AMERICAN MURDER Part One

 

I don't want to call the lady a liar, but I don't believe any of the stories Priscilla Grinder told about that night. But I simply do not believe this woman heard two gunshots shatter the early morning darkness, heard her guest begging for help and never peeked out her door. I can not say exactly what occurred that pitiless night. But maybe it was murder.

Grinder's Stand, as it was called, stood along the ridge route called the Natchez Trace or “The Devil's Backbone”. The road - to give it a generous title - began where the first high ground above New Orleans, touched the Mississippi River, at a human den of inequity called Natchez. 

Following ancient buffalo trails "The Trace" then meandered through a dense macabre forests 445 miles, twenty days by horse and foot, to Nashville, Tennessee, where it joined Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road to the east. Under the progressive President Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Army was set to work clearing the trace to 8 feet wide and removing all tree stumps above 16 inches tall, so "The Trace" could be used by high riding Conestoga wagons. But each stream and river still had to be forded, even if the traveler could afford to pay a toll along those short parallel sections improved by local entrepreneurs

In 1802, when Louisiana was still French territory, the customs house in Natchez reported a million dollars worth of tobacco, flower, hemp, cider and whiskey on its way down the Mississippi to New Orleans. By 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, "The Trace" saw as many as 1,000 travelers a year -  the crews of flatboats and rafts returning home on foot with their profits. 

And where there are profits, there are those who would steal them. Each ominous river and stream crossing on "The Trace" was reputed to be the unmarked graves of boatmen who had been set upon by gangs of “Land Pirates”. There was no law on "The Trace". And while the level of violence never approached the legends, meeting a group of strangers at an isolated ford or forest clearing, or blind turning in the trail was still an unnerving experience.

Robert Evans Grinder and Priscilla Knight were each born within sight of Moore's knob (above), the 1,700 foot high granite mountain that looms over Stokes county, North Carolina. As teenagers they ran away together, and in 1799 were married in Nashville, about the time their daughter, Parthenia, was born. They were living examples of the new nation, young, illiterate, hard working and hungry to succeed.

So as the soldiers hacked and sawed their way south along "The Trace", the Grinder's followed. And in 1807 they came to the Tennessee “Barins”, high ground between the Duck and Tennessee Rivers, sixty miles southwest of Nashville. Here the Grinders enlarged and hacked out a couple of clearings amidst the oaks and dogwoods. Back in the woods they planted corn and rye. And in a clearing along the trace they built a small one room cabin, and a similar sized barn and stable, 

The cabin and barn stood at right angles to each other, their front doors opening on  a common space. "The Trace".  A third building close by was a detached kitchen, and stood behind the first two.  This was Grinder's Stand, one of only seven such “Stands” along The Trace in 1807, where for thirty cents you could rent a bed or part of a bed or just a roof for the night. 

For a few cents more Priscilla could supply a bowl of warm gruel. But after a toll road by-pass opened, the Grinder's income dropped off. So the Grinders depended on their fallback industry, selling corn mash whiskey to the Chickasaw Indians, whose nation's border lay just a few yards beyond Grinder's Stand's front door.

In the rainy dusk of 10 October, 1809, this failing wilderness hostel was unexpectedly confronted by a tall, gaunt man who materialized out of the woods.  Priscilla Grinder, alone with her children,  must have greeted him warily. Why was this man in an expensive blue and white stripped duster, traveling alone? Why had he not taken the bypass when he could obviously afford it?  

According to Priscilla, he tried to set her mind at ease by telling her that his two servants should be arriving shortly with pack animals. But that only added to the mystery. And if she had known her weary visitor was Merriweather Lewis, Governor of Upper Louisiana Territory  and one of the most famous men in North America, it likely would not have eased her mind .  In God's name, why was such a man stopping at her door, seeking the sad comforts that she could offer?  It was a question still waiting for an answer, 300 years later.

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