Epilogue

George and Serena Croghan’s son, St. George Croghan, inherited Locust Grove and moved from New York with his young family in hopes of farming the estate. He failed, and after mortgaging the place, returned to New York to spend years litigating his wife’s inheritance. With no means of support, he joined the Confederate Army in 1861 and was killed that November. The Croghan homestead was rented, then sold, and today stands as a National Historic Landmark museum open to the public. The enslaved Croghan workforce was freed in 1856 by the terms of Dr. Croghan’s will, and although Stephen Bishop and the slave guides eventually opened a hotel for black tourists who visited Mammoth Cave, the farm’s enslaved people moved to the city and disappeared from the history of the place where most of them had been born.