A Major Finnell, about twelve or fifteen years ago, dug for those bones, and on a rise about ten or twelve feet above the bottom of the creek came to a well, and at the depth of about twenty feet found an almost entire skeleton of those enormous animals which had been buried there ages ago. The well was about twenty feet in diameter and twenty feet deep. The large bones were laid around the outside of the wall and so inwardly to the center, and the skull placed on the top in the center. Every one of the large bones was fractured, and had the print of a heavy instrument, used to endeavor to break them, it is presumed, on account of some superstitious belief. This account I had from Major Finnell. He had a partner in searching for these bones who forced him to sell his half for two thousand dollars. They were taken to New Orleans and sold for five thousand dollars, from thence to New York, and thence to England. I think it was about 1837 they were found.*

According to William Henry Perrin, a Kentucky historian, this was third collection at Big Bone Lick. It was sold to Mr. Graves for $2,000, and then taken by him to the Eastern States and sold for $5,000, a handsome profit.⁺ About 1841 he was interviewed by the famous geologist Charles Lyell (who spelt his name Phinnell). Lyell was interested in what Finnell had to tell him about the buffalo trails that led to the lick.^#

* First Explorations of Kentucky, S. Johnston, ed. (Louisville: John P. Morton, 1898), p. 170-171.

⁺Perrin, "Big Bone Lick" Boone County Recorder 9 July 1890, p. 2, cols. 1-2.

^# See Lyell at Big Bone Lick