Jordan Arterburn and Tarlton Arterburn

Jordan Arterburn and Tarlton Arterburn were the seventh and eighth sons of William Arterburn and Rachel Smoots, who came to Kentucky from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The parents navigated the Ohio River on flatboats, and settled land near Beargrass Creek. It is unclear when the Arterburns entered the slave trade but in 1839 there was a letter waiting for Tarlton Arterburn at the post office in Natchez, Mississippi, the site of the infamous Forks of the Road slave market. Based on "negroes wanted" advertisements placed in newspapers beginning in 1843, Tarlton Arterburn was originally in partnership with Matthew Garrison, another slave trader based in Louisville. According to local historians, the Arterburns were known for their "iron-barred coops." Slaves to be shipped south from Louisville were chained to one another and "marched up Main Street to board the boats in Portland to be shipped to New Orleans." On February 17, 1845, a baby named Mary Eliza was born in Kentucky. When Mary Eliza died 86 years later in Louisville, Kentucky of and senility, her 1931 death certificate listed Margaret Shipp as her mother and Tarlton Arterburn as her father. Beginning in 1845, the Arterburns began running a "series of advertisements which ran for several years" seeking to purchase "100 negroes for the Southern market, for which we will pay the highest prices." T. Arterburn was a registered voter in Vicksburg, Mississippi in February 1846. In November 1846 he placed an advertisement offering "30 YOUNG and likely NEGROES for sale, consisting of men, women and boys and girls, field hands and house servants, and two good blacksmiths" to be sold on Grove street near Washington street in Vicksburg. In ''John B. Jegli's Louisville, New-Albany, Jeffersonville, Shippingport and Portland directory'' for both 1845–46 and 1847–48, Jordan Arterburn, "negro trader" was resident at 35 1st Street in Louisville. At the time of the 1850 census, Jordan and Tarlton Arteburn shared a household in the second district of Louisville; Jordan's listed occupation was "negro dealer." == Freedom seekers and Harriet Beecher Stowe ==

On Tuesday, August 24, 1852, seven enslaved men staged what was known as a "stampede," or mass escape, from the slave pen of the "Messrs. Arterburn." The Louisville Daily Courier wrote "We suppose they are 'pre-lying,' or lying out in some of the cornfields in the county." The freedom seekers were said to be wearing "heavy bracelets," meaning cast-iron shackles. The ultimate fate of Luther and compatriots is unknown. When interviewed in 1876, on the occasion of the demolition of his old slave pen Tarlton Arterburn claimed that Stowe and a male companion had visited the pen while researching her book: a song explicitly about family separation in American slavery. According to a recent history of slavery in Kentucky, "It is important to point out, however, that if we are to accept Arterburn's account of an enslaved woman singing 'My Old Kentucky Home' to Harriet Beecher Stowe, it must have happened years after Stowe's manuscript was completed. The song was published by Stephen Foster in 1853, the year after ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was published." In Emily Bingham's 2022 book about the history of the song she wrote that Arterburn used this anecdote to "exonerate himself, mock abolitionists, and defend slavery as a benevolent institution." In February 1856, a Louisville resident name C. Crutchfield wrote to planter and former slave trade Rice C. Ballard that upon discovering the self-emancipation of Big Lewis (who had escaped with help from the Underground Railroad via the frozen-over Ohio River), Crutchfield had "immediately" sold his wife and children to "Alterburn." '', 1876 == Last sales and the American Civil War ==

In March 1857, the Natchez Bulletin published a notice that promised "NEGROES COMING. Tarlton ARTERBURN & CO. will arrive in few days with 60 CHOICE NEGROES consisting of FIELD HANDS, BLACKSMITHS, HOUSE SERVANTS, &c, being the most complete assortment ever offered in this market." J. Arterburn, "negro trader," was resident in Louisville per the 1858 city directory. Jordan Arterburn was appointed to be a delegate to the state Democratic Party convention in representing the third and fourth wards of Louisville for the 1859 convention in La Grange and the 1860 convention in Frankfort. In June 1860, J. and T. Arterburn paid the executors of James D. Breckinridge for a lot fronting Caldwell Street in the Breckinridge's Addition neighborhood of Louisville. At the time of 1860 census J. and T. Arterburn shared a household in the third ward of Louisville, had real estate valued at , and personal property worth . In 1861 Tarleton and Jordan Arterburn were listed in the Louisville city directory as "slave dealers." In September 1862, "Wm. C. and T. and J. Arterburn" paid for of land in the vicinity of Louisville. In December 1862 Jordan and Tarlton Arterburn were elected officers of Abraham Lodge No. 8 of the Masonic temple of Louisville. On March 20, 1866, a formerly enslaved woman named Emily Churchill filled an affidavit with the Freedmen's Bureau. She stated that she had been born enslaved to the Arterburn family around 1826 and had lived at the Arterburn farm until July 4, 1865. She swore a statement that she had encountered Harrison Arterburn, oldest brother of Jordan and Tarleton, on the road from the Arterburn plantation. He had accused her of stealing, threatened to slit her 10-year-old son's throat, punched and knocked down both her and her blind four-year-old son, threw her only possession from the Arterburn homestead (a chair) over a fence into a field, threatened to slit her throat, and then "desisted...and tried to persuade her to go back home with him." == Antebellum era, death, and legacy ==

At the time of the 1870 census, Jordan and Tarlton Arterburn shared a household with a number of others. Jordan Arterburn's listed occupation was "retired negro trader," and Tarlton's was "real estate agent." Jordan Arterburn died in 1875, when he was about 67 years old. At the time of 1880 census, Tarlton Arterburn was identified as a "retired negro trader." He shared a household with a 35-year-old black woman named Mary E. Arterburn (his daughter) and a 45-year-old black woman named Lucinda Hughes. In 1853 the Arterburn brothers had paid a man named P. J. Milton $675 for an enslaved woman named Lucinda. Arterburn died in 1883, with a last will and testament that bequeathed his entire estate to "Mary Eliza Shipp alias Arterburn (of color)." Items offered at Tarleton Arterburn's estate sale included a "good brick house" of 10 rooms, a building lot 28 feet by 102 feet, bedsteads, carpets, tables, wardrobes, bureaus, chairs, "also one fine Gold Watch." Also in the 1880s, a woman named Kide Ann Brown placed a family reunification ad in the Christian Recorder that documented her sale by "Arterburn & Garrison" when she was about 13 or 14 years old: The state of Kentucky has placed a commemorative marker honoring the survivors and victims of the Arterburn slave trading business at the site where their slave jail once stood. == See also ==