The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-01-03
MRS. Il. B. STOWE IN DIXIE
WHERE SHE OBTAINED MATERIAL FOR RER VEIL KNOWN BOOK,
EIiza's Flight Based on Facts Washington
 village Scene of Slave Auctions.

Village Scene of Slave Auctions.
 One of the oldest towns in Kentucky, if not the oldest, is Washington, which, up to 1S42, was the county seat Of Ma son county.
 Washington lives entirely in the past. Nobody ever moves there, nobody ever builds house there and nobody ever thinks of starting new business there. All the life and energy of the place passed away when the court was re- moved to the new county seat at Mays vile, four miles east, on the Ohio river
 Just at present, says the Cincinnati Enquirer, outside interest is revived in the town because of the demolition of part of the old courthouse buildings which were made famous chiefly be- cause 1t was there that Harriet Beech CT Stowe witnessed the slave sale that later figured in her story of "Uncle Toms Cabin" The work of tearing down the old brick annex is being prosecuted with a vigor characteristic of Washington and bids fair to be ac- complished within the next half dozen years.
 Almost everybody in Cincinnati knows that Mrs. Stowe lived on Wal nut Hills for a number of years during the period of Professor Stowe's con nection with Lane seminary. But few know, however, that all of the scenes so graphically laid in Uncle Toms Cabin,'' were transplanted from Wash ington, Ky, and Bourbon county, in the same state
 MRS, STONES MEMORABLE VISIT. An Enquirer representative has just returned from voyage of discovery across the river, during which he traced the journeyngs of Mrs, Stowe during her memorable visit to Kentucky in 1883, and has stood upon the very spot where the apostle of abolition stood siXty-two years ago, when she received her first impressions and secured her first facts about slavery.
 There still lives in Helena, Ky, a rare old gentleman, by name Benjamin D. Parry, who has something to do with the court. For all his long life since reaching mans estate, MT. Parry has enjoyed public office In 1893 he was in the county clerks office at Washington, and it became his pleas ant duty to escort about Miss Harriet Beecher, then a young teacher in the Western Institute and Miss Dutton one of her associates.
 The young ladies Were guests at the mansion of Colonel Marshal Key, and young Parry, by no means an aboli- tionst, escorted them about, taking them to the various points of interest all in ignorance of the fact that he was loading a magazine that thirty years later would materially assist in barring slavery out of existence.
 It must be explained, however, that neither of the young ladies were then bent upon gathering material for any publication They were not then studying the question of slavery, They were merely paying a. short visit to cultured family and resting during short vacation.
 Although born in New England and infused with an adherence of the in stitutions of slavery, Miss Beecher's residence in Cincinnati had accustomed her to association with blacks, and somewhat dulled the edge of her pre- iudices
 WASHINGTON TOWN.
 Now for Washington. When Miss Beecher tarried ir the Key homestead it looked precisely as it does to-day, for everything about the town, barring one comparatively new house, looks the same as it did eighty or ninety years ago, save that small wing was added within 8 score of years back
 The town is struggling, like most Kentucky courthouse towns, built upon one long street. One walks upon quaint Tagging, irregular pieces of limeroch, that was laid where 1t now is over 100 years ago. Every piece of rock is a cu- Iicsity. being filled with fossilized re- mains, with which the country abounds
 In the thirties, when the court met there, Washington was a thriving place The legal fraternity gathered there from surrounding towns, and the hotel was a little mint Many of the resi- dents of the town were lawyers, and Colonel Key was judge of the county court a post of great honor and serious importance in a Kentucky town before the war.
 It was then the custom to hold slave auctions in the courthouse grounds, the euctioneer standing within the shadow of the temple of justice, frequently upon the steps of the building. The clerk of the court had charge of the sales, and the auctions took place on certain stat ed days. Then blacks were sold under legal proceedings, such as partitionng Of estates, seizure for debt and foreclos- ure of mortga ges, just as live stock is sold to-day.
 THE SLAVE BLOCK.
 Young Parry rightly guessed that the young ladies would be interested in the sale of slaves on the block, and es- corted them to the old court house. The building still stands, just as it did then, out since tie removal of the court to Maysville, has been used as school building.
 In the thirties a wooden shed extended nearly fifty feet from the end of the brick structure. Here the slaves to be sold were huddled together. Miss Reecher witnessed a sale of slaves and photographed the scene in Uncle Tom s Cabin" only removing the market, for artistic purposes. to New Orleans. In chapter xxx she thus describes a slave