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Feb. 3, 2008
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Mammoth cave
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C
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Mammoth Cave since 1816 to see
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the subterranean realm. Travelers of
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those early years often wrote accounts of the
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cave and their experiences, accounts which
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were published on both sides of the Atlantic
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and brought more visitors to discover the
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cave first-hand with the only people who
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truly knew this underworld – the guides. And
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among the greatest of the guides were the
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Bransfords.
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Bransford family members guided visitors
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in Mammoth Cave from 1838 until 1939.
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Prior to the Bransfords, two generations
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of earlier guides had conducted travelers
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through the cave.
urious visitors have come to
MAT and NICK
A new era began in 1838 when Franklin
Gorin, an attorney of Glasgow, Kentucky,
purchased the property from Hyman and
Simon Gratz. Gorin brought his 17-year-old
slave, Stephen, for a guide. He also hired
from his Glasgow friend, Thomas Bransford,
two slaves, Mat and Nick, brothers about the
same age as Stephen.
Guides Joe Shackleford and Archibald
Miller, Jr. taught the three younger guides
the tourist routes in the cave, as they themselves
had been taught by earlier guides.
The three were willing learners and became
the principle guides during the next two
decades.
Not content with the known cave, each of
Mat assisted Charles Waldack, a Cincinnati
photographer, in taking the first photographs
in the cave. The equipment, large and
awkward, included a stereographic camera,
magnesium flare holders, and bulky reflectors,
all of which Mat helped transport from
place to place within the cave. Forty-two
wet-plate stereoscopic views were taken in
1866 and published by Anthony& Co. of
New York in 1867. These are now at the
Library of Congress. The one showing Mat
at the cave entrance is a favorite of collectors.
During his 50 years as a guide, Nick
saw many famous people come to the cave.
Ralph Waldo Emerson came in 1850. His
impressions of the Star Chamber inspired
one of his essays. The following year
Jenny Lind sat in the Devil’s Armchair in
Gothic Avenue. It has since been known as
Jenny Lind’s Armchair. In 1872 Grand Duke
Alexis of Russia toured the cave, as did
Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, in 1876.
That same year Shakespearean actor Edwin
Booth is said to have recited from
Hamlet
from a high natural stage in the room since
known as Booth’s Amphitheatre. One of the
1867 visitors cave a colorful description of
Nick:
“We call him Old Nick, considerably
past middle age; wrinkled, a short, broad
strongman ... every one of the innumerable
wrinkles in his black face made more distinct,
with his white beard and mustache,
and the whites of his eyes seeming to glow
in the blue elfish light ....”
HENRY
A second generation of Bransfords followed
the first as guides at Mammoth Cave. Henry,
son of Mat, was born in 1849; trained by
his father, he began guiding around 1872. He
delighted in showing the saltpetre hoppers
used during the war of 1812, and the road
through the Main Cave along which oxcarts
brought petre dirt to the hoppers. Tracks of
the cartwheels remained in the road, as did
some of the corncobs at the place where
the oxen had been tethered and fed. One visitor
observed that the cobs appeared perfectly
preserved by the pure cave air and asked to
purchase one as a keepsake. Henry obliged,
and then said that he would carry in more
cobs for future visitors ...
Mammoth Cave
tuberculosis hospital in the
cave, and in 1841 the three
were set to work building
cabins in the cave to house
future patients. Two were
built in Audubon Avenue,
some in the Main Cave, and
one in Pensico Avenue.
Dr. Croghan died in 1849,
and Stephen in 1857. Now
Mat and Nick were the most experienced
guides. Dr. Charles W. Wright, in his 1858
guidebook, wrote that “although a great deal
has been said and written about Stephen,
from the fact that he was the favorite of a
former proprietor, he was in no respect superior
to either Mat or Nicholas, nor was his
acquaintance with the cave more thorough or
extensive.”
Wright also mentioned that “Mat, as well
as Nicholas, saved a party from drowning
on the Echo River, by his courage and selfpossession.”
Some visitors wanted to explore the new
parts of the cave. In 1863 F.J. Stevenson of
London, England, spent ten days doing just
that. He and Nick descended into the bottom
of Gorin’s Dome, and found a pool of water
issuing from under a low arch of rock, and
passing out by a similar arch on the other
side. The following day a small boat was
constructed and lowered by guides to the
bottom of the dome. Stevenson and Nick
spent the next two days exploring the
upstream part of the river.
The Bransfords of Mammoth Cave
National Park
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
them entered the dark unknown and made
new discoveries. Mat was a member of the
exploring team that first entered Mammoth
Dome and found there a miner’s lantern that
had been dropped down Crevice Pit when
the cave was worked for saltpetre. He also
discovered at the end of Franklin Avenue a
beautiful grotto later named Serena’s Arbor.
The cave property changed hands again in
1839 when Dr. John Croghan of Louisville
purchased the cave. Stephen was sold with
the cave, and Mat and Nick were leased
as before. In the truest sense, the three
belonged to the cave, and only secondarily
to their legal owners. Croghan planned a
Stevenson later described his discoveries
on what has since been known as “Stevenson’s
Lost River.” When a dam was built
on the Green River 43 years later the water
level rose in the dome, closing the only
known entrance to that river. Remains of the
boat could still be seen at the bottom of the
dome in 1900.
Stevenson also wrote that he and
Nick explored Roaring River and that he,
Nick, and guide Frank Demunbrun each
descended the Maelstrom, the deep pit at the
end of the “Long Route.”
I
nscription on the cave wall, Snowball Room |
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