by
Kenneth Lake
Note: The following story concerns the use of patrollers to reduce theft and unlawful movements within Boone County. The names of the men involved here are doubtless among the patrol appointed for the north end of the county in 1936: "Patrollers for North Bend Allen G. McCoy Capt. Legrand Montague W. W. Hedges, Abram Wainscot, & Geo. Kelly are appointed a Company of Patrollers for the North Bend and to serve as the law directs for one year without Compensation." (Court Order Book Book D, 1836, page 14.) Note the words: "Dey dassen't beat yo' to deff." which means the patrols were limited by law to a definite number of allowable strokes. See further information on the Boone County Patrols.
About the year 1835, when the slaves had a disagreeable tendency to go foraging, much to the depletion of henroosts, meathouses, and corncribs, a patrol was organized for the purpose of guarding the road and river ways of northwestern Boone County. It was composed of prominent farmers along the border of the county, who were vested with full authority to administer dire punishment to any black man caught abroad after nightfall without a pass from his master. The patrol untimately did good service in destroying an annoying traffic of no mean proportions that had been established between Lawrenceburg, Indiana, white men and Boone County slaves. Large quantities of farm produce were purloined by the blacks, and disposed of to their white accomplices from across the river, who gave in payment nominal sums of money or such articles as the darkies desired in exchange, which were usually whisky and tobacco.
One night during the autumn of 1836, four members of the patrol on duty between the sandbar opposite the mouth of the Big Miami River and the ferry landing, caught three Negro men prowling about in a very suspicious manner among the willows lining the river shore. Upon examination they proved to be without passes, and were tied up to receive such punishment as their captors should determine upon. It was the intention of the patrolmen to intimidate them into disclosures concerning the whereabouts of a large quantity of bacon that had been stolen during the preceding night from a meathouse in the vicinity. Threats and bribes alike proved unavailing, and the prisoners, one by one, were severely chastised. While the first man was being whipped, one of his companions—a strapping Negro—gave him frequent words of advice and encouragement. "Bore hit as long as yo' kin, Mose; bore hit as long as yo' kin," he would say in response to the other's wails; "dey dassen't beat yo' to deff." When, at length, he found himself at the post, his tingling companions reciprocated in kind, till finally, when his broad back was roundly scored, though by no means in such a distressing state as those of his companions, and while the hickory rod was still being industriously applied, he cried in mingled pain, shame, and defiance: "O Gawd! I'se done bored hit as long as I kin. I'se gwine to tell whar dat bacon's at." And he did, betraying, as well, the names of the white men with whom he was associated, who were ultimately caught and severely flogged, thus forever breaking up the unlawful traffic between the two sections of the country, and giving to Lawrenceburg a trio of very sore-backed rascals.
Daniel Piatt = "Kenneth Lake" (pseudonym) "Broken Bits of Old Kentucky: In a Riverside Neighborhood of Boone County," The Hesperian Tree: A Souvenir of the Ohio Valley, edited by John James Piatt. North Bend, Ohio: John Scott & Co., 1900. p. 346-347.
See a map of the area in which this occurred. Slavery Documents from Boone County