This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: JamesWalterDrewWhitaker Surnames: Classification: biography Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.baker/16228/mb.ashx Message Board Post: The Bakers and the discovery of Great Saltpetre Cave (Per Jeff Renner) On Oct 22, 2011, at 9:43 AM, Jeff Renner wrote: we're making the assumption that Robert Julius and Robert the discoverer are the same person, which seems to be the case. While working on the history of the Great Saltpetre Cave in Rockcastle County, Kentucky, I found a lawsuit in the Madison County circuit court records between James Kincaid and George Montgomery. Those two gentlemen were known to have been the first operators of the mining facilities at the cave, although some of the details of the very earliest days of the operation were a bit uncertain. The lawsuit, wherein Kincaid sued Montgomery in 1800 or 1801 (the initial date of the action is not made clear in the documents), yielded new information about the original arrangement between Kincaid and Montgomery for mining the saltpetre dirt, and clarified the order of events involving the parties. That data isn't particularly pertinent to this discussion, so I'll not go into all the details. What is of interest to us is the unexpected naming of the discoverer of the cave-Robert Baker. . . . . . . . . . . . In every discourse on the Great Saltpetre Cave, John Baker is credited with its discovery. While the story has sometimes been embellished, the basics are always the same. Below is the first published account of the discovery, written by Dr. Samuel Brown in 1805. Brown first visited the cave in 1802 and later owned a part of the saltpetre mining operation. "[John Baker] entered by the north mouth, but proceeded only a short distance into it, on the succeeding day he brought his wife and two or three of their children to explore it, he carried a torch and his wife a supply of pine. After they had advanced within hearing distance of this torrent 400 or 500 yards from the north mouth, the only one then known, he dropped his torch and it was completely extinguished. During two days and two nights this miserable family wandered in total darkness, without provisions and without water, though sometimes within hearing of a cataract which they durst not approach, at length Mrs. Baker in attempting to support herself on a rock, perceived that it was wet, she conjectured that this was caused by the mud which they had brought in on their feet, Baker immediately ascended the rock, and saw the light of day." -From The Saltpeter Empires of Great Saltpetre Cave and Mammoth Cave, Angelo I. George, p. 1, 2001 HMI Press. It is not known who related the story to Brown. Notice that "John Baker" is in brackets in the quote. That's how George's book has it. The bulk of this quote is taken from Dr. Brown's paper entitled, "A description of a cave on Crooked Creek, with remarks and observations on nitre and gun-powder," which was read before the American Philopsophical Society 7 Feb 1806, and contains the discovery story in a footnote. However, the brackets in George's quotation reads, in Brown's original, "This cave was discovered about seven years ago by a Mr. Baker. He," with the remainder as George relates. I must point out that identifying "Mr. Baker" as John was not George Angelo's doing. It is unclear when "John" was substituted for "Mr." but Lewis Collins' 1847 Historical Sketches of Kentucky has John as the fellow, so the notion dates back to at least the 1840s. See the ending paragraphs for more on this matter. The date of the discovery is given almost always as 1798, although sometimes 1792 creeps in. A date of about 1798 fits with all the known data. Regardless, the point is that John Baker was said to be the cave's discoverer, and the story has been told that way for a long time. Furthermore, this John Baker has often been identified as John "Renta" Baker, sometimes with his discovery being attributed to his adventuresome spirit honed on his fabled longhunting expeditions. (We'll not get into the longhunting tradition here.) In his book, George says this John Baker was the same John who donated the land for the town of Winchester, KY. That was likely simply an assumption on his part; no source for the statement was given. I seem to recall this John also being identified as some other John, including the one mentioned in John B. Dysart's statement to Draper. It doesn't matter now, though, who this John Baker was because John Baker didn't discover the cave. A bit of background on James Kincaid and George Montgomery is perhaps warranted before getting to Robert Baker. Montgomery was the first person to mine the cave; he was doing so by the summer of 1799. Somehow, Kincaid learned of Montgomery's operation and went to see him. Kincaid told Montgomery that he owned the land containing the cave. In 1796 he had purchased half of a 29,000 acre grant on the Rockcastle River watershed from Jacob Remy; Kincaid claimed his part of the Remy survey stretched over to the cave. Instead of trying to throw Montgomery off the property (after all, he had physical possession of the land and had equipment and manpower mining saltpetre already), Kincaid was content to enter into an agreement with Montgomery whereby they would share the saltpetre dirt. According to their agreement, signed 25 Jul 1799, Kincaid would get two-thirds of the dirt, Montgomery one-third. But as often happens in business, the partners had a disagreement. Kincaid accused Montgomery of mining more than his one-third share, and, when Montgomery ignored his protests, Kincaid took him to court. In the lawsuit Kincaid laid out his grievances in his deposition, to which Montgomery responded by saying that Kincaid lied about owning the property, that the Remy survey didn't extend westward far enough to include the cave, thus the agreement was entered into on a fraudulent premise. Montgomery was correct in his statement-Remy's survey didn't even come close to including the cave. However, Montgomery had still violated their contract. The conclusion of the lawsuit isn't found in the circuit court files but it's evident from future events that the two men compromised and decided to split the cave into equal portions. Now to Robert Baker. As part of his deposition, Kincaid included the 1799 agreement. The important portion for us is: "...a Saltpetre Cave where the said Montgomery now works & makes saltpetre at on Crooked Creek near where John Baker lives & the said Montgomery by some means or other purchased said cave from Robert Baker who found it, & has opened & made a convenient way for access thereto & by means of an agreement with Meridy Edwards, purchased an improvement near said Cave and has settled his family thereon, now it is to be understood seeing said Kincaid hold by Deed sd. Land including said cave as his proper right & Claim and proposes that in & for the consideration as above namely his purchasing it of the man who first found it &c that a third part of all the saltpetre Dirt thereof shall be to his use (the sd. Montgomerys) & benefit his heirs &c forever..." So there we have it. John Baker lived nearby but Robert Baker made the discovery. . . . . . . . . . . . . Now let's move on to who this John and Robert may have been. I'll not beat around the bush-I think this is the father-son duo of Renta and Julius Bob, and I'll explain why. Contrary to some published data, the first instance I can find of Bakers presumably belonging to the yellow DNA group in Kentucky is the 20 Mar 1798 Madison County marriage bond between Bolen Baker and Mary Rogers with Robert Baker as bondsman. Supposedly, Robert Baker married Elizabeth Hammond in Lincoln County in 1792 but such a marriage does not appear in the Lincoln County, KY, records. I have no idea where that came from, whether it's a complete fabrication or whether the marriage place is incorrected stated or whether someone at some point made some assumption. If anyone knows, please tell me. The next instance would be the Kincaid-Montgomery agreement, which places a Robert and John Baker in what would become Rockcastle County no later than the summer of 1799. Following this, Nancy Baker married William McCollum in Madison. The bond date was 21 Sep 1799, Nancy's father John gave permission for the union, George Baker was bondsman. Later, in 1805, McCollum officially claimed his home property, which joined George Montgomery's cave tract. In 1801 we have several Baker sightings in the same area. First, on 11 May 1801 Stephen Langford claimed 200 acres of land on Crooked Creek, "at a bend opposite Robert Baker's." Two months later, 13 Jul 1801, John Baker claimed 200 acres of land on Crooked Creek "adjoining Stephen Langford, and to include Bolin Baker's cabin." Both this Baker claim and Langford's claim were made-improperly-from Lincoln County (the Lincoln-Madison line was in some dispute; it was formally surveyed in 1804). In 1805 a John Baker made another Crooked Creek claim of 200 acres, this time in Madison County. It included where he lived at the time. The tax lists are, unfortunately, not a great deal of help in the earlier years. For instance, while we know from various records that these guys were in Madison as early as 1798, they don't show up in a readily-identifiable way until perhaps 1803, when John, George and Robert are listed. There is a John, Robert and Robert, Jr. in 1797. These Roberts were Rev. Robert (son of Humphrey) and his son Robert; Rev. Robert had moved to TN by 1799. The Madison list for 1798 doesn't exist. From 1799 through 1802, there are no Johns, Roberts, Georges, or Bolins (there is a Jehu on Silver Creek whose name is sometimes transcribed as John). In case you're wondering, they aren't obvious in the Lincoln County lists, either. 1804 has John, George and Robert. It should be pointed out here that there were more Bakers than these three in the Madison tax lists-Humphrey, Thomas, Charles and others, to name just a few. Also remember that Humphrey had sons named John and Robert; the former may or may not have been in KY, the latter was at least in the late 1790s. To make matters worse, the Bakers on Crooked Creek and the Bakers on Silver and Muddy Creeks were often in the same tax district. In 1805, a couple of things changed. First, the tax districts were modified with one of the dividing lines being the State Road. The change basically separated the eastern and western parts of Madison, placing the Station Camp and Muddy Creek watersheds into the area with what would later be Clay County to the east, while Silver Creek and Roundstone Creek (including it's tributary, Crooked Creek) were left together. There was still a third disctrict on the north side that contained the greater-populated area from around Richmond to Fayette County. The second change was that Bolin finally shows up, as does Morris. Those two guys, along with George and Robert, are in the first district. However, John-listed as "John, Sr"-is in the second district. For the first time for any of these Bakers he has land-80 acres on Crooked Creek. There is also another John in that district. More changes were in store for 1806, as George, Bolin, Robert and Morris are absent. There is still a John in district two, though no land is listed for him. 1807 has a John with 40 acres on Roundstone and a John with no land. 1808 has a John with two tracts-one for 70 acres, one for 200 entered in his name. There is also a "John, Jr" listed. No John appears in 1809 and there is no John in the first Rockcastle County tax list made in 1811 (or in 1812 through 1815), nor in the 1810 Rockcastle census. The next John we find is in 1816; this is the younger man who lived on Skeggs Creek and is thought possibly to be the son of Andrew Baker, born 1765. Whew. That's a lot of stuff. By now you can probably see where I'm going. All these names match with yellow group Bakers who settled in Clay County. Of particular import is Bolin, which is not exactly a common name. When you consider that we have John, Robert and Bolin living at the same time in a very small area-the three would have been no more than a mile apart-it's very suggestive of them being our guys. Throw in the marriages which bring George into the equation and place William McCollum in the same spot, and it makes the case look even better. Then add in the movement, which indicates all but John moved to an area which would include Clay County in 1807. While we don't have any actual written document that says so, this sure looks like the yellow group to me. It could have happened this way: About 1797 the family left eastern TN/western NC and moved to KY. Whether George and Morris (this would be George's son, Morris) were with Renta, Bolin and Robert from the start is unknown, but George had arrived by 1799 and Morris by 1805. John, Bolin and Robert settle on unclaimed land along Crooked Creek, not far from its mouth on Roundstone, just north of Boone's old trace and west of the State Road. The land was indeed unclaimed, at least legally. As of this writing, I believe John lived across the creek from the cave's south entrance. While exploring their surroundings, Robert discovers a cave nearby. Somehow, word gets out and George Montgomery comes calling. He convinces the Bakers, who have no idea of the cave's potential (or at least don't have any desire to exploit it themselves), to sell him the cave. Another guy, Meridy (Meredith?) Edwards, also is squatting on land close to the Bakers, just west of the cave, and Montgomery buys him out and moves his family to the location. Interest in the cave rises, mining begins, the area becomes much more popular and official land claims begin to be made. John tries to solidify his claim, but initially makes the mistake of doing it in Lincoln County instead of Madison, where the land is properly located. His claim takes in Bolin's house, probably south of Robert's house (which may have been John's, too), adjoining Langford's on the west-northwest. You can't fit very many 200-acre tracts into this small area and still be on Crooked Creek. Other than Montgomery's and McCollum's, none of these claims were surveyed and granted. However, we know where Langford's was from other records. In 1804, production at the cave really picked up. Another cave in the vicinity was found to have good saltpetre dirt and mining began there as well, around 1805. The entire area was stripped completely of timber, slaves tended huge fires, teams of mules or oxen would have making steady trips in and out of the area, large pumping towers were erected to get water into the cave for the saltpetre leaching process. In short, it didn't take long for an unspoiled wilderness to transform into an ugly, stinky, smoky industrial site. And surely by 1805 it was that. I think that's when everyone except John, who had the only legitimate property claim, decided to move on. I believe this is evidenced in the 1805 tax list when the guys show up in different districts for the first time; the implication is Robert, George, Bolin and Morris (and maybe another John) moved to what would soon become Clay County. The naming of "John, Sr" in the tax list is suggestive that Renta was the one who stayed behind. The 1807 Clay County tax list has a John Baker, likely the John who was in the same district with the others in 1805. Was this John "Durkham" Baker? Did Bolin or George have sons named John? Who knows. We do seem to have three (or four) John Bakers in association with this group and only two known candidates. Keep in mind at this same time there was a John Baker with Andrew in Carter County, TN, who doesn't seem to be old enough to be Andrew's son. So in 1807 we potentially have a John in Carter County, a John in Clay County, and two Johns in Madison County. . . . . . . . . . . . . In the first version of this article, I speculated that perhaps a member of the Mullins family (who lived surrounding the cave) related the information to Lewis or Richard Collins in the early 1870s. However, I have since found that Lewis Collins' first version of the work, published in 1847, already had John Baker named as discoverer. So we can push the name association back 30 years further. Other than the standard demographic data concerning Rockcastle County, in the 1847 edition Collins mentions three things about the county: the Rockcastle River; an Indian attack on travelers; and the saltpetre cave. It's still possible the Mullins family supplied the information. But in the opening acknowledgements of the book, Collins lists various individuals from the counties who he depended upon for information about their county. For Rockcastle, this person was Elisha Smith. Smith was the son of William Smith, Jr. The cave property looks to have come into William, Jr.'s hands about 1830 and remained in the family until 1860 when it was sold to William Langford. Given the naming of Elisha Smith in the book and the familiarity he had with the cave as a noteworthy feature in Rockcastle County, it's not unreasonable to think the cave information came from him. William Smith, Sr. was in the area and involved with the cave-area land in some fashion beginning in the early 1800s, although he did not own the cave. He also had an interest in some the land disputes arising from Kincaid's erroneous claim. How much he or his son or his grandson knew about the cave's discovery, we cannot know. Whether the elder Smith personally knew John Baker we also don't know, but given the circumstances it's hard to imagine they never met. It is possible, though, that Smith did not know Robert Baker, depending on the timing of Smith's involvement and of Robert's move to Clay County. In all likelihood, naming John as the discoverer was simply a matter of mistaking a Baker father for his son. Robert Baker's Journal shows the following (see http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/8056/newsletter.html ): Robert Baker was born March 1st 1774 Robert Baker Sr. was born March the 1st day 1774 and God has spared his life until the 29th day of January 1836. Catherine Baker was born May 10, 1776 (Catherine Amis, #2 wife) Elizabeth Baker was born August 15,1791 (Elizabeth #1 wife) John H. Baker was born October 12, 1793 Polly Baker was born November 27, 1795 (see site for rest of journal entries) Someone after the fact has added editorial comment attempting to identify Robert's wives. His "1st wife" Elizabeth was born in 1791 yet had their 1st child in 1793. Clearly not possible. His first and only wife was Catherine (Caty) Baker bn 1776 (whether this is her maiden or married name hasn't been determined). Your source to the 1850 census verifies this. His first CHILD is Elizabeth Baker bn 1791. In 1825 a Robert Baker marries Caty BOWLIN who some claim is Caty Bowlin Amis, widow of John Amis. But widows do not remarry using their maiden name. It is much more likely that the Robert who md Caty Bowlin was a young man, perhaps even this Robert's son. very long website address http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igmpostem.cgi?op=show&app=gwenbjorkman&notify=r3UucFC6BBI-M58UHW8DIUYoR_-5Qh3-&key=I2019626&return=Return to WorldConnect Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.