Gilbert LeClerc had served in the French Army in the American Revolution under General Rochambeau. He liked the country so well that, after his discharge in France, he married his village sweet­heart and returned with her.

   William Smuthers was a native of Maryland who had served in the Maryland Line during the Revolution.  He had met LeClerc at the siege of Yorktown. When LeClerc returned, they came west to Lexington together.

   In the middle of March, 1782, Smuthers and LeClerc and his wife left Lexington with needed supplies. They were delayed by a crippled horse at Rolling Fork River, and did not reach the Bacon Creek settlements until the end of the first week in April. About noon they stopped at a small station south of Highbaugh's Mill to rest and graze their animals, but since they were anxious to reach their destination in order to plant a crop for food and and forage the coning winter, late in the after­noon, with horses well rested they resumed their journey, intending to reach the river during the night.

  The trail led up a valley west of Frenchman's Knob, and between sundown and dark they were 200 yards below where the branch from "Shirt-Tail Spring" enters the valley. The trail was quite narrow at this point with a jungle of cane and bushed on both sides and a low heavily ridge coming almost to the path on the east side. Smuthers was in the lead, driving the pack horses; LeClerc and his wife were twenty to thirty yards behind. 

  Shots were fired from the east; both men fell; and six to seven Indians rushed out to catch the horses. All but one ran after the animals for plunder; one returned and tomahawked Smuthers. When he started back toward LeClerc, the Frenchman shot him and he and his wife fled from the other returning Indians.

   They left the trail and headed toward the knob.  With the help of his wife, LeClerc reached the top.of the knob expecting the Indians to pursue at daylight he gave his wife his discharge papers and money. Whether he was alive or not, she was to start at daybreak for the settlement where they had rested at noon.  She rolled up rocks around LeClerc for protection, but the Indians were evidently stopped in their pursuit by darkness.

   LeClerc died during the night and his wife returned to the settlement where she managed to convey her story by sign language and her bloody appearance. A party started for the knob; they buried Smuthers on the ridge at the foot of the knob and LeClerc on the top where he had died. 

  LeClerc's wife went to the station on Nolin River, learned English, and did skilled household labor. Later she married another soldier named Frazier and they went to found a settlement north of the Cumberland River in Tenn­essee. Madame LeClerc knew little of the land purchase except that there were papers in the baggage captured by the Indians.

   When the notes came due, Vaughn did not know and failed to take proper steps to clear the title. Then ten to twelve years later, Vaughn sold half or more of his survey, including the land originally sold to LeClerc and Smuthers, to Richard Jones Munford, a wealthy gentleman of French descent, who settled on the land and later laid out the town of Munfordville. Munford did not know of the flaw in his title until after he had laid out the town and sold much of the land.  Nothing was known of the fate of the men and their purchase except Mrs. LeClerc’s tale, but that was enough for rumors to start and some purchasers to want their money back.

   Munford could not sort facts from rumor until a man named Meredith stopped at Munford's home to spend the night. He knows of Smuthers and Madame LeClerc and what had happened to her. He had just returned from a visit in Barren County to visit an old friend and explorer, Henry Skaggs who had told him of Mrs. Frazier, LeClerc and a visit to her a few years previously.

   Munford went to see Skaggs and heard the following story: Skaggs had met Madame LeClerc at Philipp’s Station and knew of her marriage to Frazier.  In 1802 or 1803, after hearing her story, he had met a man named Perry who, in the spring of 1782 when approaching Big Blue Spring (south of present Hiseville and Knob Lick), he had met a party of Indians just leaving the spring. 

   He fired killing one who already had a day-old bullet wound; and captured a packhorse loaded with settlers' equipment, women's clothing, and a letter in French. When Skaggs met Perry, Perry's wife still had one of the vests from the packhorse, and Skaggs took it to Mrs. Frazier (LeClerc) in Tennessee.

   After this incident Skaggs heard Perry tell his story again and this time describe the dead Indian at Big Blue breed trader, Old Louie, in Tennessee.  Skaggs went to see this trader and found he bad bought the plunder and packhorses and had discovered LeClerc’s papers. 

   Since the story the Indians had told Old Louie coincided with Mrs. Frazier's (LeClerc), Skaggs took her the papers and a gold cross from the plunder.  He told her that the land mentioned in the papers at Big Buffalo Crossing was settled but not valuable.  If she wanted to claim it, she could but she would have to pay the balance of the purchase price and any interest.

   Munford listened to Skaggs story, realizing he had to get a quit claim from Mrs. Frazier to clear his title.  He agreed to pay the original price plus interest for her claim to his land.  Skaggs agreed to go to Mrs. Frazier with Munford’s offer, and took along Cader Edwards, grandfather of Cyrus Edwards, from whom this account is given.whom he lived, as secretary. They received a quit claim and Mr.

By Cyrus EdwardsEdwards

This story can also be found in the archives of The Hart County Herald

See: The Tragedy At Frenchman's Knob 

Thursday, April 13.1916

The Book is currently on sale at the Hart Co. Historical Soc. in Munfordville, Ky.

 

 

 

 

 Frenchman's Knob Cemetery      

 Photo & Information:  LisaTennison  & Teresa Bostic

Infant son of J.A. & M.E. Adcock born & died Nov. 8, 1871 Millard F. Amos 1857-1920 Sarah E. Amos. 1860-?? Mary, d/o J.E. & S. E. Amos, born & died Dec. 17, 1886 Hanna M. Bolton June 23, 1803-Nov. 8, 1871 Capt. E.V. Bolton May 20, 1827-Apr. 5, 1869 (B. Taswell County VA) Susan Bolton Mar. 14, 1828-Nov. 4, 1896 Hanna M. Bolton Oct. 5, 1858-Dec. 25, 1861 Samuel L. Bostic 1854-1936 Ruth F. Bostic 1860-1940 Thomas G. Buckner Feb. 16, 1918-Dec. 3, 1955

James Edsell Jan. 28, 1858-July 2, 1925 Ellen Edsell Jan. 18, 1862-?? Clarene, infant d/o Bradley & Jessie Gibson, born & died July 4, 1935 W.E. Gibson Mar. 13, 1848-Apr. 18, 1916 Jarusha, w/o W.E. Gibson, Sept. 6, 1852-June 21, 1923 S.A. Gibson Oct. 8, 1875-Feb. 3, 1927 M.A. Gibson Apr. 25, 1884-Mar. 12, 1924 Iva Gibson Aug. 26, 1916-Sept 11, 1916 James T. Goodman 1876-1959 (tin marker) Katie Goodman 1894-1960 (tin marker) Parthena Hazelwood Jan. 28, 1827-Dec. 18, 1898

Linnie W., w/o William Middleton, Nov. 28, 1869-Dec. 1, 1.912  John W. Moneypenny Apr. 20, 1856-Jan. 8, 1909 & Margaret Sept. 10, 1855-?? Bobby T. Tennyson:  April 1938-Aug. 1944   Donnie Tennyson: May 1937- June 1937 William Thomas Moneypenny Dec. 30, 1864-May 9, 1954 Dora L. Moneypenny Oct. 27, 1871-Apr. 28, 1943 John Reynolds Jan. 13, 1864-Feb. 19, 1941 Allie Reynolds Aug. 24, 1874-Apr. 5, 1915 Ora Reynolds June 22, 1891-Apr. 18, 1912 Maudie Reynolds Nov. 18, 1889-Nov. 7, 1914

 Current Frenchman's Knob grant application allocates $10,000 to clean and fence cemetery. If you have other information about this site, please let us know.  

  Bottomless Pit

  While Kentucky can't boast the deepest bottomless cave pit in the world (that honor goes to a Croatian cave called Velebita), it does have more than its share of cavernous pits, of which Mammoth Cave's 104-foot-deep pit is the most famous. It is rumored that Mammoth Cave, in the hills of the south-central part of the state, contains other such pits.  The vast majority of Mammoth Cave's labyrinthine tunnels have yet to be explored. Even deeper than Mammoth Cave's deepest pit, however, is the one in Frenchman's Knob Cave, in Hart County, which is 180 feet deep. Many years ago, before the depth of these pits was known, they were thought to be bottomless. All manner of objects, including lit lanterns, were hurled down them, only to vanish without a trace, with no sound of their impact below. Scientists still haven't worked out the exact mechanics behind the formation of these enormous vertical underground shafts, and we can only guess at what secrets they hold.

 The information above is taken from the book "Weird Kentucky"

UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA   page  55

  Weird Kentucky: Your Travel Guide to Kentucky's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets By Jeffrey Scott Holland of Louisville Ky

Barns & Noble Reader Rating: 4 out of 5 stars 

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/index.asp

B.C. Historical Soc. highly recommend this book for your home, it is great fun.

 

 

 

This map is believed to have been completed by Ian Ellis in 1975.  Currently the only known enterance is under the control of a group out of Georgia.

 

  The following information was attained from  http://www.caves.org/section/asha/ 

 

National Speleological Society AMERICAN SPELEAN HISTORY ASSOCIATION

6304 Kaybro St. Laurel, MD 20707

August 21, 2006

Hello,

  Here is the Frenchman Knob article you requested.

  I apologize for the delay in getting this to you. I couldn't understand your phone number on the first message you left for me a few weeks ago and I was out of town on vacation when you called recently.

  I hope you find the article helpful.

 Bob Hoke ASHA Treasurer

 

FRENCHMAN KNOB. THE BOTTOMLESS PIT IN KENTUCKY

Angelo I. George

 Kentucky possesses few really deep pit caves when compared to prime areas like northeastern Alabama. Thick elevated limestone sequences and deep near­by stream valley entrenchment are lacking for shafts of this nature to form. Frenchman Knob Pit is a vertical cave that stands out among all the rest, both in depth and historical significance, as a natural curiosity in Kentucky.

 

 

  It is located along the southeastern flank of Frenchman Knob in northern Hart County where the topography is very rugged and is locally called the Brush Creek Hills.1 Lewis Collins in his 1847 History o£ Kentucky was the first to draw attention to this pit as one of the interest­ing spots of the county. He says:  Six or seven miles north north-east from the county seat [Munfordville], is the "Frenchman's Knob," so called from the circumstance that a Frenchman [Gilbert LeClerc] was killed and scalped upon it. Near the top of this knob, there is a hole or sink which has been explored to a depth of 275 feet, by means of letting a man down with ropes, without, discovering bottom! 2

   This same quote has been cited time and again by Kentucky historians William B. Allen, Richard H. Collins, William H. Perrin, J. H. Battle, and Gilbert C. Kniffin during the 1870*s and 80's, and in many contemporary works. 3 Only Per­rin, el al., elaborated on the Collins description by adding some popular mythology on the John Clevis Symmes hollow earth theory by stating the pit is "popularly supposed to be the short route to China." 4

  It was just this kind of depth description that sparked the interest of some young local cave explorers by the names of James W. Dyer and William T. Austin. Together with William Rindt, E. Klein, J. Blankey, and J. Neidener they pre­pared to drop the pit on August 3, 1949. Using 160 feet of rope ladder, Austin made the initial descent to the top of the breakdown pile. He signaled back to his companions about the big cave at the bottom, and they all climbed down to see the cave. During their exploration, they found evidence that they were not the first to descend into the depths of Frenchman Knob Pit. Dyer says they found signatures and an 1895 date on the wall, which may have been by the orig­inal successful explorers of the pit cave.

  The pit seems to have again gone into oblivion until 1958 when Robert Halmi of True magazine produced a photo journalism article on the descent and exploration of the cave. Halmi is best recognized for his coverage in the same publication of the 1954 Floyd Collins Crystal Cave C-3 Expedition.

  Halmi wanted to do another cave story, needing something in the caliber of the C-3 Expedition to excite readership and to show that Kentucky had deep pits similar to those in the French Pyrenees. He contacted William T. Austin at Mam­moth Onyx Cave, north of the town of Horse Cave, for story ideas. Austin and his caving buddies had already done Frenchman Knob, but figured it would make a good exciting adventure story.

  Halmi wrote, "We had 150 feet of small aluminum ladder and 320 feet of nylon rope. We used all of it, and never hit bottom." Tying off their rope, seven cavers rappelled into the shaft.  "Two hundred feet down" [actually about thirty feet down from the low side] Halmi wrote that "we hit a ledge where we were able to bring the ladder into play," and "another 80 feet down ... we found a tangled mass of dead trees and rocks that had fallen in [probably the top of the breakdown pile]." Near here another "deep hole apparently without bot­tom" was mentioned. Fatigue, time, and insufficient rope prevented the des­cent of this last drop.  The exploration team managed to reach what they said was a total depth of 500 feet below land surface, in the vicinity of the for­mation room. Using Halmi's rope and ladder length figures, the entrance drop was reportedly in the range of 280 feet, which closely agreed with Collins's 1847 account. Important to remember in this descent of Frenchman Knob is the early use of single rope technique, although ladders were used in the last drop, a holdover from the European approach to pit work.6

  Since the 1973 Kentucky Speleofest held in Beech Bend Park, near Bowling Green, Frenchman Knob has been a favorite yo-yo spot. Whenever the pit is used as part of the Speleofest program, it receives from twenty-five to fifty cavers per day. The first compass and tape map of the cave was made by Bill Holmes, Dave Weller, and Roger Miller in May, 1971.  This was a line map showing major side passages with a cross section of the entrance pit showing both the low [at the big tree] and high side tie offs.

  In 1973 Roger Miller produced a very good physical description of the cave, which he called "a near Utopian playground for the vertical caver." This was the first largely accurate account of one of the deepest holes in Kentucky. The pit's depth as reported by Collins and Halmi shrank from 280 to 150 feet, measured from the low side. Miller's figure for the high side was 170 feet, and he stated that "the original depth of the pit to the floor of the cave passage has been calculated to have been in excess of 200 feet before mud and debris filled it to its present level." The depth of the pit was determined by tying a knot in the rope where it touched the top of the breakdown pile, hauling it out, and measuring it with a tape.?

  The Holmes survey logged in about 960 feet of high, narrow canyon passage, with unsurveyed leads connecting to peripheral shafts along the length of the cave. During their ascent back to the surface, Dave Weller did not have the physical strength to jumar out.  So, Holmes, Miller, and the rest of the crew hand hauled Dave out of the cave. What got their goat was Dave eating his lunch from his pack while being hoisted, which almost triggered a decision to leave him in the pit!  On another occasion, according to Miller, the pit claimed a broken arm. ° In 1972 a portion of the cave, which was called The Blue Hole, was surveyed by the Wisconsin Speleological Survey, with 694 feet mapped. This map is not generally available.

  By 1975 Ian Ellis (see map above), was fireballing around the caves of Kentucky, and one of his stops was Frenchman Knob Pit. His physical description appeared in the 1975 Speleofest Guidebook, and along with the Miller description, makes a fine supplement to the knowledge about the interior of the cave. During his ex­ploration, he made a sketch map of the cave and side passages. This map was combined with the Holmes map and also published in the 1975 Speleofest Guide­book. Again, the entrance drop seems to have shrunk in depth. Vol. 18, Nos. 3 & 4     102

  

 

  Ellis says, "the pit has a depth of up to 195 feet to the passage floor, with a choice of a high side drop of 145 feet (three-fourths freefall) or a low side drop of 129 feet." After "arriving on a. 50- foot [high] mud and and log pile, a few minor dome-pits at the side are seen." These "minor dome-pits" are very probably the same pits Halmi described as being bottomless. Ellis annotated cave passage detail with a sketch. Cave wall width, height, side passage detail, bat colony location, and hydrologic flow direction data were added to the Holmes map. The map was redrafted for the 1979 Speleofest Guidebook.10

  In 1976 a joint venture by the Blue Grass Grotto, Lexington, Kentucky, and the ESSO Grotto, Huntington, West Virginia (the same group responsible for the survey of James Cave, Edmondson County, Kentucky), produced a high quality map of the cave, which was called The Kentucky Blue Hole. Sara Corrie has remarked that this is one of her favorite caves. The unpublished map shows a pit depth of 145 feet on the high side and 125 feet on the low side. Over 2,280 feet was surveyed with more to go. The cave was drafted using the latitude and departure method of plotting.11

  During the 1975 Speleofest, Angelo George led a geology field trip with emphasis on pseudo and interstratal karstification. Frenchman Knob Pit was stop No. 2, and was used as an example of interstratal karst development occurring between the Big Cliffy Sandstone and the Girkin Formation. One of George's figures in the guidebook presented a schematic cross section extending from the heartland of the Brush Creek Hills, and then south southeastward to Green River. Within the cross section is the vertical profile of Frenchman Knob Pit, with the sus­pected groundwater gradient toward springs on the Green River. George thought the stream discharge point for the waters in Frenchman Knob was unresolved, but he did suspect either the Johnson or Boiling Springs.  In the early 1980's Dr. James F. Quinlan and his Upland Research Laboratory of professional cavers in­jected dye in the main cave stream of Frenchman Knob Pit, and bugged a number of possible spring discharge points. The dye resurged from Johnson Spring, a straight line distance of 3.65 miles.

 

 

 There have been stories about petrified trees in Frenchman Knob's canyon pas­sage ever since Bill Holmes excidedly reported such to George in 1971. Roger Miller and William Hopper have reported seeing "ancient Mississippian tree branches" protruding from the canyon walls. Hopper indicated that to his "know­ledge this [the petrified wood] is very unusual." A few years later, Holmes made a trip to the cave, and samples of the petrified wood were taken to George for examination. The fossils, however, were not tree branches, rather they were examples of a branching type sea coral called Siphonodendron g;enevievensis (Lithostrotion hanaodites).  The original discovery by Holmes of the fossil corals helped to position the attitude of the cave in its proper stratigraphic position. Furthermore, Hopper established the twelve foot thick sequence of crossbedded white limestone with the occurrence of j3. genevievensis. The late Dr. Edward R. Pohl in his small monograph on the stratigraphy in the central Kentucky karst, says this fossil "has been found only in beds at the position of the Joppa Limestone, which in this area ranges in thickness from six to 12 feet." This fossil has wide geographic range and is a good index fossil for the Joppa aember of the Ste. Genevieve Limestone.13

 Although known at least 140 years, since the days when locals would throw in rocks to sound its depth, to the exploration efforts of modern vertical cavers,

JOURNAL OF SPELEAN HISTORY 103

Frenchman Knob Pit remains one of the deepest and best known natural shafts in Kentucky. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

. Many thanks to Sara Corrie-for her personal insight on the mapping and explo­ration efforts of the James Cave gang; Richard Blenz for locating descriptive material; and to William Austin, Bill Holmes, David Weller, Ian Ellis, and Roger Miller, whose long ago conversations contributed much to the understanding of the history of Frenchman Knob Pit.  Laurence McCarty proofread the manuscript and offered some suggestions for its improvement.

FOOTNOTES

1-Carl 0. Sauer, Geography of the Pennyroyal (Frankfort: The Kentucky Geological Survey, 1927), Ser. VI, Vol. XXV, p. 48.'

^Lewis Collins, Historical Sketches of Kentucky (Maysville, Ky.: Lewis Collins, 1347), 345.

^William B. Allen, A History of Kentucky (Louisville, Ky.: Bradley & Gilbert, Publishers, 1872.  Reprinted by Green County Historical Society, 1967), p. 132; Lewis Collins, Collins' Historical Sketches of Kentucky (2 vols., Covington, Ky.: Collins & Co., 1874).  Revised . . . and brought down to the year 1874, by his son Richard H. Collins.  II, p. 333; William H. Perrin, J. H. Battle, and Gil­bert C. Kniffin, Kentucky; A History of the State (Chicago: F. A. Battey, 1887), 3rd edition, 991. fold.

^James W. Dyer, "Kentucky Cavers Explore Blue Hole," NSS News, VII (September, 1949).

^Robert Halmi, "Men in Action: Discovery of a Bottomless Hole," True (March, 1958), pp. 12-15.

7Roger L. Miller, "Frenchman Knob Pit (The Blue Hole, or the Bottomless Pit of Kentucky)," Guidebook to the Kentucky Speleofest (1973), pp. 41-2.

Slbid., 42.

^Personal communication from Joseph W. Saunders.

lOian G. Ellis, "Frenchman Knob Pit (Kentucky Blue Hole)," Kentucky Speleo­fest Guidebook (Louisville: Speleopress, 1975), pp. 15-6, 22.  Reprinted in Guidebook: Kentucky Speleofest '79. pp. 25-6.

-U-Privately distributed blue line map by Blue Grass and ESSO Grottos.

12Angelo I. George, "Preliminary Investigation of Pseudo and Interstratal Karstification Along the Northern Boundary of the Central Kentucky Karst," Ken­tucky Speleofest Guidebook (Louisville: Speleopress, 1975), pp. 48-69; Angelo I. George, Caves and Drainage North of the Green River (Unpublished manuscript, 1977), p. 16; Personal communication from Dr. James F. Quinlan.

    

13Miiier, "Frenchman Knob Pit," p. 41; William Hopper, "Frenchman Knob Pit," Crawlway Courier, IX, No. 1 (1975), pp. 1-2; Edward R. Pohl, "Upper Mississip-pian Deposits of South-Central Kentucky," Kentucky Academy of Science, XXXI, No. 1-2 Q.970), p. 11. A natural cave has been discovered in Duvall County, Texas, which has gush­ing streams, a deep well, and walls composed of sulphate of lime.

New York World, May 31, 1867
Vol. 18, Nos. 3 & 4                                                        104

 

From Mountain Zone.com 

"Frenchman Knob Summit - Kentucky Mountain Peak Information"

http://www.mountainzone.com/mountains/detail.asp fid=6943756

 

"Frenchman Knob is a mountain summit in Hart County in the state of Kentucky (KY). Frenchman Knob climbs to 1,158 feet (352.96 meters) above sea level. Frenchman Knob is located at latitude - longitude coordinates (also called lat - long coordinates or GPS coordinates) of N 37.354777 and W -85.873579."

 "Anyone attempting to climb Frenchman Knob and reach the summit should look for detailed information on the Frenchman Knob area in the topographic map (topo map) and the Canmer USGS quad. To hike and explore the Kentucky outdoors near Frenchman Knob, check the list of nearby trails."

Peak Type: Summit

Latitude: 37.354777

Longitue: -85.873579

Peak Elevation: 1,158 feet (352.96 m)

Nearest City: Bonnieville (1.7 miles away)