ILHARDIN-L Archives

From: "Beth Lane" <>
Subject: Mystery Cabin
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 00:56:21 -0500

Cabin believed the scene of heinous crimes
May 03, 2001 2:02:32 P.M.
By BRIAN DENEAL
Staff Writer
ELIZABETHTOWN - The Saline Creek Pioneer Village and Museum will soon
have a new building believed to have been a lookout cabin used by Ohio river
pirates in the early seventeenth century.
The cabin, known by some locals as the "Mystery Cabin" is in
Elizabethtown on a bluff above the river. Some believe it is the oldest
cabin in Elizabethtown. Visitors have a 20 mile view of the Ohio, with
Carrsville, Ky., to the right, and Cave-In-Rock to the left. Hurricane
Island is directly across from the hill. When the leaves have left the trees
one can look across to see Tolu, Ky.
Charles Blackman, president of the Saline County Historical Society
was contacted by Sherman and Sarah Briscoe, owners of the cabin. They
offered to donate the cabin to the museum where it could be preserved, and
Blackman agreed.
Blackman tells a dark tale of what he believes from local legend and
from deed records is the cabin's history.
Deed records from Randolph County show a James Wilson owned the land
the cabin is on in previous to 1816, and as recorded April 30, 1816, he sold
the land to a man named William Alexander.
There was a river pirate named James Wilson who operated in the area
at that time, with outlaw James Ford. Blackman believes William Alexander is
a false name as there are no records of anyone with the last name Alexander
in the area.
Blackman believes Wilson and the other pirates used the cabin as an
outpost from which to prey on families traveling the river by flatboat, from
as far away as Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Before the dams, the river was shallow, with many shoals that could
trap a boat Blackman said.
He envisioned the following scenario: The flatboats might be spotted
and hailed at Cave-In-Rock. The pirates would tell the families the stretch
of river was too treacherous and they would need a pilot on board to
navigate them safely. The family might have agreed.
At some point, the pirates may have purposely mired the flatboat on a
shoal and fired a shot.
With the gunshot as a signal, or perhaps a flash signal from a mirror,
pirates stationed in the cabin might have jumped on horses, ridden down a
cut in the bluff to the river, and ridden out in the shallow waters to the
boat to murder the family and steal their belongings.
"They would kill the people, slit them open, fill them full of rocks
and sink them in the river," Blackman said.
Blackman said with the exception of travelers, there would have been
few living in the area not involved with an outlaw gang. "If you're not a
bandit, you're not going to be here," Blackman said.
"To be here in this cabin, you had to be part of that pirate gang."
The cabin has been altered from its original state. There is a 6-foot
door. The front and back doors are about 5 feet 7 inches, in the same style
as old cabins in Ireland and Scotland.
"Early cabins in this country had low doors," Blackman said.
He offered one suggestion for the practicality of low doors.
"A man on horseback couldn't get through a low door," he said.
A floor, a root cellar, glass windows and a chimney are other more
recent additions.
At one time a house was built around the cabin. The house has since
been torn down.
The cabin will be dismantled from the top down "a stone and a log at a
time," Blackman said.
He said the chimney will be the first part to come down to avoid the
risk of it falling on the men disassembling it.
The pieces will be marked as to their location in the house and placed
on a flatbed trailer "upside down" so the foundation may be the first
unloaded as the cabin is assembled at the museum.
Blackman is not sure when the move will be, but said it must be before
Dec. 31.
The cabin will have its permanent residence on the east side of the
museum on the slope of a hill, possibly behind the Aydelott Cabin, Blackman
said.
Blackman said the cabin may be called the Wilson-Ford Lookout Cabin.
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• Mystery Cabin by "Beth Lane" <>