FILSOX
FINCH
Jersey; that he had some knowledge of Latin,
Greek and French; and that besides being a
farmer he taught school and was a land sur-
veyor. He appears to have made his way on
foot from Chester county to Pittsburg across the
mountains and thence by boat down the Ohio
river to Limestone, and through the forests to
Lexington, Ky., where he taught school in 1783,
and the same year wrote down the narrative
given by Daniel Boone of his expedition up the
Chillicothe. In 1783 he acquired 13,000 acres of
land in Fayette county on warrants brought from
Pennsylvania, and he also purchased 1500 acres
in Jefferson covmty from Squire Boone. He made
lasting friendships with Daniel Boone, Levi Todd,
James Harrod, Christopher Greenup, John Cowan
and William Kennedy, and from these pioneer
settlers received much needed infoiination in
preparing his book " The Discovery, Settlement
and Present State of Kentucke " and his '"Map
of Kentucke " to accompany the work. His visit
to the neighborhood of Louisville at this time is
set down by Isaac Hite as the spring of 1784,
when Hite met him at an assembly of neighbors
who had gathered to assist in raising the timbers
for his mill on Goose creek. There being no
printing office west of the Alleghanies, Filson
made the journey to Philadelphia, where his
map was engraved by D. H. Pursell and printed
by T. Rook, and to Wibniugton, where James
Adams printed the book, both bearing the im-
print of 1784. He returned to Kentucky, leaving
Piiiladelphia Ai^ril 30, 1785, and reached Pitts-
burg May 36, having made the journey in a
wagon with John Rice Jones and his wife and
child as passengers. They then took a flat-boat
to the Falls of the Ohio, and landed at Beargra.ss
Creek, June 10, 1785. In July, the same year, he
made a canoe voyage down the Ohio and up the
Wabash to Port St. Vincent, returning through
the woods to the Falls in August. On Oct. 14,
1785, he sold his farm at East Fallowfield to
Daniel Henry of Louisville, and made a second
trip to Port St. Vincent, 450 miles by canoe,
reaching Vincennes by Christmas. He left Vin-
cennes June 1, 1786, for the Falls of the Ohio in
a large boat with a crew of three men. They were
greatly harassed by the Indians, and lost their
boat and most of their baggage. He then left
Louisville for Pennsylvania, on horseback, making
the 800 miles in about sixty days. Early in 17S7
he returned to Kentucky, where he had innu-
merable lawsuits and other troubles about his
land. He proposed the establishment of a semi-
nary at Lexington, and in August, 1788, he en-
tered into a contract with Matthias Denman of
Essex .county, N.J., and Robert Patterson of Lex-
ington, Ky,, by which the three men were to
become joint owners of 640 acres of land and
were to lay out a town on the north bank of the
Ohio river opposite the mouth of the Licking
river. The place was named by Filson, Losanti-
ville. He marked out the road from Lexington
to the site of the new town, and the party-
left September 23, reaching the mouth of
the Licking in September, 1788, their route
being the exact one subsequently chosen by
the Cincinnati southern railroad between that
city and Lexington. It is not certain to
what extent Filson conducted the sm'vey of
the new town, as he mysteriously disajjpeared
and his successor, Isaac Ludlow, laid out the
futui-e city and changed the name from Losanti-
ville to Cincinnati. He left impublished MSS. : A
Diary of a journey from Philadelphia doton the
Ohio and up the Wabash rivers to Fort St. Vincent
in the Spring and Summer of 1785 ; An account of
a trip from Vincennes to Louisville by land in Art-
gust, 1785 ; A journal of two voyages from the
Falls of the Ohio to Fort St. Vincent on the Wa-
bash river, etc., and An account of an attempted
trip by ivater from Vincennes to Louisville, Aiigrisf,
1786, the attack tipon him by the Indians on the Wa-
bash and his subsequent trij) to the Falls of the Ohio by
land. Dr. Lyman C. Di'aper was the preserver of
these MSS. and used them in preparing his Life
of Gen. George Fogers Clark. John Filson's
brother Robert wrote in a small arithmetic the
following: "This book was given me by my
brother, John Filson, who was killed by an In-
dian on the north side of the Ohio, October the
First, 1788, about five miles from the Great Mi-
ami River and 30 or 25 from the Ohio. " See Life
and »-/vY/»;/.s of .Tiihn Filson by R.T. Durrett (1884).
FINCH, Francis Miles, jurst, was born in
Ithaca, N.Y., June 9, 1837; son of Miles and
Tryphena Finch. He was a student at the Ithaca
academy and graduated at Yale in 1849, having
become the class
poet. He was ad-
mitted to the bar in
1850 and began prac-
tice in Ithaca. He
was collector of in-
ternal revenue for
the 26th district of
New York, 1861-65.
He became the
trusted coimselor of
Ezi-a Cornell, and
during the organiza- '
tion of Cornell uni- ' ' , '*
versitj' his advice
and judgment were ^^f,^„^JCJ(^;^.4^.c/i:> always consulted,
and he helped to refute the many slanders which assailed the founder. In May, 1880. lie was ap- pointed by Governor Cornell judge of the court of
