Stephen Bishop (cave explorer)

Bishop was taken to Mammoth Cave in 1838 when he was 17 years old, stemming from the divorce of Bishop's possible father, white farmer Lowry Bishop. ==Mammoth Cave career==

Bishop explored and named large areas of the Mammoth Cave system. He discovered and named many features of the Cave – including River Styx, Great Relief Hall, Fat Man's Misery, Tall Man's Misery, and Lake Lethe. as "Barnwell" refers to Bishop as "Stephen, the best guide to the cave". Roosevelt states that Bishop told the group that he, Bishop, had learned to read and write by seeing previous tourists "...the gentlemen paint their names with the smoke of the torches on the walls, and then asking how they spelled them." Later, in 1854, Nathaniel Parker Willis, in A Health Trip to the Tropics, described Bishop as wearing "a chocolate-colored slouch hat, a green jacket, and striped trousers" as his working uniform. Willis also described Bishop as "better worth looking at than most celebrities...With more of the physiognomy of a Spaniard, with masses of black hair, curling slightly and gracefully, and his long mustache, giving quite an appearance. He is of middle size, but built for an athlete. With broad chest and shoulders, narrow hips and legs slightly bowed. Mammoth Cave is a wonder in which draws good society and Stephen shows that he is used to it." Bishop led tours through Mammoth that included such well-known 19th century figures as opera-singer Jenny Lind, essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the violin virtuoso Ole Bull. Before Bishop, the farthest anyone had been in the cave was to the feature known as "The Bottomless Pit". Along with a guest named H.C. Stevenson, (who allegedly offered Bishop a "fistful of money" to explore the unknown parts of the Cave) more reliable sources state it was a tall ladder ==Bishop's 1842 map of Mammoth Cave==

In 1839, Dr. John Croghan of Louisville bought the Mammoth Cave Estate from its owner Franklin Gorin for $10,000 (). This sale included Bishop and several other enslaved people. Croghan briefly ran an ill-fated tuberculosis hospital in the cave, the vapors of which he believed would cure his patients. A widespread epidemic disease of the period, tuberculosis would ultimately claim the life of Croghan. In 1842, Bishop was sent to Croghan's plantation, Locust Grove. He stayed there for two weeks, drawing a map of the Mammoth Cave system from memory. The map was published in 1844 by Morton and Griswold as a pull-out insert in Alexander Clark Bullitt's Rambles in Mammoth Cave in the Year 1844 by a Visiter [sic] (Morton and Griswold, 1845.) Unusually for an enslaved person, Bishop was given full credit for his work. The Bishop map remained in use for over forty years. ==Family==

During his time at Croghan's estate in 1842 Bishop met Charlotte Brown, an enslaved domestic worker for Croghan's family. They were married at Croghan's Locust Grove plantation. Charlotte gave birth to their son Thomas Bishop about a year later. assisting Max Kämper with the first accurate instrumental survey of the system in 1908. ==Freedom and death==

In 1852, Bishop guided author Willis to Echo River. On the trip, Willis learned that, despite knowing that he would be freed in five years, Bishop intended to buy his and his wife's and son's freedom and move to Liberia. Harold Meloy, writing about Bishop in the book Cavers, Caves, & Caving states that "Pittsburgh millionaire James R. Mellon" visited the cave for one week in November 1878, where he heard stories of Bishop and met Charlotte, who then managed the hotel dining room. She led him to Stephen's gravesite, "which had only a cedar tree to mark it." Mellon promised to have a headstone carved for Stephen's grave. Three years later, Mellon arranged for a monument carver to prepare a second-hand tombstone, one that a Civil War soldier's family had not paid for (hence the appearance of a sword and flag in the lunette). The stone mason chiseled off the original name and placed an inscription that read, STEPHEN BISHOP, FIRST GUIDE & EXPLORER OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE. DIED JUNE 15, 1859 IN HIS 37 YEAR. The stone was shipped to the cave and installed on Bishop's grave. Meloy states "The error in the date of death [1859 vs. 1857] detracted nothing from the legend now reinforced by a permanent record in stone." == References ==