot tall! The brothers aimed their flashlights at it! And its eyes flashed red from the reflection!”
“We couldn’t have watched it for more than a few seconds,” The other brother related. “…than we both ran off scared to death! I turned once to see if was chasing us and I saw the creature put its hand on a fence post and just flip over into the next field."
“The next day when their father went out to the field to check their story, he found a path through a field of uncut oats in the exact area where the boys claimed the ‘monster’ jumped the fence. But they never saw the creature again.”
This proved that there had been sightings in NelsonCounty! But somethin’ just didn’t add up …somethin’ told me that this was not a sighting of a ‘werewolf’! Or could it have been? While it may have been the first recorded sighting of a ‘Bigfoot’ in the area, could this be an actual link to what I was lookin’ for?
I turned off the microfiche then. The light was beginnin’ to get hot! And I proceeded to walk back to my desk where my books were still all laid out.
I caught a glimpse of Colby as he came down the elevator again and then proceeded to walk back on up the staircase. I figured there must’ve been a girl up there or somethin’. At least he was keepin’ himself amused I reckoned.
But as I was on my way back to my seat …I heard a book fall from a shelf. And as I turned to see where the book had fallen, I spotted an old leather-bound book sittin’ in the far west corner of the Library on a solitary wooden pedestal. I was drawn to it. It was a large and heavy book; too heavy to pack to my table. So I wiped off the books cover with my hands and blew the rest of the dust into the air. And I opened the book, turning its large musky pages slowly and with sense of purpose.
It was an ancient book of names I gathered; like a book from another time. Inscribed in intricate detail and handwritten print; with hand painted drawings and artwork!
It listed families, titles and surnames and such; listing
their root names and meanings. It also listed the origins and locations from where they had come from and so forth and so on. So I proceeded to thumb through its large and heavily engraved pages to find the meaning of my last name!
My last name was ‘McAnully’ and I found that it was of ‘Irish’ descent. The way it was spelled had been changed over time from its original spelling. “Kind of like the name of Highway 31E, New Haven Road.” I thought.
