NEWS: Newlyweds in 1801, James B. Finley, Whitley Co, Ky Date: Saturday, August 30, 2003 10:36 PM Submitted by Mary Lou Hudson ************************************************************* USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit, or for presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations who wish to use this material must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or legal representative and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of the consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. ************************************************************* Source: The Whitley Republican, Williamsburg, KY – about 1976 (exact date not known) Newlyweds in 1801 "No couple on earth lived happier or more contented" James B. Finley was born in 1791 in North Carolina, spent his boyhood in Kentucky, married in Ohio and later revisited Kentucky in a time that would affect his entire life. In his autobiography he describes his first house and what it was like to be newlyweds on the frontier. "I imagine I hear the reader saying this was hard living and hard times," he wrote, but throughout his life, he would return in memory to those early years when beset by trouble and frustration. "No couple on earth lived happier or more contented." As happens to other sweethearts, the parents of Hannah Strane did not approve of her courtship by James Finely. When they were married March 3, 1801, Hannah’s father would not allow her to return for her belongings. The couple went to the woods where, with help from James’ brother John Finley, a simple cabin was built. The nearest neighbor was three miles away. "Into this we moved without horse or cow, bed or bedding, bag or baggage," Finley wrote. To make a bed the couple drove forked saplings into the ground, placed sticks in the forks, then covered the sticks with elm bark. They gathered leaves, picked out the twigs and dried the leaves to stuff into a bedtick for a mattress. There was no scarcity of meat, for Finley became a sharpshooter during his youth in Kentucky, but they lacked bread. In order to pay for a bushel of potatoes, the young husband cut and split 100 rails. His greatest prize was a hen and three childrens given him for a day’s work. Elm bark that made a mat for the bed also was spread on the cabin floor and used to line the walls. The cabin provided shelter for the happy couple through the summer when they built a neater cabin of logs. To insulate the new cabin they spread their harvest of corn in the loft. Finley went into detail describing the advantages of backwoods life. "We had not then sickly, hysterical wives, with poor, puny, sickly, dying children, and no dyspeptic men constantly swallowing the nostrums of quacks. When we became sick unto death we died at once." A few months following his marriage he learned of a great religious revival at Cane Ridge, Ky., his father’s old preaching ground and his boyhood home. This movement, he stated, "was accompanied by that alarming phenomenon called the jerks." He described an awesome scene on his arrival at Cane Ridge. Approximately 25,000 people had collected for the services. "The noise was like the roar of Niagara." Preachers as well as the crowd were either exhorting, singing, praying, crying or shouting. Finley was so disturbed he ran into the woods. He stood on a stump and once again looked to the crowd. "My hair rose up on my head." As frightened and disturbed as he was by the emotional display, he too came under the spell and was converted enroute home. He became a Methodist circuit rider, a choice which brought intense problems as well as self satisfaction. Years afterward when greatly troubled he would remember the cabin he and Hannah built in the woods. "Though we had but little, our wants were few, and we enjoyed our simple and homely possessions with a relish the purse-proud aristocrat never enjoyed. No couple on earth lived happier or more contented."