Author Archives: Patrick Lewis

SCWH Cross-Post: So, You Want to Create a Digital Project

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CWG-K XMLHave you found a hidden gem of a collection that you want to share with the world? Thinking of creative ways to actively engage your students in the work of history? Want to attract students to your department and develop diverse career skills for history majors?

If you have answered “yes” to any of these questions, a digital project might be in your future. But how exactly do you do start?

From the earliest conceptual stages through our Early Access web development, Civil War Governors has learned quite a bit about designing and launching a digital history project—sometimes the hard way.

Read some distilled tips from project director Patrick Lewis at the Society of Civil War Historians blog.

NHPRC Support

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The Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition and the Kentucky Historical Society are proud to announce that Civil War Governors was awarded $62,400 in the May 2016 cycle of National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC) funding.

This is the second grant Civil War Governors has recieved from NHPRC. The first grant supported the digital publication of Early Access, an Omeka interface that will host 10,000 Civil War-era documents. This site will allow users to access 10,000 digital document images and transcriptions, and sample the rich content that Civil War Governors will deliver. Civil War Governors true impact on scholarship, however, will be in annotation. To the extent possible given the restrictions and biases of the historical record, Civil War Governors will identify, research, and link together every person, place, and organization found in its documents. This web of tens—perhaps hundreds—of thousands of networked nodes will dramatically expand the number of actors in Kentucky and U.S. history, show scholars new patterns and hidden relationships, and recognize the humanity and agency of historically marginalized people. The network of identified and annotated people, places, businesses, government agencies, and military units, will come as close as possible to a historical reconstruction of mid-nineteenth century society as it was lived and experienced in wartime Kentucky.

This second grant will support that next phase of work: publishing an annotation interface of 1,500 fully edited and linked documents. This important step to the full Digital Documentary Edition of a projected 40,000 documents will help reconstruct the lost lives and voices of tens of thousands of Kentuckians who interacted with the office of the governor during the war years. The diverse and largely unknown lives of the people captured in the Civil War Governors documents—generals and politicians, prostitutes and plantation mistresses, free African American professionals and “contraband” refugees—as well as the social, economic, political, and geographic networks they allow us to visualize and understand, are what Civil War Governors hopes to capture and deliver to the public.

This will be an important test of the Civil War Governors vision of a digital research environment within which a user can encounter the past multi-dimensionally through the documents and the powerful annotation network that links the documents together. In this document-driven historical ecosystem, users can explore intuitively—moving seamlessly through seemingly disparate historical themes, events, and topics; breaking into the plane of social and geographic space to understand the deep patterns that underlay the issues raised in a text or set of texts. Through it, Civil War Governors will understand how project staff must balance all phases of editing work as well as how a variety of users will navigate the research platform. Early Access shows the public a tantalizing sample of Civil War Governors content, but the next phase will demonstrate how Civil War Governors will shape the ways researchers, students, and teachers will explore the past in the future.

Visualizing Unionism: Congressional Redistricting in 1861

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Modern political observers will not be surprised to hear that the redrawing of Congressional districts every ten years is an intense political battle within each state. Imagine how fraught that struggle was in Kentucky when the lines of political opposition were not only drawn between parties, but between opposing forces of loyalty and treason.

As CWG-K builds its 10,000-document Early Access interface (with funding from the NHPRC), we created a set of maps for the reference section of the site. Starting with blank NHGIS shape files based on the 1860 Kentucky census — files graciously processed by digital cartographer, GIS expert, and former KHS Research Fellow, Andrew W. Fialka — we tagged each district with a color code to track both geographic shifts (in the size of districts) and their physical placement within the state itself. This allowed us to fully visualize the redistricting process in the wake of the 1860 census and understand just how seriously the state government of Kentucky took the threat that the rebellion posed.

In the prewar map drawn from the 1850 census, Kentucky had ten congressional districts, varying widely in geographic size but (as required by law) roughly equal in population. Congressional Districts, 1859 to 1861, 37th Congress

Lincoln’s Secretary of the Interior, Caleb Smith, informed Governor Magoffin that Kentucky would lose a seat in the Thirty-Eighth Congress on July 9, 1861 (CWG-K document KYR-0001-023-0070), in the midst of one of the most politicized summers in Kentucky history. Elections for members of Congress and a new legislature served as referenda on secession in the state, which was in its period of official, declared neutrality. Union candidates dominated the summer voting, though some Confederate sympathizers soured on voting in the contests and stayed home. Nine of the ten Congressional seats went to Unionists, the exception being Southern Rights firebrand Henry C. Burnett of the far-west First District.

Legislative elections in August were equally lopsided Union victories, which meant that the new maps would be drawn by men determined to counter the rebel political threat. Looking at the 37th and 38th Congressional maps side by side, we can see how Unionist legislators sought to break up known clusters of rebel support and tip the balance in each Congressional district towards Union support.

Congressional Districts, 1863 to 1865, 38th Congress

The First District, rebel virtually to the core, lost Hopkins County, which may not have changed its electoral chemistry significantly. Hopkins was the scene of a protracted local political and paramilitary struggle between Union and Confederate elements in the later years of the war, but so was virtually every county in the region.

The Second District, anchored by Unionist Christian and McLean counties needed all of that loyal influence to brace divided Henderson and Daviess and stem electoral charges from the rebel counties in the eastern half of the district.

Any rebel sentiment in the Third District, the site of Kentucky’s secession convention at Russellville (Logan County) and the capital of the Provisional Confederate Government at Bowling Green (Warren County), was cunningly neutralized by stretching the district eastward to grab the hilly Union bastions of Cumberland, Clinton, and Russell counties.

What had been the Fifth District in the old system became the new Fourth and grew dramatically south and east in much the same manner as the Third. Notice how the soon-to-be guerrilla infested counties of Meade, Bullitt, Spencer, and Marion were neutralized with staunchly loyal Green, Adair (home of 1863-67 Governor Thomas E. Bramlette), and Casey.

The old Seventh, new Fifth, remained dominated by Louisville, a city that sent a fair number of citizens into the rebel ranks but was politically dominated by Unionists of the severest (sometimes even abolitionist/anti-slavery) stripe. Watch, though, as the new Fifth District swings east to break up the northern Kentucky rebel hive that was Owen and Grant counties. The rebels of Sweet Owen get drowned out by the Louisville vote.

Owen County’s old home, the Tenth District, became the new Sixth. And with the Owen-Grant connection broken up, the legislators thought it safe to reach down and include evenly divided Harrison County in the Northern Kentucky district, to be outweighed by the loyal voters in Covington and Newport.

Henry Clay’s old Ashland District, the heart of the Bluegrass, had fallen suspect in the eyes of the loyal legislators. The scions of the thoroughbred families were lured by the promise of John Hunt Morgan even as their old-Whig fathers drew maps in Frankfort. To brace the new Seventh District, the legislators dipped way down south into the Presbyterian-Unionist domain of Danville to prop up the district which John C. Breckinridge had represented more recently than Clay.

The two great mountain districts were largely safe from rebeldom. The new Eighth District, its political  center at London (Laurel County), remained loyal throughout the war and would become the rural base of the postwar Republican Party in the state into the twentieth century.

The new Ninth gained the rebel votes in Pike and Johnson counties, to be balanced by the unconditional unionists in Boyd and Greenup.

Reading the maps side by side gives us great insight into the ways that Kentucky leaders perceived the geography of rebellion — perceptions which have largely been borne out by historical scholarship since. What else do you see happening in these maps?

Patrick A. Lewis is Project Director of the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition.

“A Very Catiline”?: Finding Richard Henry Stanton

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A few weeks ago, CWG-K was approached by Feliks Banel, a Seattle historian and radio broadcaster, seeking information about the man who named Washington state. A Kentucky Congressman in 1853, it seems, had suggested that Columbia—the name under which the territorial bill had been submitted—might be confused with the District of Columbia. So, Richard H. Stanton suggested the compromise name of Washington—which, he apparently thought, wouldn’t get confused with any other important center of political power in that District.

So, Feliks asked, did anyone in Kentucky remember this Richard Stanton? Turns out, the answer is generally no. Not in Maysville, where Stanton lived and is buried. Not in Powell County, where the county seat is named after him. But he was well known to CWG-K.

Listen to Feliks’s radio piece on KIRO, which features CWG-K project director Patrick Lewis summarizing Stanton and his place in Civil War Kentucky.

What do CWG-K documents tell us about Richard Stanton? He and his law partner (and brother-in-law) Thomas Throop were two of the most important attorneys in the state when the Civil War came to Kentucky. Stanton had undertaken the gargantuan task of compiling a revised and annotated edition of the Kentucky Revised Statutes in 1860, making Stanton a household name to whom attorneys and judges across the state turned for the latest interpretation of state laws. On a regional level, Stanton was Commonwealth’s Attorney (akin to a district attorney in most other states) for the Tenth Judicial District serving Mason, Lewis, Greenup, Rowan, Fleming, and Nicholas Counties.

S&T

But in CWG-K documents, Stanton conducts very little business as a Commonwealth’s Attorney. He appears most frequently in private practice requesting pardons for their clients, and they seem particularly close to the Democratic administration of Beriah Magoffin.

Why was such an influential attorney like Stanton unable to hold his position as Commonwealth Attorney after 1861? The first clue came from a letter of his partner Tom Throop to Magoffin in November 1860:

Your positions are undoubtedly correct, and if our union as states is preserved the movement must come from the north. They must abolish all these nullifying laws, carry out the provisions of the constitution, as to the comity between the states, carry out the provisions of the fugitive slave act, respect their so called personal liberty bills, allow the free transit of persons from the south with their families & property through their territories; acknowledge by their acts, not words only, that we as states have an equality of rights, with them: unless this is done, our union is a farce, it is effete, a humbug & a cheat.

Throop certainly seems a John C. Breckinridge Southern Democrat, but did he speak for his friend Stanton? Union General “Bull” Nelson certainly seemed to think so. He arrested Stanton and six other Maysville men on October 2, 1861. According to Nelson (a native Maysville man, himself) the group were “traitorous scoundrels who were engaged in fitting out men for the Southern army, subscribing moneys, getting up nightly drills and doing the manner of things usual among the secessionists. …with the Hon. R. H. Stanton at their head.”

In another letter, Nelson asserted that “This man Stanton is the head of secession in Northeast Kentucky” and that “He has harbored in his house an officer of the Confederate Army” and forwarded 259 men from the area to Humphrey Marshall’s rebel forces in Prestonsburg, Kentucky. This was entirely plausible. Stanton’s son returned from a law practice in Memphis at the outbreak of the war to raise a company of troops in Mason County for Confederate service. Henry T. Stanton may have been the very officer harbored by his father.

Whether with evidence or speculation, Nelson concluded that Stanton “is the soul of rebellion in this part of Kentucky.” “[M]orally a very Catiline” whose arrest “has struck secession dumb here.”

First taken to Cincinnati, then to Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio, and finally to Fort Lafayette in New York City, Stanton proclaimed his innocence the entire time. As did many Kentucky secessionists facing the state and federal government crackdown on wartime dissent, Stanton proclaimed himself a strict neutralist. In a letter to Secretary of State Seward, Stanton argued that “we were in favor of Kentucky maintaining a neutral position in the contest…and advocated that policy, hoping that the State would be in a position to maintain peace within her borders and mediate between the two sections.”

Eventually, the Lincoln administration felt enough political pressure from undoubtedly loyal Kentuckians (including a petition from a majority of state legislators) and released Stanton on December 17, 1861, after taking the loyalty oath (read the whole case file in the OR, Series II, Volume II, pp. 913-33). Stanton & Throop continued to practice—carefully avoiding such overt political statements as Throop had made to Magoffin just after Lincoln’s election—for the rest of the war.

From the politics of Manifest Destiny to the mechanics of Confederate recruiting in Union territory to the ever-important American debate over civil liberties and dissent during wartime, Richard Stanton should not be a name that Kentucky historians forget again. Even at this stage, CWG-K has identified a host of mid-level political players like Richard Stanton, and as the project moves forward into annotation and social networking—identifying each unique individual mentioned in our documents and linking them and their known associates together into a massive research platform—we will find many more. What new life story will CWG-K uncover next?

Patrick A. Lewis is Project Director of the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition.

“Shall I order from Cuba”?: Kentucky’s Transnational Neutrality

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Last week, Matt Hulbert explored the contradictions between the Jeffersonian, states’ rights rhetoric of the provisional Confederate government of Kentucky and its actual record of heavy-handed governance and suppression of civil liberties in the counties under its control in the winter of 1861-62. In his piece, we learned that provisional Confederate Governor George W. Johnson accused the Union party in Kentucky of polluting Kentucky’s declared neutrality (which lasted from May through September, 1861) from the outset, always intending to use neutrality to save the state from secession and deliver it to the Union cause. And they did. The problem was, Matt tells us, that the Confederates had precisely the same game plan going into the summer of 1861, but were politically outmaneuvered and, later, outvoted. The rebels lost the neutrality cold war and convened their rump secession convention when they lost their bid for the legitimate government in Frankfort.

I want to jump back to that cold war, to show just how the rebels used the cover of neutrality to prepare the state for secession and civil war. In the weeks after Fort Sumter, Magoffin rejected Lincoln’s request for troops and called a special session of the legislature to consider considering secession. As Magoffin’s famous exchange with Alabama Secession Commissioner Stephen F. Hale reveals, the governor was a conditional unionist, not an outright secessionist. Lincoln’s call for troops, though, proved the limit of Magoffin’s conditionalism, and like many Upper South politicians after Sumter, he seems to have been in favor of secession. To his credit, though, Magoffin genuinely respected the will of the electorate and knew that if Kentucky were not to devolve into a miniature civil war, it must secede legitimately – through a convention called by the legislature or direct legislative action. The closest he (and all the Kentucky secessionists) could get in the May 1861 special session was neutrality and the hope that the political winds would blow the majority of Kentuckians to their side as the year wore on.

With the special session yet to convene in Frankfort, Magoffin began to set the state’s military house in order for whatever decision – secession, Union, or neutrality – might result. As chief executive and commander in chief, Magofffin could take out loans and expend state funds for arms and ammunition that (theoretically) would be put to any purpose the people of Kentucky demanded. By working through fellow secessionists at home and across the Gulf South, though, Magoffin could covertly ensure that if the cold war between unionists and secessionists turned hot, his party would have the upper hand.

Magoffin tapped Luke Blackburn to coordinate buying the weapons. Blackburn, a postwar governor of Kentucky, is most famous for his unsuccessful 1864 plot to blight northern cities with yellow fever with infected blankets from Bermuda routed through Canada. Yet secret missions involving Britain, the Caribbean, and the Gulf South had been Blackburn’s forte since the very outset of the war.

Things began promisingly. On April 26, Blackburn wired that he had “purchased two pieces heavy Ordnance two thousand muskets six hundred Kegs powder” and asked for $30,000 to be transferred from a Kentucky bank to his credit. Blackburn’s preferred shipping company, commission merchants Hewitt, Norton, & Co., whose antebellum business had brokered southern cotton between New Orleans and Liverpool, put 1,500 guns costing approximately $14,000 on rail cars bound for Louisville on May 1, but warned that the frenzied buying from agents of other southern states meant that other supplies were drying up quickly. The firm had only secured $15 worth of percussion caps and could find no more powder. “Shall I order from Cuba”? asked Louisiana Secession Convention member M. O. H. Norton. “Blackburn cant be found.”

MOHN

KYR-0001-019-0023

No one knew where Luke Blackburn had gone, and no one could act on Magoffin’s behalf as the available supplies in the Gulf South dwindled. When Norton requested new instructions on May 2, Magoffin was more than happy to turn the operation over from Blackburn to Norton, with additional funding secured by Louisville pork merchant Benjamin J. Adams. Fellow Kentuckian and cotton broker in the Louisville-New Orleans firm of William T. Bartley & Co. Robert A. Johnson had notified Magoffin the day before in a private cable that “Luke Blackburn [was] intoxicated Since Saturday” and urged the Governor to “Withdraw powers authorize another Agent”.

LPB

KYR-0001-019-0029

Luke Blackburn was certainly neither the first nor the last Kentuckian to let the French Quarter get the better of him. But why had Magoffin trusted him for the mission?

Though a Kentucky native, Blackburn was living and practicing medicine in New Orleans in 1861. In fact, he had lived his adult life in the cotton kingdom along the banks of the Mississippi River. Blackburn had lived in Natchez, Mississippi, as a young man and had family ties to Helena, Arkansas, where his interests and kin overlapped with “The Family,” an early Arkansas Democratic political dynasty built on Kentucky connections to  provisional Confederate Governor George W. Johnson. Taken alongside Blackburn’s later experiments in biological warfare, the New Orleans arms deal raises important questions about how elite antebellum Kentuckians participated in a complex – yet surprisingly intimate and personal – international economy of slaves, cotton, liquid capital, and thoroughbred horses and how those economic connections encouraged them to address the question of secession. These kinship-political-business relationships are precisely the sorts of interconnections that the future social networking capability of  CWG-K is designed to document.

Little wonder, then, that when Magoffin needed arms for Kentucky, he tapped into the networks that funneled cotton, slaves, and capital up and down the river from Kentucky to New Orleans and out to the world. Magoffin’s fallback agents at Hewitt, Norton, & Co. fit precisely the same profile. Kentucky’s 1861 neutrality was not an inward facing, isolationist political posture. The way Magoffin managed arms procurement demonstrates that he understood the Civil War as a conflict over global agricultural and industrial markets, a war fought for the interests of the southern states in and on an international stage.

Patrick A. Lewis is project director of the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition.

The Caroline Chronicles: A Story of Race, Urban Slavery, and Infanticide in the Border South – PART V

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The Caroline Chronicles: 
A Story of Race, Urban Slavery, and Infanticide in the Border South

“Part V – The Husband”

By Patrick A. Lewis

Once during Levi’s absence Mrs Levi reprimanded Caroline & her husband (a contraband who hired to Levi’s brother but slept at Willis Levi’s with his wife evry night) that they must not site up so late & keep a light burning

This passage has always been a frustrating one. In 6,500 words of documentary evidence about Caroline, her husband is only ever mentioned in this passage. Who was he? Did they run away together from Tennessee? Did she meet him on the road to Kentucky or in the streets of Louisville?

And, spoiler alert, I can’t answer any of those questions. But after looking for answers, we have a new appreciation for the bigger implications of Caroline’s story.

Let’s deconstruct that sentence. Who was “Levi’s brother”? The Willis Levi in whose home Caroline was a domestic servant was, in fact, Willis Levi, Jr. His namesake and father, a Virginia native, co-owned a “sale and exchange stable” that hired and sold horses and carriages on Market Street with an elder son, Elias Levi. There are other Levi brothers besides Elias in the picture, too. A 36-year-old Mordecai (in the family business of horse trading) and a 35-year-old James Levi (in the fascinating profession of lightning rod maker) live next door to the Levi patriarch in 1860.

So, knowing there were a number of potential Levi brothers to whom Caroline’s husband might hire, I went to the Jefferson County Court Minute Book to see what official county records might reveal. Elias was the only Levi who appeared on the record in 1862 and 1863. What was he up to?Levi

Monday May 4th 1863.

It is ordered that the Sale bond of Elias Levi for Two hundred and forty five Dollars taken for the purchase of a negro runaway Slave John Wesley, be and the same is hereby credited by the sum of One Hundred and eighty six & 30/100 Dollars Jailors fees, fifteen Dollars Physicians fees & thirteen & 31/100 Dollars Sheriffs Commission & costs of advertising as of 27 April 1863.

He is buying fugitive slaves from the sheriff of Jefferson County. Under Kentucky law, a sheriff was required to publicly advertise the capture of a fugitive and, if the owner did not come forward, to sell the fugitive to recoup the state’s expenses. Following that process, Elias Levi bid on and won John Wesley, “about 25 years of age, 5 feet 6 inches high, weighing 145 lbs; thin whiskers and mustache; round face and high forehead,” and Mary, who was not among the 18 people advertised in the Louisville Journal but was on a list of 29 people in the County Court minutes sold by the sheriff that day.

Could John Wesley be Caroline’s husband? Maybe. Of course, the testimony we have says that her husband hired to Levi’s brother, not was a slave of. But, then again, that testimony concerned events in February 1863, at which time we can say with certainty that Elias Levi did not own John Wesley (even if he may have controlled or coerced his labor under some other arrangement). And, frankly, without some new information we’ll never be able to know.

The (maybe) good news for John Wesley is that he was not the slave of Elias Levi for very long thanks to the United States Army. The day after Levi’s bond was entered, the County Court demanded to know why Captain Matthew H. Jouett “took from the custody of the Sheriff the runaways” sold on the block alongside John Wesley. Jouett punted up his chain of command to the Provost Marshall of Louisville, Colonel Marcellus Mundy, who had ordered the sales of fugitives in Louisville invalidated. Mundy had, to put it mildly, no especial regard for African American refugees in Louisville. In fact, he had complained directly to Lincoln about emancipation policy, pleading that Unionist Kentuckians—”masters for loyalty’s sake“—should be exempt from the hard hand of war.

Fortunately—and probably because of sentiments like the above—Mundy was being watched closely. Word of the sale in which Elias Levi had purchased John Wesley and Mary had reached Washington, prompting President Lincoln to clarify his Emancipation Proclamation and the Second Confiscation Act for any Kentuckians who—like Mundy, the sheriff, and Elias Levi—thought freedom didn’t follow individual refugees from the Confederacy when they entered the loyal slave state of Kentucky.

The President directs me to say to you that he is much surprised to find that persons who are free, under his proclamation, have been suffered to be sold under any pretense whatever; and also desires me to remind you of the terms of the acts of Congress, by which the fugitive negroes of rebel owners taking refuge within our lines are declared to be “captives of war.” He desires you to take immediate measures to prevent any persons who, by act of Congress, are entitled to protection from the Government as “captives of war” from being returned to bondage or suffering any wrong prohibited by that act. (OR series 1, volume 23, pt. 2, p. 291)

John Wesley and Mary weren’t sold, but were they subsequently freed? If so, where did they go after the army intervened to stop their sale to Elias Levi? Unfortunately, these are the same unanswered questions we have for Caroline after Governor Bramlette pardoned her in September 1863.

What we can say, though, is that executing Kentucky’s fugitive slave laws was profitable for sheriffs, local governments, and would-be slaveowners looking to purchase cheaply when supply was high, that the first waves of emancipation were a boon to the economies of slavery in Louisville and surrounding counties. As thousands of African Americans like Caroline and John Wesley escaped slavery in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, they made perfect targets for reenslavement schemes run by law enforcement and local slave traders. Those individuals and institutions exploited the uncertainty about contrabands, confiscation, emancipation, and freedom in the fall of 1862 and spring of 1863 to flood Kentucky slave markets with Deep South slaves at bargain prices—this after Kentucky had been a net slave exporter to the cotton plantations of the Old Southwest for a generation. The very months when most Americans believe the Emancipation Proclamation freed tens of thousands of slaves proved to be the greatest slave market bonanza in Kentucky history.

While we can look ahead and see Caroline and John Wesley as the harbingers of emancipation in Kentucky, it may not have looked like that to Kentucky masters—and it certainly didn’t look like that to them.

Patrick A. Lewis is Project Director of the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition.

The Caroline Chronicles: A Story of Race, Urban Slavery, and Infanticide in the Border South – PART III

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The Caroline Chronicles:
A Story of Race, Urban Slavery, and Infanticide in the Border South

“Part III – The Defense’s Case”

By Patrick A. Lewis

For those of you who missed previous installments, we’ll begin with a very brief rundown of Caroline’s story to this point. (A full accounting of the events that led to her trial for infanticide is still available here.) In 1862 Caroline Dennant, a Tennessee slave, was brought to Louisville, Kentucky, as war contraband by Don Carlos Buell’s army—she was subsequently arrested as a fugitive slave and placed in the home of Willis and Anne Levy—a few months later, Blanch, the Levy’s toddler-aged daughter died of strychnine poisoning—Caroline was soon after charged with murder, convicted, and sentenced to death. This and last week’s installments are written from the perspective of the prosecution and the defense in the matter of Caroline’s petition for executive clemency (and may or may not reflect our actual positions on her case!).

As the prosecution alleges, there is little the defense can do to refute the circumstantial evidence against Caroline. She had been held to labor as a servant and nurse in the home of the Levys. Willis Levy did acquire, distribute, and store a large amount of strychnine. After the child’s death, Caroline was seen to have facial expressions and otherwise behave in ways to which sinister motives were later assigned by witnesses. While the defense concedes this circumstantial evidence, it entirely rejects the fanciful and conspiratorial theory of the (so-called) crime advanced by the prosecution.

Yet to secure the conviction in the trial at the May 1863 term of the Jefferson Circuit Court, the defense knowingly suppressed the extent to which Willis Levy “spread enough strychnine (or poison) to kill a regiment of men” in and about his premises. Evidence freely offered by the neighbors and family of the Levy family since the time of the trial now begs reconsideration of the case. The defense appeals to the clemency of the executive for a pardon on the following grounds:

One. That having resided in Louisville less than six months before the death of the child Blanch Levy, “in a strange place without any one to advise with” except defense counsel hastily assigned her case and without adequate time to prepare, Caroline was unable to secure witnesses for her defense at the trial.

Two. That the witnesses for the prosecution, namely Anne and Willis Levy, did not testify to the full extent to which Willis Levy spread strychnine about his premises. Only two occasions were established in evidence by Willis Levy, and Caroline could swear to no more. “Your petitioner will now state one important fact which was not developed on the trial, Mr Levy put out the poison on more than two occasions; he put it out many times to kill Dogs & Cats, & it was never taken up, & what became of it no one knows.”

Three. That the testimony of Raymond and Josephine Lynch—neighbors and in-laws to the Levys, uncle and aunt of the deceased Blanch Levy—establishes the true extent of Willis Levy’s indiscriminate and dangerous application of strychnine in and around his and his neighbors’ property. Josephine Lynch swears that “Mr Levy put out the poison every night for a great while I would think a hundred times” over a span of time “from fall to spring.” Moreover, Mrs. Lynch herself had been “very uneasy many time for fear that my children would get some of the poison I alwaise thought Mr Levy was very reckless about throwing out poison.”

Four. That the prosecution argues against accidental ingestion of the poison in the yard from the fact that no pieces of poisoned meat were found in the stomach of the deceased Blanch Levy.

Five. That testimony developed on the trial and that subsequently sworn to by Josephine Lynch establishes that a considerable amount of strychnine was spread in the yard and neighbors’ yards by means other than on meat, including but not limited to on grains designed to kill birds and loosely distributed in and around the privy.

Six. That Mrs. Levy grasped the extent to which her husband had indiscriminately spread poison in and around the Levy house. Immediately after the child’s death Mrs. Levy threw out a “bucket full of parched coffee that was bought from the soldiers,” believing it to be tainted with the poison.

Seven. That if Anne Levy was made sick by coffee on the morning the child died, this was from Willis Levy unwittingly contaminating the household coffee supply with strychnine as part of his campaign to eradicate vermin.

Eight. That if the true extent to which Willis Levy indiscriminately scattered strychnine in and around his own property and that of his neighbors had been known at the time of the trial, Caroline’s conviction would not have been sought by the prosecuting attorney. Louisville City Attorney William G. Reasor attests that “from strong circumstances made known to me since that trial, I feel that Executive clemency will have been worthily bestowed if she be fully pardoned.”

LevyNine. That if the true extent to which Willis Levy indiscriminately and dangerously scattered strychnine in diverse methods and in diverse locations in and around his own property and that of his neighbors had been known at the time of the trial, Caroline’s conviction would not have been secured by the jury. Nine of the gentlemen of the jury who tried her case—L. A. Civill, W. O. Gardner, John Sait, Joseph Griffith, Thomas Schorch, Samuel Ingrem, R. H. Snyder, William K. Allan, and E. P. Neale—have signed a sworn statement asking to overturn the verdict and sentence they rendered.

All this the defense presents as evidence for Caroline’s innocence in the death of the child Blanch Levy. The defense will not—as it believes it has grounds to do—pursue the argument that Caroline’s service in the Levy household was in violation of the Confiscation Act of July 17, 1862, which provides that “all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States “shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves” and that “no slave escaping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any other State, shall be delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of his liberty” regardless of the laws pertaining to enslaved persons and persons of African descent in that state, territory, or district.

The defense reiterates that given the circumstances of the defendant and her insecure position in Louisville, the evidence presented in this petition was unavailable to Caroline and her counsel at the time of the trial.

If all that were introduced in this petition were this new testimony, the defense would feel confident in their expectation of His Excellency’s clemency, but having in hand the sworn statements of the prosecuting attorney and the jury, the defense feels that the pardoning power would be justly used in the case of Caroline. The premises considered, the defense asks that His Excellency Governor Bramlette issue a full and unconditional pardon.

KYR-0001-004-0787 Glossary

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Be sure to read the Transcription of this document as well as Part One and Part Two of the analysis.

Atchison, Samuel Ayers. (1810 – 1869) Kentucky native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney and real estate agent. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 22; Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Sixth Ward, p. 13.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0023, KYR-0001-004-0024, KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-2939, KYR-0001-004-2944, KYR-0001-004-3407, KYR-0001-033-0011.

Bacon, Byron. (1835 – 1900) New York native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with Martin Bijur after 1864. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 24; Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Sixth Ward, p. 32.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0454, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-2270, KYR-0001-004-3407, KYR-0001-020-0828, KYR-0001-031-0160.

Baker, Charles Samuel. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, saddler. J. D. Campbell’s Louisville Business Directory, For 1864 (Louisville: L. A. Civill, nd.), 103.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Barbour, Catherine. (c. 1805 – ?) Native of France and Louisville, Kentucky, resident. Resided in 1860 with her husband, Constance Barbour, and son, Joseph. Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, District 1, p. 36.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Barbon, John G. (c. 1830 – ?) Native of Spain and Louisville, Kentucky, resident. A laborer by trade. Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, District 1, p. 63.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Beattie, James A. (1832 – 1893) Missouri native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with William S. Bodley and Alexander Casseday. Judge Advocate of the Kentucky State Guard. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 30, 344; Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Fifth Ward, p. 62; Kentucky, Death Records, 1852-1953 [database on-line via Ancestry.com], Jefferson County, 1893, p. 113.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-007-0476, KYR-0001-017-0314, KYR-0001-017-0337.

Bender, F. (? – ?) Signatory to Louisville, Kentucky, petition on behalf of William Brockman.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Bijur, Martin. (1833 – 1882) Native of Prussia, Louisville, Kentucky, attorney and politician. Practiced law in partnership with Lewis N. Dembitz until 1864. Practiced law in partnership with Byron Bacon afterwards. Elected as a Republican to the 1865-1867 Kentucky General Assembly. “Death of Hon. Martin Bijur,” Louisville Courier-Journal, May 1, 1882, p. 2; Report of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, Held at Saratoga Springs, New York, August 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th, 1882 (Philadelphia: George S. Harris & Sons, 1883), 143-4.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-0865, KYR-0001-004-1375, KYR-0001-004-1379, KYR-0001-004-1388, KYR-0001-004-1409, KYR-0001-004-1566, KYR-0001-004-1987, KYR-0001-004-1988, KYR-0001-004-2030, KYR-0001-004-2839, KYR-0001-005-0051, KYR-0001-005-0142, KYR-0001-020-0323, KYR-0002-156-0004.

Bramlette, Thomas Elliott. (1817 – 1875) Twenty-third governor of Kentucky. Clinton County, Kentucky, native. Represented Clinton County in the state legislature in the 1840s. Judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit at outset of the war. Resigned office to become colonel of Third Kentucky Volunteer Infantry U.S.A. Resigned commission in 1862 to become U.S. District Attorney for Kentucky. Elected governor in November 1863 over Charles A. Wickliffe and served until 1867. Ross A. Webb, “Thomas E. Bramlette (1863-1867)” in Lowell H. Harrison, ed., Kentucky’s Governors (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 93-97.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-001-0001, … [2,258 more at present].

Brockman, William. (c. 1824 – ?) Native of Germany and Louisville, Kentucky, resident. Laborer by trade. Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, District No. 1, p. 60.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0418, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0004-004-0823, KYR-0001-004-3258.

Brown, Jeff. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, and New Albany, Indiana, attorney. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 43.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-0004-0016, KYR-0001-004-0018, KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0159, KYR-0001-004-0425, KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1418, KYR-0001-004-1712, KYR-0001-004-2939, KYR-0001-004-2944, KYR-0001-004-3407, KYR-0001-007-0591, KYR-0001-017-0332, KYR-0001-020-0333, KYR-0001-020-0712, KYR-0001-020-1422, KYR-0001-020-1499, KYR-0001-020-1575, KYR-0001-020-1617, KYR-0001-020-1618, KYR-0001-020-1812, KYR-0001-020-1823, KYR-0001-020-2056, KYR-0001-020-2113, KYR-0001-029-0063.

Burkhardt, Henry S. (? – ?) Louisville businessman. Worked in the wholesale grocery and commission merchant business at W. & H. Burkhardt, with William Burkhardt. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 47; J. D. Campbell’s Louisville Business Directory, For 1864 (Louisville: L. A. Civill, nd.),119.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Bush, Samuel S. (1830 – 1877) Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Partner in the firm of Bush & Shivell, along with Henry C. Shivell. Kentucky Marriages, 1797-1865, U. S. City Directories, 1821-1989 [database online, Ancestry.com; Edwards’ Annual Directory to the Inhabitants, Institutions, Incorporated Companies, Manufacturing Establishments, Business Firms, Etc., Etc., in the City of Louisville for 1865-6 (Louisville: Maxwell & Co., 1866), 234.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1601, KYR-0001-004-2133, KYR-0001-020-0637.

Chrisler, Rudolph. (? – ?) Gave testimony in The Commonwealth v. William Brockman, tried in the Jefferson Circuit Court in 1864.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Clement, Joseph. (c. 1819 – 1882) New Hampshire native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney and magistrate. History of the Ohio Falls Cities and Their Counties, Vol. 1 (Cleveland: L. A. Williams, 1882), 356; Kentucky, Death Records, 1852-1953 [database on-line via Ancestry.com], Jefferson County, 1882, p. 7.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0047, KYR-0001-004-0180, KYR-0001-004-0364, KYR-0001-004-0418, KYR-0001-004-0454, KYR-0001-004-0551, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-0920, KYR-0001-004-1193, KYR-0001-004-1418, KYR-0001-004-1957, KYR-0001-004-1968, KYR-0001-004-2270, KYR-0001-0004-2293, KYR-0001-004-2358, KYR-0001-004-2399, KYR-0001-004-2416, KYR-0001-004-2510, KYR-0001-004-2540, KYR-0001-004-2789, KYR-0001-004-2898, KYR-0001-004-3184, KYR-0001-004-3407, KYR-0001-005-0057, KYR-0001-005-0058, KYR-0001-005-0117, KYR-0001-006-0005, KYR-0001-020-0174, KYR-0001-020-0351, KYR-0001-020-1133, KYR-0001-020-1437, KYR-0001-020-1649, KYR-0001-020-1944, KYR-0001-020-2113, KYR-0001-029-0087, KYR-0001-029-0156, KYR-0001-029-0164, KYR-0001-031-0009, KYR-0001-033-0004, KYR-0001-033-0005, KYR-0001-033-0030.

Conn, T. Jackson. (c. 1826 – ?) Kentucky native and Jefferson County Court Clerk. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 60; Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Sixth Ward, p. 120.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0018, KYR-0001-004-0133, KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0660, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1055, KYR-0001-004-1283, KYR-0001-004-2337, KYR-0001-004-2789, KYR-0001-006-0084, KYR-0001-007-0489, KYR-0001-020-1527, KYR-0001-029-0156, KYR-0001-029-0307.

Craig, Edwin S. (c. 1820 – 1882) Commonwealth’s Attorney for the Seventh Judicial District until 1861. Practiced law in partnership with Robert J. Elliott. “Death of Judge E.S. Craig,” Louisville Courier-Journal, May 27, 1882, p. 4; Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 64; Seventh Manuscript Census of the United States (1850), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, District Three, p. 94.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0364, KYR-0001-004-0454, KYR-0001-004-0479, KYR-0001-004-0660, KYR-0001-004-0732, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-0843, KYR-0001-004-0957, KYR-0001-004-1957, KYR-0001-004-2192, KYR-0001-004-2404, KYR-0001-020-0134, KYR-0001-020-0552, KYR-0001-020-0554, KYR-0001-020-0869, KYR-0001-029-0239.

Dannecker, Frederick G. (1828 – ?) German native and New Albany, Indiana, attorney. John M. Scott, The Bench and Bar of Chicago (Chicago: American Biographical Publishing Company, 1883), 496-97; Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Indiana, Floyd County, New Albany, Third Ward, p. 8.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0685, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1379, KYR-0001-004-1644, KYR-0001-004-1718, KYR-0001-004-2270, KYR-0001-004-2294, KYR-0001-004-2416, KYR-0001-004-3084, KYR-0001-004-3114, KYR-0001-004-3407.

DeFlour, [unknown]. (? – ?) Gave testimony in The Commonwealth v. William Brockman, tried in the Jefferson Circuit Court in 1864.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Dembitz, Lewis Naphtali. (1833 – 1907) Native of Prussia and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Delegate to the 1860 Republican national convention. Practiced law in partnership with Martin Bijur until 1864. Uncle of future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis. “Dembitz, Lewis Naphtali” in The Encyclopedia of Louisville, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 241-42.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-007-0109.

Donheimer, [unknown]. (? – ?) Gave testimony in The Commonwealth v. William Brockman, tried in the Jefferson Circuit Court in 1864.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

von Donhoff, Albert. (1806 – 1882) Native of Berlin, Germany, and Louisville, Kentucky, physician. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 75; “Dr. Albert Von Donhoff: The Unusual Life and Career of a Prussian Nobleman’s Son, and a Brilliant Physician” Louisville Courier-Journal, Nov. 7, 1882, p. 2.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Fields, Moses S. (c. 1828 – ?) Kentucky native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Sixth Ward, p. 119.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-023-0117.

Frend, [unknown]. (? – ?) Gave testimony in The Commonwealth v. William Brockman, tried in the Jefferson Circuit Court in 1864.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Fry, Jack. (1839 – 1870) Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with Franklin Gorin in 1865. Edwards’ Annual Directory to the Inhabitants, Institutions, Incorporated Companies, Manufacturing Establishments, Business Firms, Etc., Etc., in the City of Louisville for 1865-6 (Louisville: Maxwell & Co., 1866), 310; “Jack Fry – Find A Grave Memorial” http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=86941179&ref=acom.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1957, KYR-0001-004-2944, KYR-0001-020-0333, KYR-0001-020-1579, KYR-0001-023-0117.

Fry, William W. (c. 1798 – 1865) Virginia native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, District 2, p. 18; “W.W. Fry – Find A Grave Memorial” http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=96183143&ref=acom.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0108, KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0180, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-020-0129, KYR-0001-020-0167, KYR-0001-020-1618, KYR-0001-029-0278.

Gailbreath, Joseph P. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 97.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0024, KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1418, KYR-0001-004-1983, KYR-0001-004-2416, KYR-0001-004-3407, KYR-0001-017-0352, KYR-0001-017-0355, KYR-0001-017-0356, KYR-0001-020-0828.

Gazlay, Addison M. (1818 – 1881) New York native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with Franklin Gorin. History of the Ohio Falls Cities and Their Counties, Vol. 1 (Cleveland: L. A. Williams, 1882), 509-10; Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 98.
Associated Documents: KYR-001-004-0115, KYR-0001-004-0364, KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1791, KYR-0001-004-1803, KYR-0001-004-1805, KYR-0001-004-1806, KYR-0001-004-3407, KYR-0001-017-0001, KYR-0001-017-0062, KYR-0001-020-0129, KYR-0001-020-1527.

Gibson, Thomas Ware. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 99.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0267, KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1509, KYR-0001-004-1528, KYR-0001-004-1553, KYR-0001-004-1554, KYR-0001-007-0109, KYR-0001-007-0229.

Gorin, Franklin. (1798 – 1877) Barren County, Kentucky, native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with Addison M. Gazlay and with Jack Fry in 1865. E. Polk Johnson, A History of Kentucky and Kentuckians: The Leaders and Representative Men in Commerce, Industry and Modern Activities, Vol. III (Chicago and New York: Lewis Publishing, 1912), 1673-74; Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 102; Edwards’ Annual Directory to the Inhabitants, Institutions, Incorporated Companies, Manufacturing Establishments, Business Firms, Etc., Etc., in the City of Louisville for 1865-6 (Louisville: Maxwell & Co., 1866), 323.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0108, KYR-0001-004-0109, KYR-0001-004-0110, KYR-0001-004-0111, KYR-0001-004-0112, KYR-0001-004-0113, KYR-0001-004-0114, KYR-0001-004-0115, KYR-0001-004-0116, KYR-0001-004-0117, KYR-0001-004-0118, KYR-0001-004-0119, KYR-0001-004-0120, KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0122, KYR-0001-004-0123, KYR-0001-004-0124, KYR-0001-004-0139, KYR-0001-004-0364, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1803, KYR-0001-023-0117, KYR-0002-204-0076, KYR-0002-204-0082.

Griffiths, Thomas J. (c. 1826 – 1884) Native of Wales and Louisville, Kentucky, physician. Practiced in partnership with Benjamin F. Grant. Accompanied an 1861 movement south of Louisville by General William T. Sherman, and provided medical services to the military barracks in Louisville through the end of the war. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 105; “Dr. Thomas J. Griffiths” The Louisville Medical News XVII no. 23 (June 7, 1884): 360-61; Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Eighth Ward, p. 320.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Hanna, John. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, businessman. Partner in Hanna & Co., printers, with Alexander Hanna. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 111.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Harris, James. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Edwards’ Annual Directory to the Inhabitants, Institutions, Incorporated Companies, Manufacturing Establishments, Business Firms, Etc., Etc., in the City of Louisville for 1865-6 (Louisville: Maxwell & Co., 1866), 339.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0083, KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1418, KYR-0001-004-1644, KYR-0001-004-1957, KYR-0001-004-2270, KYR-0001-004-2510, KYR-0001-017-0352, KYR-0001-017-0355, KYR-0001-020-1579.

Hoke, William B. (1838 – 1904) Kentucky native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with Samuel S. English. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 82, 123; Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Kentucky State Bar Association Held at Covington, Kentucky, June 22-23, 1905 (Louisville: George G. Fetter, 1905), 56; John J. McAffee, Kentucky Politicians: Sketches of Representative Corn-Crackers and Other Miscellany (Louisville: Courier-Journal Job Printing Co., 1886), 92-94.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0682, KYR-0001-004-0683, KYR-0001-004-0684, KYR-0001-004-0685, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1377, KYR-0001-004-2161, KYR-0001-020-1598, KYR-0001-031-0125.

Hornsby, Isham H. (c. 1822 – ?) Kentucky native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 125; Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Sixth Ward, p. 20.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Huber, [unknown]. (? – ?) Gave testimony in The Commonwealth v. William Brockman, tried in the Jefferson Circuit Court in 1864.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Jefferson Circuit Court. Part of the Seventh Judicial Circuit, which also included Bullitt, Oldham, Shelby, and Spencer Counties. Peter B. Muir (1861) and George W. Johnston (1862-1865) were the judges. Edwin S. Craig (1861) and J. R. Dupuy (1862-65) were the Commonwealth’s Attorneys. James P. Chambers was the Circuit Court Clerk.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0003, … [390 more at present].

Kahnt, Charles. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, furniture maker. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 135.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Kramur, Franz. A. (? – ?) Signatory to Louisville, Kentucky, petition on behalf of William Brockman.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Logel, Adolph. (? – 1864) Killed in altercation with William Brockman in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1864.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Louisville, Kentucky. Seat of Jefferson County on the Ohio River. Largest city in Kentucky during the Civil War. “Louisville” in The Kentucky Encyclopedia, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 574-8. The Encyclopedia of Louisville, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001).
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-001-0001, … [1,102 more at present].

Mattingly, John N. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with Isaac R. Greene. Edwards’ Annual Directory to the Inhabitants, Institutions, Incorporated Companies, Manufacturing Establishments, Business Firms, Etc., Etc., in the City of Louisville for 1865-6 (Louisville: Maxwell & Co., 1866), 434, 327.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0180, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-0827, KYR-0001-004-0828, KYR-0001-004-2250, KYR-0001-004-2416, KYR-0001-004-3407, KYR-0001-005-0042.

McDowell, William Preston. (c. 1838 – ?) Kentucky native and Louisville, Kentucky, law clerk. Assisted in raising the Fifteenth Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment and was appointed its adjutant. After August 1862, served as aide-de-camp and assistant adjutant general to Major General Lovell H. Rousseau. Wounded in action at the battle of Stones River. Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Fourth Ward, p. 74. Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Kentucky, National Archives and Records Administration, RG94, M397, Roll 284, Fifteenth Infantry, Hu-McE; J.H. Battle, W.H. Perrin, and G.C. Kniffin, The History of Kentucky, Eighth Edition, Part I (Louisville and Chicago: F.A. Battey, 1888), 839-40.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Meriwether, William A. (1825 – ?) Deputy U.S. Marshal from 1861 to 1864 and appointed U.S. Marshal for Kentucky in 1864. J.H. Battle, W.H. Perrin, and G.C. Kniffin, The History of Kentucky, Eighth Edition, Part I (Louisville and Chicago: F.A. Battey, 1888), 847.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-020-0927, KYR-0001-031-0109.

Miller, Isaac Price. (c. 1818 – ?) Kentucky native and Jefferson County, Kentucky, farmer. Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, District 1, p. 195; Miller-Thum Family Collection, 990PC47, Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-023-0116, KYR-0001-004-0787.

Miller, John K. (? – ?) Signatory to Louisville, Kentucky, petition on behalf of William Brockman.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Oakland House and Race Course. Louisville, Kentucky, horse racing track established in 1832. Saw its heyday in the 1830s and 1840s, and closed in the 1850s. “Oakland Race Course” in The Encyclopedia of Louisville, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 665.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0309, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0002-036-0045, KYR-0002-036-0046.

Ormsby, Collis. (1817 – 1891) Kentucky native and Louisville, Kentucky, merchant. Owner of the hardware and cutlery business of Collis Ormsby. Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, Louisville, Fifth Ward, p. 208; Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 189; Louisville Daily Journal, Jun. 22, 1861, p. 1.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0002-058-0006, KYR-0002-220-0147, KYR-0002-220-0149, KYR-0002-220-150.

Ormsby, Robert J. (1822 – 1879) Louisville, Kentucky, businessman. Bookkeeper in the hardware and cutlery business of Collis Ormsby. A founding director and stockholder of Cedar Hill and Oakland Railway Company in 1868. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 189; Acts of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (Frankfort, Ky.: Kentucky Yeoman Office, John H. Harney, Public Printer: 1868), 553-554.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Pope, Alfred Thurston. (1842 – 1891) Kentucky native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Kentucky Death Records, 1852 – 1953 [database online, Ancestry.com], Jefferson County, 1891; J.H. Battle, W.H. Perrin, and G.C. Kniffin, The History of Kentucky, Eighth Edition, Part I (Louisville and Chicago: F.A. Battey, 1888), 877-78.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-031-0215.

Pope, Hamilton. (1815 – 1894) Louisville, Kentucky native and attorney. Practiced in partnership with John G. Barrett. Commanded Louisville Home Guards that accompanied William T. Sherman on an expedition towards Muldraugh’s Hill in 1861. Thomas Speed, The Union Regiments of Kentucky (Louisville: Courier-Journal Job Printing Company, 1897), 24, 28, 427. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 196.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0139, KYR-0001-004-0364, KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0448, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-2416, KYR-0001-004-3055, KYR-0001-007-0109, KYR-0001-007-0229, KYR-0001-007-0309, KYR-0001-009-0024, KYR-0001-017-0265, KYR-0001-020-0351, KYR-0001-020-0637, KYR-0001-020-1575, KYR-0001-031-0215, KYR-0001-033-0039, KYR-0002-060-0029, KYR-0002-060-0030, KYR-0002-067-0053, KYR-0002-204-0037, KYR-0002-218-0014, KYR-0002-218-0056, KYR-0002-218-0098, KYR-0003-158-0103.

Ronald, William A. (? – ?) Sheriff of Jefferson County in 1864-65. Stock agent for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. J. D. Campbell’s Louisville Business Directory, For 1864 (Louisville: L. A. Civill, nd.),70; Edwards’ Annual Directory to the Inhabitants, Institutions, Incorporated Companies, Manufacturing Establishments, Business Firms, Etc., Etc., in the City of Louisville for 1865-6 (Louisville: Maxwell & Co., 1866), 502; Genealogical and Historical Notes on Culpeper County, Virginia (Culpeper, Va.: Raleigh Travers Green, 1900), 90; Louisville Daily Democrat, July 19, 1867, p. 1.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0180, KYR-0001-004-0233, KYR-0001-004-0234, KYR-0001-004-0235, KYR-0001-004-0748, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1070, KYR-0001-004-1332, KYR-0001-004-1379, KYR-0001-004-1600, KYR-0001-004-1966, KYR-0001-004-2030, KYR-0001-004-2399, KYR-0001-004-2511, KYR-0001-004-2878, KYR-0001-005-0051.

Rousseau, Richard Hilaire. (1815 – 1872) Lincoln County, Kentucky, native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with his brother, Lovell H. Rousseau. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. XII (New York: James T. White, 1904), 185; Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 210.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0018, KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0180, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-0841, KYR-0001-007-0109, KYR-0001-020-0712, KYR-0001-023-0117, KYR-0001-034-0050.

Semms, [unknown]. (? – ?) Gave testimony in The Commonwealth v. William Brockman, tried in the Jefferson Circuit Court in 1864.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Sherley, Zachariah Madison. (1811 – 1879) Virginia native and Louisville, Kentucky, businessman. Owned and operated steamboats along the Ohio River, contracting many of them to the United States army during the war. Partner in the ship chandler firm of Sherley, Bell & Co. with Jesse K. Bell and Richard H. Woolfolk. “Sherley, Zachariah Madison ‘Zachary’” in The Encyclopedia of Louisville, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 814; Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 224.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-007-0552, KYR-0001-020-1812, KYR-0002-205-0045, KYR-0002-207-0095, KYR-0002-207-0147, KYR-0002-209-0130, KYR-0002-220-0130, KYR-0002-221-0999, KYR-0002-221-1000, KYR-0002-221-1001, KYR-0002-221-1009, KYR-0003-158-0595, KYR-0003-158-0714.

Shivell, Henry C. (1841-1869) Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with Samuel S. Bush. President of a lead mine along the Kentucky River in Owen County, Kentucky in 1865. Edwards’ Annual Directory to the Inhabitants, Institutions, Incorporated Companies, Manufacturing Establishments, Business Firms, Etc., Etc., in the City of Louisville for 1865-6 (Louisville: Maxwell & Co., 1866), 529; New Albany Daily Ledger, February 27, 1866, 2; New Albany Daily Ledger, August 5, 1865, 2; The Louisville Daily Journal, April 12, 1867; Daily Courier, July 26, 1866.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-2155, KYR-0001-007-0381, KYR-0001-007-0432.

Shrader, Augusta. (? – ?) Gave affidavit in The Commonwealth v. William Brockman, tried in the Jefferson Circuit Court in 1864.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Shrader, John. (? – ?) Gave affidavit in The Commonwealth v. William Brockman, tried in the Jefferson Circuit Court in 1864.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Smith, Samuel B. (c. 1800 – 1866) Virginia native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with Joshua F. Bullitt. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 46, 230; Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Jefferson County, District One, p. 32; “Death of Samuel B. Smith, esq.—Bar Meeting,” Louisville Courier, Dec. 15, 1866, p. 1.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-007-0476, KYR-0001-020-0327.

Tennessee. Sixteenth state to join the Union in 1796. Shares Kentucky’s southern border. Capital at Nashville.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-002-0001, … [162 more at present].

Wolfe, Nathaniel. (1808 – 1865) Virginia native and Louisville, Kentucky, attorney and politician. Practiced in partnership with Silas N. Hodges. Former Commonwealth’s Attorney and State Senator. Served in the House of Representative of the Kentucky General Assembly from 1859-1863. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 267. “Wolfe, Nathaniel” in The Kentucky Encyclopedia, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 962.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0351, KYR-0001-004-0439, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-0811, KYR-0001-017-0194, KYR-0001-017-0358, KYR-0001-017-0375, KYR-0001-017-0384, KYR-0001-020-0323, KYR-0001-020-0863, KYR-0001-020-1244, KYR-0001-020-1437, KYR-0001-023-0109, KYR-0001-029-0097, KYR-0001-031-0202, KYR-0001-033-0010, KYR-0002-050-0008, KYR-0002-207-0142, KYR-0002-218-0044, KYR-0002-218-0349, KYR-0003-158-0241.

Wood, Logan A. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Practiced in partnership with L. A. Civill. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 267; “Lawyer L.A. Wood,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Dec. 3, 1886, p. 2.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-006-0049, KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0234, KYR-0001-004-0264, KYR-0001-004-0310, KYR-0001-004-0384, KYR-0001-004-0483, KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-004-1057, KYR-0001-004-1260, KYR-0001-004-1458, KYR-0001-004-1644, KYR-0001-004-1957, KYR-0001-004-2161, KYR-0001-004-2293, KYR-0001-004-2294, KYR-0001-004-2416, KYR-0001-004-2867, KYR-0001-004-2927, KYR-0001-004-3168.

Wood, William C. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, attorney. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 267.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0113, KYR-0001-004-0114, KYR-0001-004-0117, KYR-0001-004-0121, KYR-0001-004-0122, KYR-0001-004-0123, KYR-0001-004-0124, KYR-0001-004-0787.

Wood, William F. (? – ?) Louisville, Kentucky, businessman. Partner in the wall paper and window shade business of Wood & Bros. with Charles A. and John B. Wood. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 267; Edwards’ Annual Directory to the Inhabitants, Institutions, Incorporated Companies, Manufacturing Establishments, Business Firms, Etc., Etc., in the City of Louisville for 1865-6 (Louisville: Maxwell & Co., 1866), 602.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787.

Woolfolk, Richard Henry. (1823 – 1885) Kentucky native and Louisville, Kentucky, businessman. Owned and operated steamboats along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Partner in the ship chandler firm of Sherley, Bell & Co. (later Sherley, Woolfolk, & Co.) with Zachariah M. Sherley and Jesse K. Bell. Tanner’s Louisville Directory, and Business Advertiser for 1861 (Louisville: Henry Tanner, 1861), 224, 268; “Capt. Woolfolk Dead,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Jun. 13, 1885, p. 3.
Associated Documents: KYR-0001-004-0787, KYR-0001-007-0552, KYR-0002-207-0095, KYR-0002-207-0147, KYR-0002-209-0026, KYR-0002-220-0130, KYR-0002-221-0999, KYR-0002-221-1000, KYR-0002-221-1001, KYR-0002-221-1009, KYR-0003-158-0595, KYR-0003-158-0714.

Who are “We the undersigned”?

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We recently featured the case of William Brockman, a German man appealing his murder conviction to Governor Bramlette (read the full transcription here). Our previous post pointed out the fascinating diversity of topical subjects CWG-K will bring to the attention of scholars — the immigrant experience, violence and public arms bearing, micro-economies of military posts, and the environmental and urban history of the Ohio River.

KYR-0001-004-0787But who signed the petition to pardon William Brockman? Why did they do so? What can we learn about a war-torn and refugee-swelled Ohio River city from analyzing the actors in William Brockman’s world?

Each of the document’s 65 glossary entries contains a list of associated documents (Read the full glossary here). In those 65 entries, this document makes 4,353 connections across the CWG-K corpus. Excluding the four best-connected entries (Thomas E. Bramlette, Louisville, Jefferson Circuit Court, and Tennessee), the remaining 61 entries yield 441 connections to a web of 248 unique documents spread across 25 unique collections in 3 separate archival repositories. The glossed people, places, and institutions in this document link to a median of 5 other records.

Though these appear to be no more than numbers on the page, this is the raw data of a complex series of geographic, economic, social, personal, and political networks that bound 1860s Kentuckians to one another, to the nation, to the war, and to the world. The patterns in these accession numbers suggest fascinating research questions which the user can further explore through documents themselves. What shared interest led twenty of the signers of this petition to appear in another document KYR-0001-004-0121? What political or personal factors inclined the individuals named in this document to appear more frequently in collections associated with Bramlette (145 documents) than Magoffin (50 documents)? What does the appearance of Zachariah Sherley and his business partner Richard Woolfolk in documents from all three repositories suggest about the breadth of their interaction with state institutions? Might this suggest ways in which their steamboat-supplying firm benefited from military mobilization?

The entries from this document also highlight what CWG-K can do with even the most fragmentary information. A man named Donheimer, for example, testified in the case related to Brockman’s petition, but we know nothing further of him—not even his given name. CWG-K will, nevertheless, create a glossary entry for him and include what information can be gleaned from the document. Even though what we know of Donheimer is limited now, the open-ended nature of a born-digital project allows CWG-K to expand the entry as new documents are identified and transcribed and as the CWG-K universe becomes populated with more interconnected historical actors. The point is not that we know very little about Donheimer now. Rather, it is that we may learn more about him in the future, and, even if not, scholars will use the networks of which he forms a part.

This document reveals how researchers will be able to visualize and study the interactions Kentuckians had with their neighbors, their governments, and their enemies, linking an untold number of individuals—enslaved and free, men and women, Union and Confederate—together in an interconnected web of relationships. CWG-K will be an unimaginably powerful tool for studying the whole of a society under the strains of civil war.

Patrick A. Lewis is Project Director of the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition.

KYR-0001-004-0787

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Be sure to read the glossary for this document as well as Part One and Part Two of the analysis.

KYR-0001-004-0787-001

To His Excellency Thomas E. Bramlette

Your Petitioner William Brockman says that at the present term of the Jefferson Circuit Court he was tried on an Indictment for the murder of one Adolph Logel. found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to serve ten years in the penitentiary of this commonwealth. He did not deny on the trial and does not deny now that he struck Logel a blow which unfortunately proved fatal but he asserted then and still asserts that he struck said blow in self=defense and under circumstances that justified it He says that he lives in the suburbs of Louisville not far from the old Oakland Race Course at which point the general government Keeps stabled a large number of horses and mules &c the chief part of which have been worn out in the military service of the government, considerable numbers of these animals die daily and the persons having them in charge were in the habit of hauling them to a strip of woods near petitioner’s House and there leaving them to rot. Your Petitioner had obtained leave to take the skins off of these carcasses on the condition he would remove or burn sathe carcasses to avoid having a nusance to the detriment of the health of the neighborhood The deceased Logel without having obtained leave as petitioner did, to take the skins, was in the habit of taking the skins and leaving the carcasses on the ground neither removing or burning them This created a nusance for which petitioner was indicted and fined Petitioner apprised Logel of the facts and told him he must not skin any more of the animals without burning the or removing the carcasses but Logel insisted that he would skin them without removing the carcasses and continued and persisted in so doing. At the time the difficulty occurred Logel had just skinned ^one^ of said animals ^a cow^ when your petitioner approached him and requested him to remove the carcass Harsh language and a quarrel ensued, Logel had a Butcher Knife with which he had just skinned the animal, in one hand and a stick in the other Your petitioner had only a stick in hand but it was pretty heavy one. Logel struck your petitioner twice with the stick and cut him on the hand with the Knife before petitioner struck at all whereupon your petition struck Logel with the stick which was in your petitioner’s hand a blow which knocked him down and unfortunately proved fatal Your petitioner had no idea that the blow would prove fatal and had no intention of killing Logel and struck him only in self=defense. Your petitioner insisted that he did not have a fair trial in the circuit court and that the verdict was obtained only by a conspiricy on the part of somethe principal witnesses for the commonwealth He states that the prinicpal witness for the state Donheimer not only testified differently in very material points from what he did in the examining court butand far more unfavorably to the [unclear]accused than he there testified but also as is showen by the accompanying affidavits of John Shrader Augusta Shrader and Charles Samuel Baker, procurred the witness for the commonwealth Huber, by bribery, to swear falsely on the trial of the case in the circuit court and thereby to make statements corroberating his said Donheimers, false testimony, all of which your petitioner was not made aware until after said trial.

Joseph Clements one of the justices who composed the examining court testified ion the trial in the circuit court that the witness Donheimer stated in the examining court that the deceased had a stick with which he was punching accused at the time accused struck him, whereas Donheimer testified on the trial in the circuit court that accused approached and ordered Logel to put down the skin and thereupon without anything further struck deceased upon the back of the neck a blow which produced his death. The witness for the accused Frend also testified that Donheimer attempted to procure him by bribe to swear against accused and that said Donheimer had said in his, Frend’s hearing that he wanted to have accused hung or sent to the penitentiary, Cathrine Barbarer testified that Donheimer sayed he would have accused hung The witness Semms who with the witnesses Huber and Donheimer was the only witness for the commonwealth who pretended to have seen the difficulty contradicted Donheimer by stating that the accused and the deceased “quarrelled” and fussed and contended over the skins for some time, and although he Semms then testified that he did not see but heard only one blow struck and thereafter looked and saw deceased lying on the ground, he is there in contra^dicted^ by Mr L A Wood an atty at law who testified on the trial in the circuit court that he was present as a spectator at the examining trial and that Semms there stated that deceased had a knife in his hand with which he struck at accused and L. A. Wood further testified that accused in the examining trial had a cut on the back of his hand.

The court refused a continuance applied for by accused at this present term on the ground of the absence in Tennessee of accused’s principal witness whose name is Rudolph Chrisler and who is a soldier in the Federal army and was so at the time of the difficulty and by whom accused could have proved on the trial in the circuit court as he did prove by said witness in the examining court that he Rudolph Chrisler saw deceased strike at and strike accused with a stick before accused struck deceased and that deceased had a Knife in his hand during the difficulty with which he cut accused on the hand Your petitioner had a subpoena for this witness and it was returned by, the sheriff “not found” and petitioners counsel asked leave of the court to introduce evidence of what the witness Chrisler had testified in the examining court which the court refused to do Your petitioner says that if he could have obtained the testimony of Chrisler it would have fully corroborated, and supported the testimony of DeFlour in the trial in the circuit Court and established the innocence of the accused of the charge Your petitioner states that he has a large family depended on his exertions for support

KYR-0001-004-0787-007All of which your petitioner would respectfully submit and implore the exercise in his behalf of your Excellency’s clemency

[unclear] [unclear]
translation William Brockman

We the undersigned citizens of Louisville join in the prayer of the foregoing petition and aske that William Brockman be pardoned

Nat. Wolfe
R. H. Rousseau
I H Hornsby
Chas Kahnt
Dr. V. Donhoff
F. Bender
Byron Bacon
F Gorin
A M Gazlay,
Jack Fry
S. A. Atchison
Jeff. Brown.
W. W. Fry
James A. Beattie
Thos W. Gibson
W A Meriwether
Jno. Hanna

Jos. Clement
W. C. Wood
W. P. McDowell
Lewis N Dembitz
Martin Bijur
S. S. Bush
H. C. Shivell
L. A. Wood
Isaac P Miller
Franz, A, Kramur
E S Craig
W, B. Hoke
Sam B. Smith
C. Ormsby
R. J. Ormsby

Wm. F. Wood
Hamilton Pope
Alfred T. Pope.
M S Fields
James Harris
J. P. Gailbreath
John N. Mattingly
Jno. K. Miller
John G. Barbon

F G Dannecker
H. S. Burkhard
T. Jack Conn
R H Woolfolk
Z, M, Sherley
Thos. J. Griffiths

Jefferson Cir Ct
vs
Wm Brockman

This is a case which demands Executive clemency and a pardon is ordered

Tho E Bramlette
Govr
Apl 29th 1864

10 years
Manslaughter

William Brockman to Thomas E. Bramlette, n.d., Office of the Governor, Thomas E. Bramlette: Governor’s Official Correspondence File, Petitions for Pardons, Remissions, and Respites 1863-1867, Box 10, BR10-213 to BR10-213A, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, Frankfort.