"Old Natchez Trace" Photo by jimmywayne on flickr.com
I've got a new dream vacation. I want to hike the Natchez Trace. If by chance John T McNeff wasn't a rogue and a cad, he was an unlucky traveler on the Boatman's Trail from New Orleans.
In the early 19th century, it was common for farmers to build flatboats to take their crops to market in New Orleans. Abraham Lincoln, for example, made trips down the river in 1828 and 1831.
So if John T's trip had gone as Polly expected he would have floated the cattle (or horses, depending on the account you follow) down to New Orleans. It would have at least been himself and we'll say his slave - John T could have also sold him while there. Would someone else have come along? Maybe a Thompson cousin? (There was a Thompson family living in Springfield after all.) John T would have sold his goods, his flatboat - and if he was a bit of the faux dandy I imagine him to be, he would have bought himself a horse for the return trip. (Though it was frequently made on foot.) To head North, he would have have got on the Nashville Road - the Natchez Trace. From Nashville, The Wilderness Road would have taken him the rest of the way to Kentucky. Except we know he never made it.
Marauding gangs are common in these tales ... indeed they are the stuff of legend. The Harpes, Joseph Hare, Samuel Mason and John Murrell were among the famous. And it wasn't just robbery, there was sadistic cruelty. There are stories of disemboweling the bodies to fill them with weight and send them to the bottom of the river ... of signatures in the blood of their victims to make sure they got proper credit.
John T's bones could be resting in a watery grave - or forgotten deep along a shaded, well-worn path.
I'm sure it's the story that the family told itself to make sense of his never returning. Remember, David T McNeff's bio said that John T was "presumed dead." But Polly's divorce request still nags me. I think she knew more about the man than we'd like to remember.
