John Hart Crenshaw and Hickory Hill: Final Report

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Autumn 2003 by Avila, Wanda

John Hart Crenshaw and Hickory Hill: Final Report. By James M. Cornelius (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2002. Pp. x, 99. Maps, photos., illus., notes, sources. Paper).

Did John Hart Crenshaw (1797-1871) of Gallatin County kidnap free blacks and indentured servants in order to sell them as slaves in the South? Did he hide the blacks in the attic of Hickory Hill, his two-story double log house near Equality, until slave traders could arrive to take the blacks down the Ohio River? Did he breed slaves in that same attic by using a "stud slave" named Bob Wilson? Most Gallatin County residents would answer these questions in the positive because they have grown up hearing the stories. However, many of the descendants of John Crenshaw and his wife, Sina Taylor, vehemently deny all truth to the stories, asserting that they are all part of a cruel conspiracy to besmirch not only their ancestors' reputations but their own reputations as well.

And now the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (IHPA), which purchased Hickory Hill in February 2001, has entered into the fray. Ostensibly to find out once and for all what the truth was behind the persistent rumors about Crenshaw, the IHPA recently contracted with the Illinois Historical Survey (IHS), a unit of the University of Illinois Library in Urbana, for historical research. In September 2000, IHS hired James Cornelius, Acting Director, to research and write a report on John Crenshaw and Hickory Hill.

Throughout the report, Cornelius makes clear that the paucity of historical documents hampered his search for the truth. For example, none of Crenshaw's account records have survived. Crenshaw claimed that he had kept most of his figures in his head and that the few records he had kept were all lost in the fire at Cypress Mill in March 1842. Also, Gallatin County court records from the 1830s and from 1846-1860 are missing, as are the state-mandated census records for Gallatin County in 1825, 1835, 1840, 1845, 1855, and 1865 (although these records have survived in neighboring counties). Likewise, the county board minutes for the 1830s are missing. Consequently, Cornelius acknowledges, we lack much of the information that might throw light on Crenshaw's movements. (45, 92, 44, 75)

Even when historical documents do exist, however, Cornelius often did not take the time to examine them, citing secondary sources instead. For example, to support his statement that Federal census results for 1820 place the John Crenshaw household somewhere within the U.S. Saline Reservation, he cites Lucille Lawler's unscholarly Gallatin County: Gateway to Illinois, published in 1968. (75)

Cornelius acknowledges that too little evidence exists either to prove or disprove any allegation against the Crenshaw house. (89) Yet, he spends almost the entire report trying to refute the various allegations. Throughout the report, Cornelius shows himself less interested in discovering the truth than in exonerating Crenshaw.

One of the clearest indications of Cornelius's bias is the fact that he excludes from his report one of the two photographs of John Hart Crenshaw known to exist, though he includes several other photographs of people and things associated with Hickory Hill. Cornelius's reason for excluding the photograph was that he found the portrait unflattering: It shows Crenshaw with what Cornelius calls "an unfortunate hairdo." (97) The photograph appears in Memoirs of the Lower Ohio Valley: Personal and Genealogical with Portraits (Vol. II, Madison: Federal Publishing Co., 1905, 373).

Cornelius examines several of the kidnapping charges against Crenshaw, concluding in almost every instance that the evidence is too scant to prove Crenshaw guilty. The only episode with substantive evidence against Crenshaw, Cornelius says, occurred in March and April 1842, when Crenshaw was accused of kidnapping Maria Adams, his indentured servant, and six or seven of her children and of holding them until a Crenshaw associate could take them across the Ohio River. Still, acting more as a defense lawyer than as a historian, Cornelius musters up every possible argument he can think of in defense of Crenshaw.

If Crenshaw did sell blacks down the river, Cornelius says, he may not have known he was doing anything illegal. The indenture system was based on the assumption that the owner of an indenture owned a human property, and the 1818 Constitution upheld the standing validity of all contracts, including indentures. Consequently, Cornelius argues, Crenshaw may have believed that he owned Maria and thus had a right to sell her, and, by legal extension, her under-18 children. (83)

As to why Crenshaw's contemporaries so frequently accused him of kidnapping if he was innocent, Cornelius suggests that they were slanderers who hoped to gain by their accusations. He explains, "trickery and fraud were common enough in business dealings that to accuse another man of kidnapping might have been a way to get back a black worker whom one had illegally sold him - to get the money as well as the man." (79) However, Cornelius cites no instances of such chicanery, seemingly satisfied only with the hypothesis that it might have happened.